Hey guys, Tim here from Core Electronics and today I'm going to do an overview of the 3D printing slicing software Cura by Ultimaker. Cura is an open source and free software that you can find online. Put simply, this software turns your computer files into a recipe, in this case G-code, for your 3D printers to be able to print with. Cura is great because of its community and commercial support with lots of different print profiles for any type of 3D printer available on the market effectively and almost all different types of materials. This saves you, the user, time because you don't need to go through and change all those settings yourself. With over a million users and more than a million prints happening each and every week, Ultimaker Cura is a fantastic software to help you hit the ground running.

The best way to learn Cura is to jump right in so why don't you follow me through a simple workflow so that way I can show you all the features of Cura and how they can work for you. So this is the homepage of Ultimaker Cura and this is what you'll be welcomed with after you go through the wizard to set up your 3D printer. So this, everywhere inside this blue box is print space. So anywhere inside here you'll be able to print with. So let's start by putting a CAD file in. So this file in particular is an STL file but it will work with a number of different types.

The button you'd press to insert a file is this one here or you can go up here, press open file or you can even click and drag. So in this case we're going to click and drag. And just like that we've imported our CAD file into Cura. So I find one of the best things to do now is to learn navigation. So with your mouse in front of you, zooming in and out is as you'd expect, rolling and scrolling the mouse wheel. If you click the mouse wheel you can then scrub the screen and look around it like that and if you right click you can rotate your model. These three controls will allow you to access all the different sides of your model. If you want to do more orthogonal kind of views, if you take your mouse and come down here you'll be able to see different types of 3D views, front views, side views, top views and all of these different types of views will allow you to see your model in whatever orientation you really need. We'll bring it back to here, the default.

If you want to throw more models in it's a very simple process, just click and drag or do any of those other two options. So this is your home page and it's worth noting different types of options you have. So the main thing to focus on is the work stages. So we have prepare, which is the stage we're up to right now. We have preview, which you'll come to once you slice your models and monitor. So from this prepare page you can see the connected printers. So I'm lucky enough to be able to have access to an Ultimator S5. And if you wanted to add more printers this is where you do it from. So this Ultimator S5, because it's a dual extruder, it has two different types of materials and setting up for it right now is ABS at 0.4 millimetre diameter of the nozzle. So it's important that these settings match your personal 3D printer. With Ultimaker it will actually tell you whether it's been set up correctly, but other certain printers you need to make sure that this is correct.

So coming over here you'll be able to see an overview of the particular settings for this print. So apparently it's a normal size with a 20% infill, that's what this symbol means, with supports on and also with a bed adhesion type also on. So if you click on anywhere along here you'll be able to dive into print settings and these print settings at this level you can understand them as the coarser you go the faster it will print and the finer you are the slower it will print. One of the best things about Cura is these kind of print profiles and these print profiles have already been set up and have had thousands of hours of printing already done making them quite reliable and quite accurate. So infill change percent is this is something commonly you'll see used if you make it higher than you have stronger products. If you make it lower you'll have a faster printing but less strong product. Infill percentage is how much of the cross-section of your model the internals is actually filled with plastic and adhesion type. So this lets you get the best connection between your 3D print and the print plate.

One of the best things about Cura is you can click on custom and you can get all these different types of options. So there's over 400 different types of options you can use with Cura. So if you're an advanced user you can really dive deep with Cura and get exactly the kind of results you want. But since this is a simple workflow process we'll just go back to the basics. So for this example we'll start with a 0.1 fine profile and with that we'll close this. So looking at other things available on the screen you can come over here and this allows you to move each particular model on the base plate on the print plate to exactly how you'd like it. This leaves you the option to scale each particular model. This gives you the option to rotate. This gives you the option to mirror. This gives you the option to turn your model into different types of materials. This gives you the option to print your model as a support structure or more complex things such as when it overlays each other where it's overlaid as the support structure. And this allows you to create little blocks where you can prevent the support structure from falling.

Since we're using a dual extruder we can decide exactly which type of material we wish to print with. Down here we can select each particular model that we want. Over here we can name exactly what the file should be called. This gives us the dimensions in millimetres of each particular object. And then over here also worth noticing is the marketplace. Over here in the marketplace is where the commercial and community come together to create print profiles for different types of materials and different types of 3D printers. And this is one of the great things about Cura. So without further ado we've got our two models and we've got them placed where we want them on the bed. So let's press slice. So by pressing slice and it should take less than a minute. You'll see all the different layers of your model be produced.Now that we've sliced, you can go to the preview section. In this preview section, you'll notice a couple of changes. If you zoom in very closely, you'll see on our models each particular line, representing the material deposited by the 3D printer. By scrolling, you can observe the layers evaporating away with the sliders provided. Pressing play will show you the path the nozzle will take during printing, aiding in troubleshooting. Additionally, you can view the estimated print time, which, in this case, is one day, nine hours, and 13 minutes, using 97 grams of material equating to 13.79 meters of filament.

Another option available is the views selection. Currently on layer view, switching to x-ray view allows you to see the internal structure of your models and customize colours within the Cura software. Moving on to the monitor section, you can check if the printer settings match those initially set up in the prepare settings before proceeding to print over the network or save to file.

After selecting the desired options, you can choose to print over the network, initiating the upload of the print job to the printer. Once completed, you can monitor the job status and queue through the browser interface. This walkthrough aims to familiarize you with Cura and ignite your enthusiasm for 3D printing. Stay cozy and happy making!