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104 lines
8.7 KiB
Plaintext
104 lines
8.7 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 3201
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Title: HPR3201: A small intro to 3D printing
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3201/hpr3201.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-24 18:43:00
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3201 for Monday the 9th of November 2020. Today's show is entitled
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A Small Intro to 3D Printing. It is hosted by Euro-OnBatten
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and is about 11 minutes long
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and carries a clean flag. The summary is,
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everything a newbie needs to know to start 3D printing.
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This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared
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hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15. Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair
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at Ananasthost.com.
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Hi guys, this is Euro-OnBatten again. It's been a long time since I did a podcast and, well,
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you know, been busy, busy, busy. By the way, I did do podcasts as a matter of fact, we just
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accelerated 50th edition, but it's a podcast in Dutch aimed at the Netherlands. It's called Angry
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Nerds. There is a website, Angry Nerds podcast.nl. So if you're Dutch, well, maybe you find it fun.
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For the rest of the world, yeah, I'm sorry you're out of luck. Like I said, I was busy, but I got an
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email from a good friend of mine saying that HPR really needed a few shows and I did a sort of
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a query in my mind what I have been recently up to. And I concluded I could do three podcasts
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all after one, you want to have to the other, just making a brain dump of recent stuff things I learned.
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So, well, here goes. The first I want to talk to you about is my experiences with 3D printer.
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And this one is just for newbies. So if you have a 3D printer, there's nothing you will learn here,
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and you can simply skip to the next HPR podcast. But if you don't have a don't have or don't own,
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or have no access to a 3D printer, let me just fill you in on the the basic stuff. So
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as when you get the opportunity, you can start playing with them and what's the expression for it?
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Hit the ground running, you know. So some time ago, a friend of mine emailed me saying, look,
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this is a webshop, they've got a very nice seal on a 3D printer and it's not for you can't refuse,
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which turned out to be pretty much true. And this time in a nice sense, you know, there's always
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this is not for you can't refuse and it's dead or you get concrete shoes, but this time it was
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a nice offer. And so I bought myself a 3D printer and it was a N3 from Creality. And it's a Chinese
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manufacturer, it's really it's a it's a very low cost printer. But it's it's also very much fun
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to to print with it. So I bought it, it came in a package that I had to reassemble myself and
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well it took me some time, but that's not because it's a lot of work, it's just that I was pretty
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busy at that time. So it took me a couple of weeks, but you know, every evening quarter of an hour
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or five minutes, just finding stuff and and putting it all together. The thing is with this printer,
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so your mileage may vary with other printers, but this printer, the manual that it came with was
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not exactly great. But I went to the website, I was updated manual, there are YouTube videos
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really taking you by the hand as they say in assembling this printer. So it's it's not
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difficult at all. Every tool you need comes with the printer, screwdrivers and a lot. So
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no problem there. Then it's my question was, okay, now I have a 3D printer, how does printing work?
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I mean, there is a sort of a knob on the system and as a display, but what do I do? Turns out
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you have to heat the preheat the printing head to some default temperature, depends on the material
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that you print it. I use PLA for one because it does biodeigrate, so I don't pollute the world
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in the end. And so I have to warm the preheat the printing head to 185 degrees Celsius.
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And then it's okay, but what do I print? How does that work? Well, turns out for printing,
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you need to find yourself an STL file. And the STL file is a file that contains the geometry of
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the object that you want to print. Now you can make those with editors, there are numerous editors,
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some are closed source, but free to use for personal use, others are commercial. So there's
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even websites that where you can design stuff. But at first to start as a newbie, the easiest way
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probably is to go to Thingiverse.org.com. Let me have a look. Thingiverse.com. Okay,
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Thingiverse.com. On Thingiverse.com, there is a total of probably close to a million objects
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with photos and the readme file. And also the accompanying STL file that you can download
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for free. So you download the STL file or something that you like. Now you can't print an STL
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file that you need something to do something with it. And that process to come from an STL file,
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STL file to something that the printer can print is called slicing. It's sort of the process where
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you have this area where the object will be printed. And in a horizontal
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the horizontal dimension, I don't know what the word is in English. But anyway, in a horizontal
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manner, the product is sliced and the printer is told where to go to XYZ coordinates and where
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to print and where not to print. And for that slicing, you need a program. So you need a program
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to convert an STL file to a file that the 3D printer will use. And there are several STL
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accessories, several slicing programs in the world. But one of the most well-known is Kura.
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And Kura is open source. It's made by a Dutch manufacturer of 3D printers, actually,
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called Ultimaker. But Kura supports a lot of different 3D printers. So not only Ultimaker,
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even the Creality 3 that I have. And when you slice, you have the option to, for instance, say,
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I want the speed of the head to be 40 millimeters per second or maybe 10 millimeters per second.
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And the result of your printing job will be either coarse or either fine, depending on, for instance,
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a printing speed. The other thing is that way you have an arch in your product that sort of
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floats in the, well, it doesn't float in the air, of course. But it's not supported by
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the printing base. Then you sometimes have to fill that area up with some loose printing that
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you can later remove. And so that's sort of a filling of vertical areas. And that's also
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something that the slicing program will do for you. If all goes well, then you can download
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the result of the slicing process to your printer and start printing.
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Then the next step you probably want to do is get, make yourself a more user-friendly setup.
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And the way you do that is you start with a Raspberry Pi. You start with a piece of soft
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echo. Octoprint on the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is connected via USB to your 3D printer.
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The Raspberry Pi is also connected to the network. And then Octoprint will present you with
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a web GUI where you can upload, where CURA, for instance, can upload for you the result of the
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slicing process. You can store stuff there. You can see a nicer visualization of the printing
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progress. You can extend the functionality of Octoprint with plugins. For instance, a telegram
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notifyer. So let's say every 10% of progress you get an app on your phone saying, oh look,
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it's I'm now at 20% or 30% or I'm finished. Because, well, that's nice functionality because
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printing is not fast. The first object you will do probably are pretty small. So that will take you
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maybe, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 minutes. But if you're going serious with boxes, et cetera,
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I have had printing jobs that lasted for more than a day. So you also have to consider do you want
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to leave your printer because for more than a day, if it's in the same house the way you live,
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do you want some device with a pretty hot printing head to keep working while you sleep.
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And you know, just out of safety. Just think about it for a second. It's not that it has it
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is, but it's good to have thought about it. And well, yeah, this is basically the beginner's
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guide to to 3D printing. I guess if I've left something or you have additional questions,
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just drop a note in the comments of this episode. And I'll be more than happy to respond to those
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as well. Okay, well, this is Joel Betten again with my 13th podcast on 3D printer. And when I'm
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done with saving this one, I'll start recording the next one. Okay, have a nice day. Bye bye.
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You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org. We are a community
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podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Today's show, like all our
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revolution at binrev.com. If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly,
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leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself. Unless otherwise status,
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today's show is released on the create of comments, attribution, share a live 3.0 license.
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