Embossed/engraved text, what are the minimum size?

[Björn Syse]

Hi,

I recently tried recessing a text into a block and print it on the Medium setting, but nothing came out. I mean, nothing of the text was visible. The rest of the thing came out, but there was no mark of the text at all in the surface. 

What is the smallest recess feature it can print you reckon? 

I wish there was a preview/simulate option in Makerware so one could visualized the gcode it created in order to track down any errors. 

Regards

- Björn

[Darrell jan]

You can use a separate app to read the gcode--I use Pleasant 3D. I was having the same problem but with text that extends out. It looked like the font was large enough to be properly rendered, but the gcode was just missing large pieces of the letters. I gradually made the text bigger and bolder until it showed up. Letter height was about 4mm, much bigger than you'd think was needed.

Darrell

[Björn Syse]

Whoa, 4 mm, that's a lot! 

Thanks for the tip about Pleasant 3d, I'll try that right away. 

- Björn

[Björn Syse]

Ah, Too bad I'm stuck on windows here.

Anyone use a similar gcode simulator/visualizer for windows they would like to recommend?

Regards

- Björn

[geneb]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012, Bj�rn Syse wrote:

> Ah, Too bad I'm stuck on windows here.
>
> Anyone use a similar gcode simulator/visualizer for windows they would like
> to recommend?
>

Don't forget that you can get VMWare Player for free and set up a Linux
machine just for things like this.

g.

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[Clinton Hoines]

You can use Repetier host for viewing Gcode, you cna't use it to slice but you can view Gcode by layer. And 4mm seems far too large for min print resolution, you might want to try a different slicer.

 

http://www.repetier.com/download/

 

Clinton

[Cymon]

If you stand the letters up so they're printing as a part of the layers you can sometimes eek a little more detail out of them.

The best thing to do is try it. Make a piece with the letter "A" in different sizes and see what happens. Then return and report because I'd love an answer.

[Björn Syse]

Thanks, but in this case, this specific app was a mac app. However, I would never do such a thing as to launch linux virtually just to run a program that does something that should have been included in the application in the first place. That's an outrageous suggestion in my world, but I guess you didn't mean it that way ;)

[Andrew Russell]

This industry is young, there are many parts of the process that have yet to be streamlined.  :)

The upside to this is that you can be THE GUY to invent the next solution!

To be fair, any program that comes with Skeinforge does have a gcode viewer, since SF includes one.

But, it is not my favorite and runs pretty slow.  I use pleasant 3d which was mentioned previously.

The gcode viewer that is included with Repetier Host has the ability to dial in the extrusion thickness, which should give you an more accurate preview than even pleasant 3d.  

For printing text and objects with thin/small parts, previewing the gcode has been essential for me.

-Andy

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[RocketSled]

I've had a similar problem.  Both relief and inset text.  The only solution I've identified (though honestly, I haven't worked too hard at it) was to make the text larger.  It's a really strange behavior, though.  Small otherwise-arbitrary features print just fine but text I generate doesn't print below a certain feature size.  SF can't know the text is text.  Geometry is geometry.  There's got to be something I'm doing wrong when I model the text that's causing it, but it's not obvious to me what that is...though thinking about it, maybe something related to how I extrude it from a surface.  Maybe I'm leaving an internal intersecting face.  I did one thing with text where the letters were hollow, like a stencil, and that printed just as I'd hoped.

[Darrell jan]

RocketSled,

What you describe is exactly my experience. I tried several different font sizes, and like you say, small arbitrary features print just fine, but the text didn't look good until I got to the surprisingly big 4 mm. That's the letter height, not the feature size of the letters. That's with SK50; Slic3r and Miracle Grue looked worse.

Darrell

[Björn Syse]

Yes, your're right. It's young, but still. I've had this functionality (simulation) in the program I use to control my cnc mill since 2004. 

I'll have a look at repetier host, thanks for the tip!