3 Cura Slicer Setting Tricks For Beginners

It's been really cold out here in the shop and I haven't spent as much time with the printers. I did put together another CR 10 mini for the print farm. I still love this machine. But I ended up spending more time on the computer and there's three tricks in cura slicer that I want to show you guys. Especially beginners out there who are just getting started. One relates to this hot end model that I did on a previous video. Another relates to multiple processes within Cura to do different infills. And the third one relates to when to use a brim. So I'll show you all three of those on today's Filament Friday. This episode of Filament Friday is brought to you by these patreon supporters. The first trick I want to show you is this one. I had this model in a previous video. I showed a cutaway view of the Ender 3 or CR-10 hot end. And many people asked me where they could get that model or how did I cut it away? What software did I use? I did it all on the slicer. Let me show you how I did it. So here's the model and the coupling that I used. And the first thing I did in Curaa was to rotate it 90 degrees so it would lay flat on the bed. I did the same thing with a coupling so they're laying flat the way I want to cut them. And then what you do is you just lower them onto the bed until you get to the slicing point you want. Because anything below the bed is not gonna print. So I can put it at any level I want just by adjusting the height and that's really how we're going to cut this thing. And I can do the same thing with the coupling. Now with the coupling there's a little problem. If you look at it, I got this piece that's kind of hanging in the air and I don't want to use supports. So I can just turn it 60 degrees so everything's touching the bed and the gap is at the top now. I should be able to slice these and get what I want. So I sliced them and here's the layer view and you can see it starts at halfway point and it works its way up. So now I have the slicing exactly where I want it. I got my display model so you can do this pretty much in any slicer and definitely here in Cura. The next trick I want to show you, I'm going to use a Marvin here. I'm gonna use uniform scaling up scale it to 200%. I want to print this with 100% fill at the top, 100% fill at the bottom, but in the middle I don't care. I want it less than that. So if I slice this thing at a 100% across-the-board, I would get what I wanted but it's gonna take three hours in five minutes. Way too long and you can see it is solid all the way through. I don't need it solid in the middle. If I go 20% so I use less plastic and print it quicker you see it's one hour and seven minutes. I'm not gonna get what I want. The middle will be fine, the bottom won't and the top. Look at this, it's gonna break away. That hook is not gonna work. So what I'm going to use is processes within Cura. So what you do is select the model, come over to the side here and there's a support blocker. That allows you put a block on the model so I'll put one down here at the feet and I'm gonna put one up here at the top. These are the two areas I want to make 100%. And then you scale those blocks just like you would any object, so um I've got uniform scaling, you want to use non-uniform scaling. So you can adjust the X and then the Y and then the Z to cover the area that you want to be 100%, in my case. So then you can move it and center it so I'm going to Center to Marvin in the X-direction. It's sticking out the back so I need to move it back in the Y-direction. And I'm actually gonna move this up as the block is below the bed so I got plenty of space. I'm gonna move it up so the legs are completely covered. So everything within that block is what I want to make 100%. Now I want to do the same thing at the top. So I do the same steps. Make it bigger. Make it taller. And then center it Center it above Marvin here and then I gotta raise it up so I make sure I get that hook. And there we go. So now I've got the top on the bottom defined. The middle, I really don't care. So I'm gonna leave the infill density over here at 20%. Now I'm gonna go and select one of the blocks and then select "per model settings" and there's a drop down here. It says "Don't support...". Click on it and there's a "modify settings for overlap with other models". Click on that and I should be able to change the settings. I click on it and then select settings window pops up. Click on it and then I can type in infill and the infill menu comes up. I select infill density. Close this and then now I can change the 20% which the whole model is, to 100%. That means that bottom block will now print at 100%. Now I need to do the same thing to the top. Same thing, "modify settings for overlap". Select settings. Infill. Select the infill density. And then change the 20% to 100%. (Which appears to be harder than I thought). So 100% top, 100% bottom, and the middle should print at the 20% which is the infill density setting in the slicer. So I slice it, and let's look at the layer view and make sure it did what I wanted. So here it is on the bottom. It's all solid and then it makes the transition to 20% as you can see, which is awesome. And in when it goes to the top. Its solid again for my hook. So I get a nice solid hook at the top if I go all the way up. See, perfect. Exactly what I wanted and it didn't take 3 hours to print. 1 hour and 41 minutes. So I cut the print time in half by using this. So this is very very handy. It's a great way to get what you want in your print and save time. Here's a print I stopped at midway. A lot of stringing going on. You can see the transition from 100% to the 20%. Here's a final one I want to show you. This is really not so much about supports, it's about using a brim with your supports. But this is a test model for testing supports. If I clicked on supports everywhere and I show you the layer view, then I'm gonna get supports everywhere including on top of the print itself. The 3D prints base. Which I don't want, so if you're really new to 3D printing, you can just click "touching the build plate" and slice it. And it's only going to give you supports from the build plate. It's not going to touch the model which is good. And I still get the supports under the arches so it'll probably print fine. But what I really wanted to show you is when you use supports, see my bottom base is nice and strong and smooth. I want that on the glass bed but the supports have these little strings. Very little support. These are gonna break away probably when it's printing and that's not good. Because if they break away you just end up with a stringy mess. And I don't want to mess with the base of my print. I want that on the glass bed and here's the trick I really want to show you. Build plate adhesion. For this I'm gonna select a Brim. I don't want a Raft because I don't want my print to be off the bed. And Brim Width allows me to adjust the size of that Brim. So what it's gonna do is when I slice it you'll see that it's gonna put a Brim outside the base of the print and it's gonna go underneath those supports. And give those supports a nice solid base to stick to so the Brim here is the circular pattern on the outside around my base. Which is still going to touch the bed. So I'm gonna get a nice smooth base because it's on the glass and then the brim will break out from there and support the supports. So this is a great way to prevent the supports from falling over or getting a bunch of stringing. And you'll get a much better result and here's the result I got. The print is on the Left I flipped it over and here's the bottom view. You can see that supports are sticking to that Brim. So now I just need to break away the supports, cut away the Brim and I've got the print that I want. Those are just three of the tricks I use in Cura all the time. I hope they helped you, especially the beginners out there, because I love helping people get started with 3D printing. If you like what I'm doing here maybe check out some of the other videos that are popping up. If you want to help support the channel patron is one way or just buy through the affiliate links in the description below. It all helps a lot. And if nothing else click on that CHEP logo and subscribe. That's it for this week. I'll see you next time right here at Filament Friday.

Channel: CHEP

Views: 611,913

Rating: 4.9744043 out of 5

Keywords: cura settings for ender 3, cura settings explained, cura settings for cr-10, cura settings for creality ender 3, 3d printing for beginners, cura slicer tutorial, cura slicer settings, cura slicer ender 3, cura slicer infill, cura slicer 3d, cura slicer supports, creality ender 3 pro, filament friday ender 3, filament friday tool kit, filament friday 3d print tool kit, CHEP, chuck hellebuyck, 3 Cura Slicer Setting Tricks For Beginners

Id: su_m5zV9rvA

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/derpinator12000]

If I had not seen this in some video I would have never got the idea to try.

I think the should just copy the button and name it "modifier block" or something. That way the pepole using the support blocker as support blocker won't be confused and pepole will actually see that you can add "modifier blocks".

[u/Grether2000]

Credit to this video where I found out about this, around the 2:40 mark. Somehow I had missed that the blocking tool could be used for other settings as well. Honestly I only found our after playing with a similar feature in PrusaSlicer. Fantastic resource for both slicers if anyone else hasn't found this yet. Change infil, layer height, perimeters ect. as needed for the model design.