Too high and the grooves won’t transfer to the plastic, and too low, and it’s likely you’ll just melt the grating itself. This is because the first layer of plastic has to meld perfectly with the diffraction grating to pick up the pattern. Getting the bed as close to perfectly level is key here, as is the first layer height.
We’ve seen similar work before, but the guide from goes into greater detail on how to get the effect to work just right. It’s a great way to add iridescence and shine to a print. Instead, by 3D printing onto an existing diffraction grating, the print can pick up the texture on its base layer. You can 3D print a functional diffraction grating, too, with the right techniques, as it turns out! The average 3D printer can’t recreate the tiny-scaled patterns of a diffraction grating directly a typical diffraction grating may have up to 1000 lines per mm. It’s the same effect you see on the bottom of a CD! Diffraction gratings are beautiful things, bending transmitted and reflected light and splitting it into its component wavelengths to create attractive iridescent rainbow patterns.
