In the wake of Luigi Mangione’s alleged killing of a health care CEO with a partially 3D-printed pistol, we built and tested the exact same model of weapon ourselves. And it was entirely legal.
You can definitely reliably get sub-millimeter precision with a consumer-grade 3d printer. Even with a 0.4mm nozzle, once dialed-in, you can make print-in-place models with a clearance of 0.1mm, and the default layer thickness is typically 0.2mm.
While layer adhesion is usually the weakness of 3d-printed parts, some materials like PETG or TPU have very good adhesion, to the point that printing on a glass plate can damage the glass when removing the model.
Material shrinkage is another factor to consider, and there are a myriad of other reasons why there are more accurate ways to mass produce things.
Even assuming a perfect print - no blobs, no zits, and, just for the sake of argument, let’s ignore the Z seam - I disagree that you can reliably get 0.1 mm precision off of a FDM machine in all directions. I’ve been able to get parts to fit each other to within 0.3 mm reliably in the best conditions on a properly-calibrated Prusa MK3S+
You can definitely reliably get sub-millimeter precision with a consumer-grade 3d printer. Even with a 0.4mm nozzle, once dialed-in, you can make print-in-place models with a clearance of 0.1mm, and the default layer thickness is typically 0.2mm.
While layer adhesion is usually the weakness of 3d-printed parts, some materials like PETG or TPU have very good adhesion, to the point that printing on a glass plate can damage the glass when removing the model.
Material shrinkage is another factor to consider, and there are a myriad of other reasons why there are more accurate ways to mass produce things.
Even assuming a perfect print - no blobs, no zits, and, just for the sake of argument, let’s ignore the Z seam - I disagree that you can reliably get 0.1 mm precision off of a FDM machine in all directions. I’ve been able to get parts to fit each other to within 0.3 mm reliably in the best conditions on a properly-calibrated Prusa MK3S+
But that’s just my experience.