Difference between revisions of "Tools:Ditto3DPrinter"

Revision as of 03:20, 16 February 2016

These are some instructions on how to use Tom's 3D printer (called 'ditto'). They are based on notes I took while Tom was showing me how to use the printer. I'm still in the process of writing this page at the moment. Feel free to correct any mistakes when I've finished. --Highfellow (talk) 03:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Overview

To print a model, you'll need to go through the following steps:

• Create the model in a 3D design program such as FreeCAD, Blender, or OpenSCAD. Alternatively, download a model from somewhere online, like Thingiverse. You can also print from 2D bitmaps such as JPEGS, BMPs, or PNGs. This part of the process is up to you - you should be able to find help elsewhere online.
• Export it to a file format recognised by Cura, which is the program which renders the model file into a form the printer can understand, known as G-Code.
• Import the file to Cura and render it into a G-Code file.
• Start up the printer and change filament if necessary.
• Upload the G-Code file to the printer through the web interface.
• Start the print and wait for it to finish.
• Remove the print from the print bed and clean the bed.

These steps are described below. First though, you'll probably also need to install and configure Cura.

Setting up Cura

Cura is the program which renders your 3D model file into a series of detailed instructions to send to the printer, written in a language called G-Code. This tells the printer exactly what to do at the level of 'move the head 3mm along the X axis while feeding filament at 1mm/sec', as opposed to the model file which is more like 'there is a surface here which is defined by the following polygons'.

To set up Cura on your laptop, you'll first need to install it from their website. If you have a debian based system like Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint, you'll get a .deb package which you can install as follows (assuming you've downloaded the Cura package to <cura-package>.deb):

dpkg -i <cura-package>.deb
apt-get -f install

Next, you need to configure Cura to work with Tom's printer.

First, start up Cura. If you're running it for the first time, the 'Add new machine' dialog should open automatically; otherwise you'll need to go to the menu item [ Machine > Add new machine... ]. Click 'Next' to start the wizard, then select 'Other...' and click 'Next' and then select 'Custom...' and click 'Next'. If the 'Other' or 'Custom' radio buttons go off the end of your screen (which happened on my laptop), you can select them by clicking the button at the top of the list and pressing the up arrow key once.

Now you should be at a dialog entitled 'Custom RepRap information'. The values you need to enter are set out in the table below.

Now click 'Finish'. You should now have a new entry 'Ditto' in the machine menu. Select this to use this printer.

Using Cura

Slicing settings

The next thing you need to set up are the settings which govern how the model file is rendered ('sliced'). These are settings which you might want to change from model to model, as compared with the ones above which are always the same for a given printer. You can set them using the tabs on the left hand side of the main Cura window. The only tabs we need to change for now are the Basic tab and the Start/End G-Code.

First, make sure the Basic tab is selected and fill in the fields based on the values in the following table:

Setting up the printer

Printing a model