Cura: 3D printing software for your Lulzbot Printer

Updated 22 April 2022

cura-logoOnce you setup your printer and finish printing your first rocktopus, you will inevitably want to move onto more ambitious prints right away. It’s understandable, all the possibilities all at once, I get it. We are going to step you through the process of printing some STL files from a model repository and give you some tips and tricks on operating Cura to arm you with enough knowledge to be a little dangerous with 3D printing.

What you will need:

  • 3D printer, we are going to be using our Lulzbot Mini
  • PC with Cura installed and configured for your Printer
  • Connection to your printer, we use a USB tether to our printer
  • .STL from a model repository

Head over to Thingiverse, my mini factory or any of the like and grab a simple looking print. The 3DBenchy was our choice. It is a little tugboat that is designed in such a way that the entire model can be printed with no supports and depend on your printer, the print will look spectacular or not so great as a result.

Load up Cura on your PC. This program is known as your Slicer as it takes STLs and produces G-Code from them. Select the Load Model button at the top left of your working space (Control L shortcut). Once the model loads, go ahead and select it by left-clicking on the model itself. When you do so, 3 options will appear at the bottom left of your workspace.cura-screenshot

  1. Rotate – Clicking this option gives you the ability to rotate your object on each axis allowing you to orient the model any way you like. Depending on your quality and strength requirements, the orientation of your print can be quite important. As a general rule, opt for an orientation that gives your print the greatest surface area on your first layer.
  2. Scale – Clicking this option gives you the ability to scale each dimension (X, Y, and Z) of your print with a decimal value or a mm value. The decimal value will act a scaling factor, meaning .5 would be half the size, 1.5 would be one and a half and so on. The Size (mm) options allow you to scale to an exact dimension size. There is a uniform scale option enabled by default that will keep sizes unchanged by you to scale with the rest of your model which is handy, you can disable it if you need to as well. The other option for this menu is the Max option. This will make your model as big as possible for your print bed. A handy and fast option if you want the biggest print possible for a single part.
  3. Mirror – this option allows you to mirror your model in any of your 3 dimensions, not much more to say on this option. 

If you right click on your model, you will see a bunch of options for manipulating your model. These options are very self-explanatory and easy to use so I won’t bore you with simple explanations. NB: there is a split object into parts option which is great if your model is a collection of separate parts.

One final selection in your workspace is the View Mode in the top right corner. This allows you to change the way you view your model in the workspace and can be great to check overhangs for printing supports later on.

By default, Cura will load the Quick Print Menu on the left-hand control panel. This simple view requires you to select a filament profile, a print profile and gives you the option to print supports and/or brims to your print. When it comes to your prints higher detail means finer layers, meaning more layers and more print time. Whilst there are advanced and expert settings available in Cura, we believe it’s important to get a feeling for our machines, getting some baseline prints to compare future settings against. To do this we stick with our quick print profiles which will work exactly as they say.

The final options here are support structures and brims.

    • The support structure option will print supports from the bed up that will enable your printer to print parts for your models that are at 45 degrees or more from a straight-up vertical position. Use the overhang view mode on your model and see if there are any red parts of your model hanging out from the first layer, if so it will be worth printing supports for your model.
    • Brims are additional bottom layers outward from the actual models base layer. When printing models with small surface area touching the plate, brims enable those parts to stick to the bed more reliable and can be easily peeled from your model at the end of a print. 

Go ahead and select a profile for your print. For our Benchy print, we are going to use 3mm (or 2.85mm) ABS on the Standard profile. If your filament type isn’t listed in the Material drop-down you might need to select All in the Material Ease of Use drop down first to see it. The Benchy will test our printer’s ability to print a good first layer as well as the print without supports so we will leave brims and supports unchecked for now. Underneath the load model option at the top you will see in white text your print time, filament required in grams and in meters. These options will change according to your selected profile.

Now we have our print oriented, scaled and configured we convert our print settings to machine language for our printer to interpret. Click on the Save G-Code option in your workspace, if your printer is tethered to your PC you may see a Print Model option instead.

Load your file and print it. We recommend you go and watch the printer print the first few layers and get an idea of the way the printer operates. This helps tremendously when you have an issue on a particular layer as you will be able to troubleshoot what is happening and come up with a solution to test to fix it.

That’s our guide on using Cura for your first few 3D prints, we are going to delve a bit deeper into advanced and Expert settings in later tutorials but this guide was made to get you understanding basic principles of FDM printing with Lulzbot machines. If you have any suggestions, comments, gripes or praise leave us a comment. Good luck with your prints and get in touch if you’re having any issues with the ideas discussed in this guide!

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