Tiny holes problem

I printed this part on tough resin and it came out great but i cant get those little holes to see. They size 0.15mm. Is that kind of details reachable?
Tried 100 microns and 50 microns. It got better but cant get those holes

any ideas? Should i try 25 microns on clear resin ? How would you orient it ? Should i orient the piece to let holes paralel to bed ? (At top face)

If not in Form2, do you know any prototiping machine that could ?

You might find this thread helpful (or not) - Form 2 does not print hole with 0.5mm diameter

I’ve also found that 0.5mm holes are pushing the limits. I would think that 0.15mm is not yet possible.

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Can you make guide depressions to facilitate later drilling? Because the wizards at Formlabs have optimized the laser resolution by modulating the beam time, the surfaces are smooth and gorgeous for models and dental, but not holes. If you have the patience, you could get very close with the $500 Wanhao and LOTS of tuning with the right resins. In contrast, FormLabs has done so much behind the scenes work to optimize their technology (including supports, slicing, resins), that most work is no-brainer.

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Definitely not possible with the current SLA machines, especially in Tough. Even the 3DSystems machines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars can’t resolve feature that size.

You’d have to post-process or find another way. I’d investigate buying a metallic mesh of that size and gluing it to the part with some resin afterwards.

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I suppose only CNC machines with drills 0,15mm.

They sent this imagen le 200um holes in sla machines

Who is they, Formlabs of someone else ?

For me more than 50% of these holes are blind, which is probably not what you are looking for. I still think most if any SLA machine can’t print reliably a 150um hole, and for sure not Formlab’s

The depth of the wholes is also a factor, I bet in the image you just showed the wall is very thin while in your part it seems the wall is several times the Ø of the holes.

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All SLA printers have the issue–it’s indirect curing, there’s going to be liquid resin in the holes and either it gets cured from the laser going through the next layers (since you can’t stop the light from going through the current layer) or it gets cured from where light from the laser bounces around within the resin.

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Thanks, maybe i should orient it different?

In stupid (Imperial units) 0.15mm is almost 0.006 inches. Given the size of the holes, the depth, and thick viscosity of the resin; I’d say you’re asking too much of the printer regardless of the orientation and print resolution.

As others have said, you will not be able to resolve 0.15mm holes, but with Black or Grey resin you can do a bit better than you can with tough and can get below 0.5mm if the holes are not too deep.

150um is tiny even for machining. Standard PCB drills usually only go down to 250-300u. Smaller holes are usually laser cut (ironically?) Smaller drills do exist though.
No idea for a 3d printing technology that can do it though. Possibly a direct laser melting type technology?

AFAIK that’s worse than SLA in terms of XY resolution :stuck_out_tongue:

You could produce this meshes with photo etching (chemical milling), but they would be limited to a metal thickness of less than the size of the holes.