- Today, I wanna walk you
through the process of setting up
Cura for the Monoprice
Select Mini Three Printer.
(upbeat music)
First off, I'd like to
thank Taylor Parsons
for suggesting the idea for this video.
The Monoprice Select Mini
is a great 3D printer.
The version two is also excellent.
They're inexpensive.
They're reliable.
And they're super easy to use.
They really do give good results
for anybody who's into 3D
printing whether you're a beginner
or you've been doing it for awhile.
That being said as soon as you wanna print
any of your own 3D models,
you need to use a slicer.
A slicer is a software program
that literally slices
the 3D model into layers,
so that the printer can
print them layer by layer.
It also creates the G Code file
that the printer understands.
There are tons of options
available for slicers.
Some you have to pay for.
Some that you don't.
I recommend for this
printer just using Cura
which is a totally free slicer.
If you go to ultimaker.com,
or just do a google search for
Cura, you'll find the website
where you can download the software,
and there are tons of
versions for both Windows...
And Mac OS.
All of these versions are free,
but there are some
differences between them.
The new versions are quite
advanced, and really fun to use,
but I recommend using an older version
for the Monoprice Select
Mini to get the best results.
Everything I'm going
to be going over today
is based on Cura 15 point 04 point two,
which is an older version but like I said,
gives the best results for the
Monoprice Select Mini Plus.
Once you're in Cura, this
column on the left hand side
is really where you can
adjust all of the settings
for each individual print.
So every time you're
gonna print a 3D model,
you can come over here and
adjust your settings accordingly,
especially if you're downloading anything
off of ThingIverse or prebuilt things.
Sometimes the creators will give you
the best settings to use.
This is where you can put those in.
Before you can even get to that though,
you need to set Cura up to
handle the Monoprice Select Mini.
If you go up to the Machine menu,
you can have multiple machines.
So if you have multiple printers,
they can each have their own settings.
I have two Monoprice printers
that I use with Cura,
the Mini and the Maker Select Plus.
The difference is if I click
on the Maker Select Plus,
you'll see the bed size now increases,
and some of the setting have changed.
If I go back to the
Mini, then it brings up
those specific settings for that printer.
If you need to add a new machine,
all you have to do is
click on add new machine,
and it will walk you through titling it,
and doing all the settings.
I've already added the Mini,
so here are the settings that I use.
And you can change the
settings at any time
in the Machine settings menu.
Really, the most important settings
in this menu to set are the bed size,
which for the Monoprice Mini
are 120 millimeters by 120 by 120.
That's gonna give you
the correct bed size,
so that the printer doesn't try
to print larger than it's capable of.
It only has one extruder so that's simple.
It does have a heated bed
so you wanna click on that.
The build area is square.
You can leave G Code Flavor
at RepRap Marlin Sprinter.
And all of the printer head sizes,
you can just leave straight at zero.
And these two settings,
serial port and baud rate,
you can leave at auto, and that's it.
That's pretty simple.
And you just click okay.
And jump down in here for a print.
Now, over on the side here
is where you can start
adjusting some of the more
fun settings for your prints.
You've got layer height.
The good thing about Cura
is any time you mouse over an option,
it will give you a quick explanation.
It's not always exactly what you need,
but it's pretty helpful to have.
Layer height usually is point two.
You can go point one if you
have a little more time,
and you want finer detail.
You could even go up to point
three if you are in a hurry
and it doesn't have to be
the most detailed print.
Typically point two works very well.
Shell thickness I usually
leave at point eight.
You definitely want to enable retraction
which will help the printer give you
finer details with less stringing.
If you click on these
ellipses next to any settings,
then you'll have the option
to kind of adjust more.
I keep most of these
basically at the default.
When it comes time to
print your fill density,
we'll change based on the
print that you're doing.
Print speed.
This is what I've done
to get the best settings.
50 millimeters per second.
With a temperature of
205 for the extruder,
and a bed temperature of 50.
Sometimes depending on the weather,
or the room that you're printing in,
if it's colder, you may need
to up the bed temperature
to closer to 60 just to
get the prints to stick.
Supports depend on the print.
And for filament, you wanna
leave this the diameter at 1.75,
and the flow at 100%.
In the Advanced menu setting,
the Mini has a nozzle size of point four.
Retraction speed can be left at 40.
Retraction distance should
be set to four point five.
In the quality menu,
initial layer thickness
should be point three.
Initial layer line width should be 100%.
Cut off object bottom
should be left at zero.
And dual extrusion overlap
should be kept point one five.
