3D Printing Guide

Milton Keynes Makerspace has a few 3D Printers available for member use, these machines are either owned by the space, or on long term loan from a member. We stock filament required and ask for a donation to cover your material use of (money)/gram used so we can keep a good stock and maintain the machines.

Machines

Printing Guide

To use the PrusaSlicer based printers at the makerspace, you will need your model in a .stl format, this can be generated from most CAD programs, or ready made models can be downloaded from sites such as Thingiverse or PrusaPrinters.

There is a 3D Printing PC in the 3D Print/Network room with a “Do Not Hack” Label on, this machine can be used to slice any files you may have, or alternatively you can slice your models on your own machine if you have a copy of the PrusaSlic3r Configuration. Once booted, you will need to open “PrusaSlicer” You should be greeted by a window similar to this.

To Import a model, navigate to file, Import, Import STL/OBJ/AMF/3MF…

Once you have your model imported, you can manipulate it using various operations such as scaling, rotating, moving and much more.

I would like to print this part with the face closest to the viewport being the bottom of the part, to do this it must be rotated either using the rotate tools on the left, or the rotate boxes on the right, in this case the Y Axis is rotated -90 degrees

I would only like to print one of this part, however you can nest more parts to print concurrently.

These settings are your print settings, depending on the configuration in PrusaSlicer, you may have different options. Print settings set your layer height, the lower your layer height the better resolution your print will have, but will take much longer, higher layer heights give faster printing so is ideal for strong structural parts.

Filament sets your settings for your plastic filament, You must ensure you select the correct material as different materials require different temperatures to melt. We mainly use PLA, though we also have ABS, PETG and Flexible materials. Note Flexible materials need a “direct drive” extruder so should only be used with the Wanhao.

Printer sets the configuration for the printer you wish to use, every printer is different and you will need to select the correct machine. I.e. Pink Hypercube, Green Hypercube etc.

If your print has large overhangs you may need support material and it can be enabled here.

Infill designates how solid your part will be printed. 100% Infill would be entirely solid, use lots of filament and take a very long time to print, whereas 20% infill will be 20% solid inside, and print much faster.

To “Slice” your model ready for printing you click the button above, which is located in the bottom right hand corner of the PrusaSlicer window.

You should next be greeted by a window such as above, You can look through each layer using the orange slider. Some estimated information is provided in the bottom right, as well as “Export G-Code”. This allows you to save a .gcode file which is used by the printers. Please bear in mind the filament use in meters/grams is an estimate, ideally weigh your finished part once it has cooled to work out your suggested material donation.

Sending your file to the printer.

Most of our printers use Octoprint, a 3D Printing Web Interface running on Raspberry Pi’s. Octoprint allows you to control and send print files to the printers. A more details on using Octoprint will be available once we reopen.