#reprapmicron — Public Fediverse posts

The mystery image posted a while back was a ludicrous attempt at the Mona Lisa. I tried again at greater speed, doing a 43x64 stippled b/w icon, which at 4μm a pixel comes out at 0.25mm high and looks like a mess.

Well, got that out of my head. Back to work on #RepRapMicron.

The #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter just produced this "Hello World" with a dot spacing of 8μm. That's the size of a human red blood cell, and the accuracy of the Intel 4004 CPU feature size. Positioning is good down to sub-4μm but the point and the Sharpie ink film start smudging up badly. The advance is due to a new mechanical touch-sensing probe tip assembly.

For squits & giggles I've put a real-time video up of the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter depositing minuscule droplets of resin with CC subtitles.

https://youtu.be/UAQo_PypGZc

I strongly suspect YT's compression algorithm will not be friendly to it, but we'll find out shortly.

I managed to get a repeatable, automated probe etch done for the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter, using the Z axis to control the etch. These are 0.3mm diameter 316 stainless wires, etched on different occasions. Yes the probe walls are meant to be rough to hold the resin "ink":

The #RepRapMicron electrolysis cell. Basically an M8 washer stuck to a glass slide with UV Nail Gel.

Took me a while to figure out I could use the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter to etch its own probes. This is a test of my wee electrolysis cell. You can just see the turbulence caused by electrolysis when the probe dips in.

Okay, I feel I can put the PIKA #RepRapMicron files up on Printables and let the world loose on it https://www.printables.com/model/1692745-reprapmicron-pika-micron-resolution-3d-printer

Phew! Managed to get the PIKA #RepRapMicron assembly docs done. Well, started, here come the revisions...

https://github.com/VikOlliver/RepRapMicron/wiki/PIKA-Build-Process

A 10x10 grid of 100μm squares drawn using the #repRapMicron #3Dprinter.

Etched into a layer of marker on a glass slide.

Oh yeah, #RepRapMicron PIKA V0.01 levelled a 1mm square bed to within 4μm!
http://blog.reprap.org/2026/03/levelling-pika-reprapmicrons-bed-to-4.html

Just finished printing the bits for the next gen #RepRapMicron. In black. Immediately, Lewis The Massive Hairy Ragdoll leaps up onto the bench and moults all over it. His fluff is white, which of course is magically attracted to black objects...

Preparing for the first Geeko Farm livestream, running alongside Jon Oxer's #RepRapMicron build on SuperHouse to take notes and offer help if he tears out his hair... Oh.

Charging headphones, check. Studio mic, check. Notepad, check. Folding screen to hide all the crap, check. Tea mug filled with scotch, check.

New laptop still pending though, so AV is going to be running/crawling on USB 2.0 😬

Jon Oxer of SuperHouse spoke with me at #EverythingOpen about doing a livestream of him building a #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter. Well, it's this Sunday NZ/Aus time: https://www.youtube.com/live/9y5YsKGFets

Boy is the documentation wiki due for a shakedown!

I shall lurk in the background.

Jon Oxer is going to livestream a #RepRapMicron build on his SuperHouse YT channel.

I feel a great distubance in The Force, as if many documentation fixes suddenly updated at once...

The Latest from RepRapMicron – Nail Gel, First Objects, and More https://hackaday.com/2026/02/01/the-latest-from-reprapmicron-nail-gel-first-objects-and-more/ #microfabrication #3dPrinterhacks #flexurejoint #RepRapMicron #pantograph #flexure #UVresin #UVgel

The nice #EverythingOpen peeps have put a video of the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter presentation up on the youtubes https://youtu.be/dq_ZCf0-KmM

Yay! #EverythingOpen presentation runs on Linux and Windows - my ancient Linux laptop has no HDMI so I have to borrow The Boss'. Also got Windows controlling the #RepRapMicron, so might bring that along...

Prototype micro-gripper for #RepRapMicron (13x scale model)

http://blog.reprap.org/2026/01/kinky-probe-gripping-things-and-new.html

Tried burnishing some Dutch Guilding down to see how conductive it is. Answer: Not.

Looked at it under the microscope for clues. Well thar's yer problem.

http://blog.reprap.org/2026/01/poor-results-frim-gold-ish-leaf-dutch.html
#RepRapMicron

Microscope slide gimbal. Couldn't find one so designed one. The point of a binocular #microscope is to view and manipulate in 3D, so you really need 3doF to position the sample.
https://www.printables.com/model/1534011-microscope-slide-rotating-gimbal-mount
#openscad #3Dprinter #reprapmicron

Latest #RepRapMicron piece. A folded and fastened structure with a hair threaded through it. The squares are 0.8mm across. The sides are two print lines wide, 30-odd layers thick.

Blog post of details: http://blog.reprap.org/2025/12/more-successful-folded-structure.html

#3Dprinter

Figured out that each dot of resin the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter puts down is about a billionth of a ml.

Here's a picture of a millionth of a ml of resin squares stuck together at not even close to a right angle. They're 400μm (0.4mm) on a side and it's untidy and hairy because I did it manually and "spilt" resin everywhere during manipulation. Made a total pig's ear of it, but shows the potential for making foldable structures and setting them in place. The structure will support a pin.

Here's a short 400μm diameter cylinder (viewed from above, probably about 40μm thick) with a 12μm thick base. I printed it on the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter, accidentally flooded the slide with about 20-30μm of resin, cured it, and peeled it off. This preserved the fragile base that you can see inside the cylinder. I was actually trying to clean the slide for reuse...

The big pointy thing in the background is a 0.5mm diameter hypodermic needle poked underneath the resin.

Looking for commercial tools to take my printed parts in the 10-200 micron range and assemble them to within a micron, as part of #RepRapMicron research.

Guess what? Nobody makes them. WTF? Ones that work 10-200 nanometres, yes. Microns no. Oh, and they start at US$17,000.

Oh well, was planning on making my own anyway...

I've seen pictures of another #RepRapMicron in the wild! It was PM'd or I'd share.

Those following the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter might want to know I've managed to more or less get a few layers printed. Hilariously badly, but printed.

http://blog.reprap.org/2025/11/finally-layers-like-onion-or-parfait.html

More #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter work. I think I have the design for a probe that can make the right size dots (20μm) and lots of them between probe "dips" in the resin. The trick is to have a rough body to the probe to hold on to resin, and an ogival point to control the size of the deposited dot. Am making great progress. http://blog.reprap.org/2025/11/probe-9-right-size-dots-lots-of-em.html

I feel like I'm actually managing to get some control over the shape and surface texture of electrochemically etched #RepRapMicron probes at last. Dimensions in alt text, buffoonery on http://blog.reprap.org

I bent a medium #RepRapMicron probe. There was blood. Why not photograph them together? Details on http://blog.reprap.org for the curious. Squeam-friendly.

Had a go at doing layered prints with the #RepRapMicron #3Dprinter http://blog.reprap.org/2025/11/layered-print-test-object-strike-1.html
Didn't all go according to plan, but it was just a shakedown. Fixing a few things up, then trying it with a finer deposition probe. May have made it a bit too fine.