Use G-code Preview to prevent 3D Printing failures! 3D Printing 101 Video Lecture | What is 3D Printing: Basic Knowledge - IT & Software

how's it going guys angers here from
makers Muse so how often have you guys
gone to get a 3d print you sliced it you
send it to the printer and then you come
back maybe a few hours later to find
well this to be honest this has happened
to me many times in the past and often
it's saying that can be prevented if I
was a little bit more careful in
checking my sliced files before sending
them to the printer so G code preview
used to be something that was quite
difficult to do for a very long time
often you tap to just slice and then
pray that your file would print
correctly or you had a bit of a
rudimentary approach to being a cg code
that really understanding or being a
visually understand speeds or what
material will support what was infill
that kind of thing but then simplify 3d
came along with it's extremely powerful
preview mode for previewing the G code
before you can commit it to your printer
and that's we're going to use today to
verify our files and to prepare a really
difficult to print 3d print and make
sure it's going to work first time that
wasting any plastic or time on our 3d
printer let's get started
all righty guys so here we are within
simplify 3d and I'm going to go to
import and bring in this file here
birthday puppy so if you're on my
patreon list you've seen this file I
designed for my sister's birthday it is
a debt claw head on the body of a puppy
I designed in meshmixer
pretty funny but this is the file so
here we go first things we can notice
it's tiny that's not good and it seems
to be in a weird orientation so let's
fix that first let's zoom in and let's
click the file double click so scaling
it's obviously tiny so let's see if we
can make it a little bit bigger than
that let's just scale it telling us I
can actually manipulate it I guess
there we go so that's the deathclaw
puppy on the head on the body so let's
make it probably orientated so it's
going to edit and place service on bed
select the base and that's a lot more
like it
Center and arrange so now we have a sort
of good idea of what it's going to look
like we can work out our scale so I want
to print it's not too large because I
don't have to take too long maybe a
hundred hi there we go make sure it's
nice and centered and I'm good to go so
here's the file and this is an extremely
difficult
3d printing file there's a few reasons
why one of them are these horns these
horns have sharp underside curves which
means that support material generation
automatically might not detect it
there's also this tongue here very thin
and this underside is a dog tag thing
which is also extremely difficult to be
supported we've also got some overhangs
here in terms of this sort of spike at
the back and got the overhang of the
mouth so overall this is a difficult
file to 3d print and if I was just to
commit this to a slicer which would just
slice and go like an up printer I know
for a fact that the UPS cannot handle
sharp underside curves they just don't
generate support for them so I know for
a fact this would fail and what's worse
is it's not going to fail at the start
I'll fail as it gets to the end of the
print which is like several hours in so
that's
prevent that so let's go to our process
so I'm going to be putting this on the
craft bot plus so I've already got that
selected which is awesome and I'm going
to print in PLA fantastic layers 0.2 is
good and here we've got some settings
for the the layers how many how many
layers there is on the outside of the
part so I've got four of perimeters and
four top and bottom so that's quite a
heavy amount of a shell around the file
but you'll see when I do the preview
that having more is usually generally
better than having less in terms of a
good surface finish and let's go to
support so if we were going to do
automatic support generation
let's do support pillar resolution of -
it's usually default to four by the way
so make sure you keep note of that
that's make a max overhang yeah 75 so 15
degrees will be supported so let's try
to print and see what happens so here we
have the simplify 3d preview mode and
before I jump into what I want to change
on my model let's have a look at how
this preview mode works and how you can
use it to better fine-tune your 3d
prints before actually committing them
to your 3d printer so on the left hand
side we've got various different preview
modes so if we look through coloring we
can choose between movement speed which
is very handy if you're trying to
fine-tune your print speeds when it
comes to fine details for example you
can see here the horns the printer will
visibly slow down which means you'll get
a better surface finish we can also look
at active tool head which is very handy
if you're using a dual extruder 3d
printer because it will show each
extruder as a different color for
example as supports you could assign
them to a different extruder and a shop
in a different color but what I tend to
use most is feature type so feature type
will show all these different feature
aspects of your 3d print as different
colors for example the raft is purple
the supports are grey and the main model
itself on the outside perimeter is blue
but how do we look at the internals and
a layer by layer aspect of this 3d print
well at the bottom of the screen we can
scroll all the way back through the
model and by using this slider
we can go through each layer one at a
time to work out exactly how the model
is going to be formed but can also be
extremely handy is to view the model
just by a single layer and we can do
this by selecting layer and then single
layer only and by doing this
we can go through the model layer by
layer without seeing the previous layer
so you can see how the support crosses
over itself at 90 degrees by viewing
each layer independently which can be
very handy to troubleshoot and fine-tune
very complicated STL files and a feature
I tend to use a lot in my videos is the
play function so we can actually scroll
through the layers layer by layer or
line by line using this function and we
can change the speed so for example that
would be very fast but we can actually
sew it right down like this to show how
the model would form line by line we can
change a speed depending on how we want
to check it out
this is an extremely satisfying and
powerful feature within the preview mode
of simplify 3d it's a great way of
checking your model it also looks really
good when I use it in videos something I
also really appreciate the Odyssey is
travel moves so if you're getting
stringing between your model this is a
good way to diagnose it so for example
here if string was an issue that's where
the strings would form without a doubt
and because we can see these in the
g-code preview we can try to fine tune
where our models are placed to minimize
where the stringing could occur or even
