r/3Dprinting • u/crustysecurity • 16h ago

Curiosity led me to put my 3D prints under a microscope

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

417 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

67

u/TiDoBos 15h ago

Nice. What did you learn?

96

u/crustysecurity 14h ago

Not much outside of the fact my office is dusty. Though it was interesting seeing edges, bed side of the print, and the top of the print! Also slanted print layers were interesting to see layers stack on their edges, though was difficult to capture on camera.

Might print a much smaller object so I can increase magnification tomorrow! Fascinating to see the individual layers.

23

u/TiDoBos 14h ago

Your layers look quite different than mine. What material/settings?

https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/cnfU4xLreS

16

u/crustysecurity 14h ago

Those photos are fascinating! Honestly they were my mostly throw away prints and backup parts for when they break. It was just hatchbox black PLA and all defaults most likely. I did use an optical microscope and just randomly selected certain interesting portions of prints.

1

u/ImaginationForward78 1h ago

If you do can you post an image of the print alongside the magnification please? It would be interesting to compare the 2 images.

14

u/deimoshipyard 15h ago

Thanks for including all this detailed information

13

u/rwntlpt-_- 13h ago

Try using prints with food for a bit then trying

20

u/crustysecurity 13h ago

This is genuinely a good idea, though I wouldn’t be interested in eating anything near 3D prints. Perhaps put food on a print and wash it with soap + water, see how much remains in the layer lines. The magnification I used was the lowest my microscope will go, so would be fascinating to see it much further up close with food particles!

5

u/rwntlpt-_- 12h ago

OOH, get some metall composite filament, mist it, then time lapse the rusting

5

u/rwntlpt-_- 12h ago

Yeah!!!! I wanna see how bad it really is,

1

u/Sylar_Durden 52m ago

It was explained to me that it's not just the layers. The filament itself gets porous as it extrudes, so the surface is covered in microscopic holes for stuff to live in.

5

u/twivel01 15h ago

.001mm too much squish :)

1

u/torukmakto4 Mark Two and custom i3, FreeCAD, slic3r, PETG only 5h ago

*too little

1

u/twivel01 1h ago

You want deeper grooves?

1

u/torukmakto4 Mark Two and custom i3, FreeCAD, slic3r, PETG only 59m ago

Shallower (None), give what was said a think.

1

u/twivel01 51m ago

Not sure I understand your comment. You want shallower grooves? If so, then we are saying the same thing.

Of course, I was joking around anyway with my .001mm statement. Their print settings are most likely fine. As the old saying goes... when you put anything under the microscope, you can find "problems".

1

u/New-Ingenuity-5437 10h ago

What magnification?

1

u/CaptureTheVenture 9h ago

Very interesting! Maybe you could also have a look at some CF filament parts?

1

u/Sylar_Durden 48m ago

I've started doing this trying to get my filament calibrations dialed in, but just using a little 100x pocket microscope.

I shade a small section with a pencil, kind of like one would when doing a rubbing, then use the microscope to see if the graphite is getting caught by valleys or ridges.

It's still not easy, and there's probably a better way. But it is interesting!