From the course: Designing a Replacement Part using 3D printing

Plating and printing - Tinkercad Tutorial

From the course: Designing a Replacement Part using 3D printing

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Plating and printing

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Now it's time to prepare our knob for printing. I'm going to be using a MakerBot replicator 2 to print my print. And so therefore, I'm using MakerBot Desktop to prepare and slice it. Certainly if you have a different brand of 3D printer, you can use your own slicing software to prepare your file. Before we get started, I just want to make sure I have the right machine set up. I'm going to go up to Devices > Select Type of Device and make sure that Replicator 2 is checked. Now it's time to add the file. Go to Add File and because Tinkercad is a cloud application most of the time, if you are working in Tinkercad, your files are going to automatically end up in your downloads folder. Choose Knob Seven and Open. And our object comes in already nice and centered on the build plate there. And now we just have to choose the right settings for printing. So, there's a couple of things to notice. So, we have these big overhangs here. So, we're going to need to use support material and because there's not very much contact with the build plate with the back of that sleeve, you would need to use a raft anyway. So I'll choose Settings. Make sure both raft and supports are checked. And because this is just a first draft and I know I'm going to make another one later on that's a little bit more refined. I'm going to choose it at low, so it will print faster. I'll choose Save Settings, and then Print. We'll wait for the slicing to finish. Now that our file is sliced, I'm going to double check the print preview. You can see our support's being built underneath, along with our raft. Everything looks as expected. We'll choose Close, and Export Now, and I'm going to save to a file folder on my desktop called ready to print. And when I want to print my file, I'll just transfer it to an SD card and pop it into my Replicator 2 to create a 3D print.

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