What defines a printers resolution 

What defines a printers resolution

The step angle of the stepper motors, the level of microstepping used in the stepper drivers, and gear reduction in the axes. Do not get resolution confused with accuracy. Accuracy is how dimensionally close to the actual CAD model your printed part gets. Just because the resolution is in the single digit microns, the actually accuracy in the x and y of your part will probably be in the range of 100 to 200 microns of you’re lucky

Accuracy also refers to the drivers ability to match the microstepping angle. The higher microstepping you go, (generally) the slightly more off of the step angle you get (usually a percentage). This is why it’s better to go with higher step resolution motors than just doing something crazy and going with 128th microstepping or something.

As @Ashley_Webster mentions, nozzle diameter is usually the hard constraint for xy resolution with respect to the minimum feature size. As far as I’m aware most slicers won’t double back in a path so it likely the minimum achievable feature size is twice the nozzle diameter.

@Ashley_Webster , The two terms you are looking for are repeatability and accuracy. Accuracy is still a bit blurred, as for motion systems, it generally refers to the ACTUAL location of the end effector versus, the COMMANDED location. Accuracy can be measured in terms of both standard deviations and in absolute maximum (absolute maximum is more common for motion control). Repeatability is the deviation of positioning of the end effector when commanded to move to the same spot. So imagine you command the end effector to go to 0,0 then to 0,100, and move it back and forth 100 times. If you graph the movement in the y direction with respect to the ACTUAL position on the 1st run, you will get accuracy. If you continue to graph the movement over the 100 trips back and forth, the line will start to thicken on your graph. The width of that line defines you repeatability. If you have higher repeatability than accuracy, you can always MAP you movement against a MASTER, and increase your accuracy to to the point that it approaches your repeatability.

Now “part accuracy” is kind of a misnomer, as it is totally dependent on how you measure your part, so there is not REAL answer to that.

But as for accuracy of the stages, once the stages have accuracy below that of the repeatability of you extrusion system, you will reach a point of diminishing returns, i.e., and improvement in stage accuracy will be overshadowed by the extrusion system accuracy (consistency of diameter and height of plastic bead).

Hope that helps.

wow thank you everyone for the input. My main concerne here is what can I do to make the resolution of my printer better. I can see how steps on a motor can do that and once you get down to it, it depends on how accurate you can measure your movements on your machine.

It’s not just how accurately you can measure the movement, it’s how accurate the movement is and how stable the stages are. The mapping I mentioned is not supported in Marlin, or any firmware AFAIK

ok ill have to think about this for a while as well thanks

@Ashley_Webster just remember smaller nozzles mean longer print times!

haha @Ashley_Webster . Well im working on a new build and was going to try and include stuff into anything I buy