Potential resolution

[Feign]

Regardless of the precision of the mirrors, the laser used in the Peachy is at least half a millimeter wide from what I've seen. To make an analogy, trying to draw nanostructures in a surface with the Peachy's laser would be like trying to write your name in 10pt font in wet concrete using a bowling ball on a string. While it's theoretically not impossible, it's certainly outside the realm of common sense.

[Morten]

But I don't want to draw nanostructures, I want to draw microstructures. They're a lot bigger. I'm not actually expecting to be able to do this with a stock Peachy, but like I said initially it's fun to speculate. Can the diameter of the laser be adjusted with an iris or a lens of some sort?

[Davo]

... would be like trying to write your name in 10pt font in wet concrete using a bowling ball on a string.

That's great. I tell people it's like signing a check with a caulk gun, but I may borrow this from you.

[Yourtime]

Regardless of the precision of the mirrors, the laser used in the Peachy is at least half a millimeter wide from what I've seen. To make an analogy, trying to draw nanostructures in a surface with the Peachy's laser would be like trying to write your name in 10pt font in wet concrete using a bowling ball on a string. While it's theoretically not impossible, it's certainly outside the realm of common sense.

I agree with you and I like the analogy, but he also said modified peachy, theroetical is it possible to use a more thin laser to reach the micrometer level?

[IsThisSparta]

I agree that the laser looks about .5 mm wide, but I hope and pray that the focused point at the center is bright and small enough to do this

[Anuvin]

The laser point is determined by the user. The user can place a cover on the laser, and poke a hole the size they like. What's the best way to put the tiniest hole in a piece of soda can?

(The aperture disk in the beta kit is essentially a disk of thin aluminum)

[bovalis2037]

But by changing this aperture would it affect any calculations the team has done and already built in to the printer?

For example if they said to poke a hole with a tooth pick rather than a pin the aperture would be different, and the laser would cure different amounts of resin than initially expected and change the wall size of the print. If you were to somehow make the hole smaller than initially expected the laser could possibly be moving to fast for it to actually solidify any of the resin.

Our am I just going crazy waiting for this thing to get here

[rylangrayston]

But by changing this aperture would it affect any calculations the team has done and already built in to the printer?

For example if they said to poke a hole with a tooth pick rather than a pin the aperture would be different, and the laser would cure different amounts of resin than initially expected and change the wall size of the print. If you were to somehow make the hole smaller than initially expected the laser could possibly be moving to fast for it to actually solidify any of the resin.

Our am I just going crazy waiting for this thing to get here

Very very good point bovalis2037
We are really focused on making the peachy printer hackable, built TO be modified, there are many many things that users will want to change that will effect any default calibration.. Thats why there is no default calibration per say... instead every time you make a peachy printer you calibrate it! We are shipping with not only software to print with but also software to calibrate with, That way if you build a different printer for better or worse it still has a great shot at working!

Since this is a problem that im very passonate about solving ill get into it a bit
There are 3 basic ways we are doing this:

1 . The printer always draws a bit of a warped shape with its moving laser beam, there are many stacking and unpridictable reasons for this, so we have been implementing a way for you to create a specific profile for each of your peachy printers. It applys various transformations to unwrap you unique printer.

2. Cure Rate calibration print-- (as you mentioned) If a larger aperture was used or a different laser power or even an different resin was used then the amount of light needed per volume of cured resin would be different. To calibrate for this we walk you thru doing a print where every layer is progressively cured less and less, once this print is complete you tell the computer at what height the printer did the correct amount of curing and the software correlates that with the settings used on the layer at that height.

3. drips and containers- We are making an easy to use program where you let the drip feed run from one height to another. After entering the hights int the computer it counts the drips and tells you how many drips per mm there are in your setup.

[Anuvin]

I don't think so. However, I don't think anyone knows yet how small a laser point you can use to cure resin. Another test to add to the list.

[Morten]

This printer http://oldworldlabs.com/product/owl-nano/ seems to use a laser and (10x?) lens to get to .1 micron - why couldn't we mount a peachy on a microscope? Vibration dampening is probably a concern but a laser can demonstrably cure resin at far higher resolution than we need to do structural color