For speed, you can leave travel speed
at 150 millimeters a second.
Bottom layer, 15 millimeters a second.
And everything else can
just be left at zero.
And for cooling minimal air
time should be left at five,
and you definitely do want
to enable the cooling fan.
And then the Plugins and
the Start End G Code menus,
are ones that you can get
into if you really start
wanting to customize your prints.
For example, you could have pause points
where the print will automatically
pause at certain points,
and you can switch out the filaments
to change the color or the material.
That gets really complicated.
I tend to even stay away from that.
So you don't need to mess with either
of these two menus just to get started.
I would just stick with
basic and advanced,
and that will get you started.
Just to give an example, I'll
run through a sample print.
So for a test print,
I went to ThingIverse,
and found the 3D Benchy by Creative Tools,
which is a great benchmark test
just to get your printer all calibrated.
The Mini usually does it very well.
This is a cute, little print.
But the reason it's a good test print
is because it has all of
these different angles
that are pretty tough for the printer.
If you really look at this,
there's a lot of different
slopes and angles and circles
that are tough for printers to do.
And so if you get this printed well,
that means your printer
is calibrated properly,
and the rest of your prints
should come out great.
So if we go to thing files,
there's a lot of different options.
We're just going to
download the regular Benchy.
The full print by itself as a STL file.
Then in Cura, I'm going
to load that STL file.
Now Benchy has been loaded into Cura.
So Benchy requires a
layer height of point two,
and an in fill of 10% which
is what we already had.
You can right click to
then spin it around,
and see it from different angles.
You can scroll to zoom
in or out on the print.
And Cura also puts the
estimated amount of time
for the print up here along with
how much filament it will require.
If you wanna make any changes,
down here is where you can scale things up
based on axis or by whole model.
You can also mirror it if
you wanna move it around
and switch it in different ways.
We don't need to do that with this print.
You could even get
different views happening
if you wanna do the layers.
This is what the slicer does.
It slices that three model into layers.
You can scroll down to
see each individual layer,
and how it's going to be built up.
And this blue line is the
path of the extruder nozzle.
So it's going to start in this corner.
Come over here.
And then start with layer one,
and go all the way up to 240...
Layers.
Now, in here...
This pattern is the in fill.
So at 10%, that's what that looks like.
What we can do is switch
that up to say 50%.
And now viewing the layer you can see
that it's much, much
more dense than 10% was.
But we'll go back to 10
because that's what we need.
And there we go, there's 10% in fill.
That's all that's needed for this print.
When it comes to support,
you have a few options.
Touching build plate would mean anywhere
that support needs to be
generated over the bed itself.
It will be created.
Benchy doesn't need any supports.
But if this angle were any
sharper than 45 degrees,
supports would probably be needed
to connect this to the bed.
Doing supports everywhere means
that even inside the print,
so even here where it
might need some supports.
It will create supports that are connected
to the print itself
rather than the print bed.
I pretty much never use that,
but you may need to use
it from time to time.
Platform adhesion are
just different settings
to help the print stick to the bed.
For Benchy, you don't need any.
A brim will create a
little bit of an outline.
And a raft will create sort of a platform
that the print is printed on
that then just pops right off afterwards.
I use rafts for smaller or taller prints
that might not stand
or stick on their own,
and just need a little extra help.
So once you've got your
settings ready to go,
all you have to do is click save.
Give it a title.
3D Benchy works great.
Gonna save it to my
desktop and click save.
Now to load the print into
the Monoprice Select Mini,
all you need to do is
grab the micro SD card
from the printer, load the print onto it.
Go into your printer.
Select the print.
And click start.
If you go to 3dbenchy.com,
this is the creative tools
website where Benchy came from.
And on the analyze page,
they actually give you
all of the different
measurements you can take
to see how the print came out.
If it was accurate or not.
And how your printer
may need to be adjusted.
Of course you don't always have
to go into this much depth.
You could always just eyeball it,
and see if you like the quality
that came out once the print is finished.
And that's it.
So I hope that was helpful.
If you have any questions,
feel free to ask.
And remember, my settings are
just the ones I recommend,
but as you get to know your
printer a little bit more,
you might need to adjust them
specifically to suit your needs.
It's always important to remember
that 3D printing is about experimentation,
and sometimes it might
take you a few tries
before a print gets going well,
but that's kind of part of the fun.
So that's it.
Thanks for watching.
Please check out some of the videos
I have about 3D printers.
If you any questions, feel
free to send them my way.
I'm always happy to help
or help you figure out
the best answer to your question.
