Slicers for 3d printing

[Gene Uselman]

One consideration for printing is which slicer program to use. A couple years ago the most features were offered by Simplify3D- which you have to purchase [as I recall it was ~$100], fortunately now the free slicers are pretty much caught up... I still use it because, like RDw, I know it pretty well, and I am lazy. I am now on vaca [can a retiree take a vacation?] and have a printer with me and cannot get my Simplify prog to work, so I am using a prog developed by Josef Prusa for his printers and it has some nice features- I think it works for other printers as well and is open source like his printers [you can build your own Mk3s- he supplies the print files or you can buy them anywhere... so ' most' Chicom printers are a variation of his- but I digress...] . Prusa started with a version on Slic3r, which is free, Another good free slicer is Cura, which I have some experience with.

I feel very luck to have all these tools available to me, laser, 3D printer and cnc router. Gene out...

[Tim Mellor]

You can now add Fusion 360 to the list of Slicers as of today. Still an early release but it is off to a great start

Video here and if you run Fusion 360 for your Design software it will auto update over the next day or two. The Audio quality is a bit ordinary and I have whipped the speaker with a wet lettuce leaf about it https://youtu.be/Yd0l2ZOQQek There is a bunch of other new upgrades too this month but I will drop them in the Fusion 360 thread at some stage.

It already has presets for a lot of the more common printers including Prusa, Creality CR-10 and Enders and a bunch of others. The GUI will take a bit of getting used to but it looks fully featured with plenty of options and setrtings for day 1 release.

[Gene Uselman]

That is good news as I normally alter [or create] files in F360 and then output to Simplify3D, and often go back to F360 to add supports that I can see are needed when the automatic or custom supports are added and then sliced.

[Tim Mellor]

New version of PrusaSlicer 2.2 out today with some nice new features. Built in config files for non Prusa printers is a great extra for those of us who haven't drunk the KoolAid

Video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy3u4DNh_XQ

Download here https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/releases

[Gene Uselman]

The Koolade tastes pretty good Tim. I have the Prusa at home now and it is absolutely bulletproof, and almost foolproof . I used the Prusa slicer in Fla for 3 months and was quite impressed with it, especially how well the supports peel off without marking the print. That said, the support generation I found very clumsy compared to Simplify3D. Like all programs, there are many ways to do things and some are better in one program than another. I haven't had time to try out the Fusion360 slicer... I expect to have time now .

[Gene Uselman]

I use PrusaSlicer [2.7.4 is current I think, they are great about upgrading it often] exclusively now- many new features.