Were you thinking about getting into 3D
printing and don't know where to start?
Well I'll explain it all right here
at Filament Friday. This episode of
Filament Friday is brought to you by these
patreon supporters. There are a lot of
different 3D printing technologies but
the most common is FDM or FFF. FDM
stands for fused deposition modeling, FFF is the same thing but it's called
Fused Filament Fabrication which is the
one I like more. And all it requires is a
spool of filament, which is plastic and
this comes in different materials, that
will get melted by a hot end on a 3D
printer that moves around and build your
design layer by layer as it melts the
plastic. But how do you get to that point?
Well there's three main steps. 1) there's
the design itself which is typically a
dot STL file, then 2) you need to convert
that STL file into the g-code that
controls the 3d printer. And that's done
by a slicer, which is a software program
that runs on your computer many printers
come with a slicing program on their SD
card that you can install on your
computer. And most of them work on
Windows or Mac and many of them you can go right to their website and download
them for free. There are slicers that you
can buy such as simplify3D which will
cost you about 150 dollars. It has some nice features but you don't have to spend
that money. You can use one of the free
slicers and they work really well. Once
you have that g-code file you can 3) send
it to your 3D printer and there's three
very common ways to do that. One is to
save it to an SD card and plug it into
the SD card slot on the printer. Most
printers have an SD card slot. You can
also connect to your computer through a USB
cable and send the information that way.
Just don't let your computer go to sleep
because then it could mess up the print.
The third way is some printers offer
Wi-Fi communication and in that case
it'll send your file wirelessly and save
it most likely to its own SD card and
print it from there. One of the first
things I ever designed was a chess pawn,
an actual size not this big one. And I
designed it in Tinkercad.com. It's a
free software that you can use to design
3D prints.
But you don't have to design your own,
there's all kinds of sites to download
designs that people share such as
thingiverse.com myminiFactory.com. And
many others. In fact I share my chess
pawn design on Thingiverse.com. So we're
going to download that, bring it in to
Cura slicer and I'll show you how to slice it.
Then we're going to print it on this
Ende 3 low cost printer. And here's
the chess pawn. The one on the left is
my original and then I redesigned it and
improved it in Tinkercad on the right.
And if you scroll down to thing files
you'll see there's .STL files. This is
what we want. So I'm going to download
the CHEP underscore pawn dot STL and
we'll load that into Cura slicer. And here's
the Cura software version 3.6 running
on my Mac. It's got a Creality Ender 3
profile. I selected PLA material.
I'm using a recommended setting so it's
much easier. Layer height is set to 0.2. You can see it's a slower to faster
depending on how you slide it. Infill I set
to 20% and that's it. We're gonna click
on prepare and let this thing slice. Now
if I look at the layer view it'll show
me every layer so I can slide through
this thing and look at how it's going to
print. And if I tilt this you can see
what 20% infill looks like. There's a lot
of air in there. A lot of space. So let's
slide this back up. Then we're gonna
change the infill to 80% so this should
be more solid. And then we'll click
prepare again and look at the layer view.
And now when you slide it, you'll see a
much more dense chess pawn. So that's the
settings, the basic settings. Now let's
click on custom settings and what this
does is give you more control over the
slicer. This is what you learned by
playing with it over and over again. You
still got the 0.2 layer height but
now I can set shells which is the number
of outer layers. You can see right here
there's two on the pawn right now. If I
change this to three, then it's gonna
print three solid layers on the outside
as you can see. And then print the infill.
And you can change that infill pattern.
Right now it's a grid. I can change it to
triangles These are just some of the
settings you can change in the slicer and
you find out what works for you.
And then there's other settings you can
change like the temperature for the
material you're using. And that can vary
depending on what you're printing with.
The temperature of the bed that makes it
stick and the print speed. You can print
slower to get better results or faster.
And then there's how it sticks to the
bed. I had a skirt that was going all the
way around it. You can also do a brim and
this will help prevent anything from
warping. You can also print a raft like
if your bed isn't exactly flat. It prints
a little island that your part will get
printed on top of. So these are just some
of the settings that you learn by using
your slicer. So then you can save it
right to the SD card, and it'll say eject,
and now the SD card has the file. The
g-code file. And we're ready to print it.
Now I have the g-code file on the SD
card. I just stick it in the slot here at
the front, plug it in and now I can turn
on the printer and we can print the pawn.
It looks really good nice and smooth.
It's the same pawn, this one is 750
percent bigger. So you can adjust that in
the slicer you can take the same file
and just up size it and print it big!
And that would print on the same machine.
So that'll get you started with 3D
printing. You just need to find your STL
file, use a slicer and print it on your
3D printer. Now beyond that it's nice to
have the right tools to help you remove
files or to clean your nozzles and such.
And I've put together a small tool kit
that is a collection of things I've
learned over the years. It's the Filament
Friday tool kit. I'll put a link to this
in the description below.
You also need filament and there's
several different types of filaments you
can buy. PLA,  ABS, PETG. These are all
types of filament and each one has a
different set of properties. The most
common to start with is PLA. It's the
easiest to print. We do have our own
Filament Friday filament PLA but there's
other brands. Just about any brand will
work in your printer. And then you can
get exotic filaments like some that have
metal infused into PLA. They've got wood
infused into PLA. And then some that are
like rubbery, so you can print real
flexible things. Those are more advanced
materials for after you've tackled 
designing STL files, slicing STL files
and are comfortable printing them. And
once you get into 3D printing you'll get
all kinds of recommendations from people
to change your hotend, change your
circuit board, reflash your machine and all
that's fun. But the first thing you need
to do is learn how to use the slicing
software. Learn all those different
settings. Try them out. Print with it to see
what works for you and what doesn't. I
wish someone would have explained that
to me when I got started because I spent
so much time fixing my printer and very
little time on the slicer. Once I started
using the slicer and learned what it
could do, my prints came out so much
better.
Many of the modifications I did probably
weren't needed. So remember, print with
your machine for the first couple months
as it is out of the box. And just learn
how to use your slicing software. Now
that you know how to get started with 3D
printing, go get yourself a 3D printer.
This Ender 3 is a great low-cost way to
start. And I've got many videos that show
you how to use it. If you like what you
saw here maybe
check out some of the other videos that
are popping up. If you want to help
support the channel patreon is one way or
just buy through the affiliate links in
the description below. It helps a lot. And
if nothing else, click on that CHEP logo
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any other videos. Thanks for watching.
I'll see you next time right here at
Filament Friday!
