Comment by arjie
8 hours ago
I had no idea this kind of precision was possible with parts that are not particularly advanced. Most of my modeling and 3d printing is entirely AI driven these days. With this stuff, I could make even miniature parts and screws and so on. I’m a late adopter, so I’ll have to wait the 10 years or so before it reaches current Prusa/Bambu performance but it’s exciting nonetheless.
It's because it's only 8mm cubic volume.
But you can get etched glass scale encoders that will give you 1um accuracy for basically nothing these days (IE <50 bucks).
You'd still be better off just using cheap linear motors with encoders built into the rail though.
Encoders are cheap, even interferometric setup is possible to do at perhaps <$300 if you happen to live near the NeHe rust belt. Actuator backlash and stiction will still be a problem. Good actuators are expensive. Solving backlash is what is nice about this setup.
Sure. For positioning a microscope point to point the backlash wouldn't matter. For an extrusion head it kind of matters. Still not as much as it would with a cutting head, but it is nice to solve it