September 2014
Intermediate to advanced
244 pages
6h 43m
English
Content preview from Mastering 3D Printing
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Chapter 6
Driving Your Printer: G-code
In Chapters 4 and 5 we developed a model (an STL file) and sliced it to make it ready to print. We did not really talk much about what is in that sliced file (a .gcode file) and what to do with it. To carry forward the metaphor from Chapter 5, we will now turn on the oven and figure out how to actually “bake the cake.”
At this point we start mechanically building parts versus creating idealized images of parts on a computer screen. This transition can lead to some surprises (and humbling experiences). The extruder and the build platform can get pretty hot, and things do not always turn out the way you would ...