Labeling a Part - help?

[kaiser]

I am very new to this and would like to make some small 40mm parts with "text" on them, I have tried a couple prints out in S3D and the part prints fine but the text is almost never readable.

I have tried printing in both stock settings of Medium and High and High shows a improvement but still not quite there. What settings would you try to tinker with ? Given the letters are only 3x3mm and are cut to a depth of 1.5mm maybe to small ?

Educate me >.> went from radios and metal detectors and small electronic builds to this I am lost <.<

[jimc]

you cant do text that small. keep in mind that your extruder extrudes plastic at roughly 1/2mm wide.

[kaiser]

I assumed that I would get a little better resolution on the lettering, I guess I will just have to make it larger or try fiddling with settings till I get a acceptable resolution. Really not sure what to play with setting wise but I'm up to the task as long I don't break my printer

[jsc]

If you use embossed lettering instead of extruded, you might get a better result if you printed the text face vertically. The vertical resolution is finer than the horizontal resolution, and having them embossed means at least the exteriors can be placed precisely since you can create a gap smaller than your extrusion width.

Otherwise, there are no settings that will get you around physics. You can get a smaller nozzle for finer detail work.

[ednisley]

you can create a gap smaller than your extrusion width

Alas, the inner details still get obliterated by the need to have two parallel threads for raised areas inside the letter: W M R P X B and so forth.

The finest detail an extruded-filament printer can produce in the XY plane will be about two threads wide, just under 1 mm for the usual 0.4 mm thread width. If you think of that as a 3D printing "pixel", then a crude 5x7 "dot matrix" letter lying flat on the XY plane must be at least 4x6 mm. Standing it up gives better vertical resolution, but that doesn't make the XY features any smaller.

XY resolution is one of the facts about consumer-grade (i.e., the ones we can afford) 3D printers that gets lost in the media hype cloud. Not a killer fault, just something to keep in mind.

[kaiser]

I appreciate the comments and I grasp it a bit better.

Like some have suggested I tried printing vertically but what works best is just making the text bigger, 3x3mm just was to small for the detail and the spacing was too close together - my fault for lack of understanding. I understand this technology has its limitations still but for what we can create at the moment I am very happy with it.

For now bigger text won't hurt me maybe I can get a different nozzle someday but for now it works great.

Like many I jumped into this without knowing the full depth of this hobby and software needed to begin, since it isn't advertised really. But honestly I needed something like this, my fiance just passed away suddenly from a Brain Stem Hemorrhage and working with these programs certainly gets me away from reality for awhile. Nothing can get your mind away from things like the thought of a invention even if it has no real purpose

Thanks again.