Tools:Ditto3DPrinter
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 '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
