This is meant to be a small guide to actually using a 3d printer. It consists of my knowledge I gathered over the past year or so of printing.
The workshops of tomorrow begins today.
Tooling
You’ll need both hardware and software tools. Depending on your printer you’ll need various wrenches, screwdrivers etc. Some that will prove handy:
- sanding paper
- calipers
- a wire cutter (for cutting supports)
- 99% isopropyl alcohol (for cleaning the bed)
As for software:
3d Modeling
- Blender is the one stop shop for everything 3d modeling related. Open source, beautifully designed, it grew a lot with the community and it matured to a point that some consider it industry standard(at least for game dev)
- Fusion360
- TinkerCAD (web)
Slicers
There are a lot of slicers nowadays. You the one that you like or that comes with your printer:
- Prusa printers -> Prusa Slicer
- Bambulab -> Orca Slicer
- Cura Slicer if you like how it looks
Websites to get STLs from
- Printables is the best looking one and the fastest growing
- Thingiverse is the biggest repo, but the models are a bit harder to browse( so hard, in fact, that there are websites built to do that for you)
- Cults3d
- MyMiniFactory
- Thangs