better try to make the stringing not
occur at all by making travel moves
within the model and there is actually a
mode for that within simplify 3ds
Advanced tab called a void crossing
outline for travel movements all right
so this is simplify 3ds sort of
automatic generation of support and
slicing of this file so this scroll the
layers right back to the start so I've
got a raft here which is I find useful
when support material is generated if
it's straight into the build platform
usually I find a raft helps it stay in
place so the support generation has
detected that overhang for the dog tag
which is what's there see it starts
forming that little tag there which is
awesome so that'll work good all right
and we've got support for the formation
of the head I suppose there we go
that's not good so you can see there
guys as as I go a little bit higher and
on the other side the horns start
forming in mid-air and if I had
committed this to the 3d printer the
printer would print them in thin air
which is completely useless because then
it's going to fail horribly so you see
they start forming
and there's just there's nothing that it
is in midair so this isn't suitable for
printing if I had sent that gqo to the
printer the print would have failed so
let's go to tools and customize support
structures to create our own manual
supports right so max overhang let's go
a sport resolution of two and generate
automatic supports so with a support
pillar resolution you can change that
and you can have multiple resolutions in
the same file so in terms of my manual
support a add-in I'm going to make them
four because they're more blocky and
easier to position in my opinion what we
want to do is take a note looking from
the underside of the model where things
are overhanging and as I said under
sight sharp curves are notorious to be
ignored by automatic support generations
so we need to add support there and to
be honest more is usually better than
less especially in this circumstance so
that's going to add new support
structures and I can literally just go
click intersections are totally cool in
terms of the support beams touching each
other actually that's what you want to
be honest so that's pretty good so
that's a nice thick support structure
and on this side as well why not let's
just add them all in all up through here
why not let's have a nice and thick to
be fully supported because that's what
you want it's better spending a little
bit more time here than having a print
fail and in terms of support structures
that we don't want we can then go in and
remove them so for example this one here
doesn't really have any purpose it might
be supporting something tiny that
actually won't happen so that's fine
this one here as well doesn't really
need to be there so looking at the
bottom of the model you can see where
supports going to be so I can see I
might want to add a bit more support for
that dog tag so I'm just gonna add new
support structures and just chunk those
this old junky but that should work
really well awesome
all right I'm really happy of that done
sorted okay so let's go back to preview
and see how it looks sweet okay so let's
scroll all the way back down so when I
mentioned multiple layers of multiple
shells in the file this is what I
so these sort of areas here if you don't
have enough if you only have two shells
on your model for example then often
these can lead to holes because you see
here it's changing quite a lot in a very
small amount of area and if you don't
have enough layers so here got CS goes
goes on the perimeter four times if you
only went around twice you're probably
gonna end up with a hole there and this
sort of makes them nice and easy to see
using the G curve preview anyway let's
keep going up and have a look that's
what we wanted to see so you can see
here on both sides that it forms the the
dense support and then it starts forming
those sharp overhangs and they weren't
detected before but because we made it
ourselves
it works you can tweak this to your
heart's content guys you can tweak every
setting you can see what the build time
estimate is going to be so this is a
five hour print which is fair enough I'm
not printing too fast it's going to use
74 75 grams of plastic and you can see
where the supports going to be so
another thing this is handy for is
working out if supports will be able to
be removed after the prints completely
if you've got a letter structure like a
sphere with holes and you have support
in that sphere you're not going to be
able to remove it easily so that's like
also you can see in the preview mode
because as I said if I sent this to the
printer before without doing a preview
then yet it would have failed 100% that
the horns would have printed and it
would have been like oh sorry - my
sister or your birthday present failed
horribly but because I could do preview
I could check that then I can make sure
it worked perfectly so I'm going to put
my money where my mouth is and let's
send it to the printer and see if it
works
so here you can see guys it's printing
really well I love the time-lapse you
can get off the craft but plus because
the bed doesn't move it just drops down
and I chose to print in a fake metallic
copper PLA so it's not real copper it
just looks like copper and it came out
really well here's the support
structures that I'm breaking away and
you can see that the RAF was a bit hard
to remove not really anyone's fault it's
just the material maybe was a bit too
old or a bit too hot when I was printing
it but the support structures themselves
just broke away by hand it's such a
satisfying experience when supports
break away like that it's so awesome I
didn't have to do any post-processing or
cleaning up it just looked great
straight off the printer and she was
super happy with it let me tell you so
ya despite this print being extremely
difficult for an FTM 3d printer
especially with the custom support i'm
really happy with how it turned out even
the tongue work which is awesome so
thanks for watching guys I hope you
found this video on G code preview
useful I mean in terms of testing your
models before you commit them to the 3d
printer it's a fantastic way of saving
yourself time money and just pain coming
back to a failed print is horrible at
the best of times but if your print had
no chance to start with because your G
code wasn't good enough then that's the
worst so let me know in the comments
guys if you manage to save a 50-hour
print or something using g code preview
of what's of disasters you've had in
terms of not verifying gqo that love to
hear your stories and let me know the
comments also what sort of future videos
you'd like to see especially in terms of
slicing and that kind of thing or
simplify 3d tutorials let me know and
I'll put it away in the old and the old
list hood to bring you in future I look
forward to seeing it very shortly guys
here and make his muse catch later bye
you