Smallest dots possible with reprap extrusion?

With the current mendel model, what is the smallest 'dot' of extruded material that can be produced and to what degree of accuracy?

0.5mm dots, 0.3mm thick, with as little as 0.1 degree of spacing?

It's pretty difficult to express the accuracy of repraps in such a way, you don't just print in voxels. Your measurements would be very optimistic I think, especially if you don't want them to be misshapen blobs, because the extruder takes time to start/stop, and the plastic is stringy. What do you need such accuracy for?

It might be doable with paste deposition, as opposed to thermoplastic.

I'm namely interested in DIY 3D printing for printing models / miniatures of 3D design concepts.

I havn't seen any DIY 3D printers aside from the thermoplastic extrusions.

... AFAIK with FDM the practical limit is around 120 microns with 50 microns space - this was the statement of a comercial developing team some years ago

With fluids and pastes the limits are finer - comercial wax-inkjets have droplets with 30 microns diameter but wiscosity is then lower than with water

Here some related talks: [forums.reprap.org]

Some years ago i developed a technique and prototypes for dispensing single droplets of extreme high viscouse pastes - like toothpaste or even thicker.

We made some tests with 30 microns thick glass-fibres as dippers dispensing 30 micron big droplets - here a post with an atached image of a test-array: [forums.reprap.org]

Some guys made 'Nano-inking' with a wet AFM drawing 20 nanometer wide lines ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]