LaserUser.com Forum (formerly RDWorksLab)

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...

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.

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.

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

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 .

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