today we're going to talk about something a little bit different from normal a lot
of people have been asking how to use different graphical user interfaces or GUI(s) with their
printer and most the time i show you how to use Pronterface because in the interface it allows you
to get replies back from the printer software today I'm going to show you
something different with Cura curl will not reply back but you can use it for rendering
and sending to a local printer on your network this uh will not allow you to use
things like OctoPrint with Cura but you can use that separately but I'm going to show you with the
printer today so I'm going to show you where to download it so we'll do a search on Cura download
if i can spell
and what we have here is the
curl website for software so you're gonna click on software and then we're gonna go to version 4.8
then we're going to say download for free and we're going to select the alter maker
for Cura for windows and then we're going to say download now now list may take a few moments as
it's kind of a large file it's about 158 megabytes and as soon as this is downloaded what we'll do
is we'll map to the download folder with this over here and we'll open that up but as you all know
when i actually work with the printer I'm using Pronterface and the rationale behind it is so
that you can actually get feedback back from your printer I'm going to show you what that looks like
so I'm going to go to my print run directory and open Pronterface while this is downloading
I'm going to connect to the printer i have locally connected and as you can see it says the printer
is now online and if i were to type in something like m119 and press enter for my end stop set
status you would see that the x minimum the y minimum and the z minimum all show their status
of either open or triggered this cannot be done in Cura so if you're seeing something wrong with your
printer you're gonna have to go over to Pronterface and do the exact same setup
and if you don't see it here the other place that you will see it is if you go to settings debug
communications this will turn on debugging and show you what's occurring on your actual printer
so right now what it's doing is it's saying what temperature is it and right now it's telling you
the temperature for the different things that are connected let's go back to the web browser
and see if that's completed which it has and we'll do a show in folder and then I'm going to click on
it or double click on it to install it so now it's going to ask me if i want to install it i
have an old version already so I'm going to say yes then I'm going to uninstall that old version
and so I'm going to remove it this is going to take a few moments more
and as soon as this is complete we can close it
and it will actually install the current version we have to agree to the end user agreement
and then we're going to say next again then next again then install
so this may take a few moments to install but if you want to see the details of the install
you can always click over here and this will show you what's occurring with the actual install right
now it's doing a lot of dlls which are dynamically linked libraries and now i can't read it because
it's moving a little too fast for my eyes but needless to say it's going to install any second
so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back over to Pronterface right now and i'm going to
turn off debugging because they don't usually use it too often and I'm actually going to
disconnect from the printer so that i can connect in Pronterface I'm going to close this out and as
you can see we're almost done with the actual install let's give that a moment more to run
okay now that it's finished we're gonna actually let it run
automatically so we're gonna click on finish
now this may take a second to start as you can see
now it's gonna ask you if you can have access be allowed so allow access
and so I'm going to close this out I'm actually going to maximize this so you
can see what I'm doing it's going to say get started so in get started it's going to ask you
to sign up for the agreement so you're going to agree to that
then you're going to say next next and then we're going to skip the actual account creation and just
go directly into Cura so it's going to ask us what printer we're currently working with
so a lot of people out there are currently using Cura so what you can do is you actually
can scroll down here and there's something for Creality which is located right here
and you can choose the printer that you're most commonly using
in this case I'm going to go with the Creality Ender 3 pro then I'm going to say next
and what it will show you is the number of actual millimeters of length for your x your y your z
so these are already known by the software
so if you were to do something that was custom you would have to change these
so we're going to leave them all the same down here we have what's known as g codes so if we
were to click on this field we could see what actually happens for your starchy code so I'm
going to copy these and I'm going to go over to notepad to show you a couple of what they are
so I'm going to start a new file real quick here
and as you can see here are the g codes so it says reset the extruder is the first g
code then it says homo all axis or axis's in this case that would be x y and z going to their zero
starting point and that goes on from there so as you can see that's not very interesting but
at least you know what's occurring now if we were to highlight this and delete it for a second and
then go back over to here we could actually see what the G codes are by copying those
and as you can see it has a couple of weird things but the most important thing that it has is it's
turning off everything when the print has completed so you don't want to really change
this because why run the heat after your printer has completed it's safer to turn everything off so
let's go back over to this and click next because all of these values are going to be default
and your extruder is going to be default as well to 1.75 millimeters and of course you can add more
start and G codes here which i don't understand but okay and then you have your environment
now currently we don't have anything loaded so let's see if we can find a STL on my computer
so I've got a 20 millimeter cube that i can bring into here
so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to open the path to that cube to see what it is
I'm going to right click and I'm going to open the file location so I'm going to drag this over here
and now we have our cube on what would be our print bed now you can rotate this by holding
the right mouse button to rotate it in different directions you can also click on it and move it
with the arrows the other thing that you can do is if you so feeling inclined is you can actually
rotate it with these so you can click on it and you could actually turn it and make it print
this way if you wanted but that's for other models that you're going to be working with this one it's
not that important I'm going to rotate that back down to the zero position hopefully
apparently I'm not having a good time with it so I'm going to click on this button
and see if i can flatten it there we go i was able to flatten it into position
now over here we actually have different settings that we can set so as you can see right now there
are different profiles you can do 0.12 degrees of step and do 0.16 you can do 0.20 0.28
and then nothing above that so they keep you somewhat restricted technically you
might be able to go higher in other printer software's that do slicing but in this case
they limit you to a small range then they have infill which is 20 and that's usually the default
for almost every single print that you'll do there's rarely a time you need to go above that
and then they have a checkbox for support material so I'll show you an example of what support
material looks like if i were to click on this and i were to turn this back up to the angle we'll say
so you can see like right here let's turn that angle up so it's more dramatic so like that it
would have a hard time printing so it would need support material so you would click this
and then in order to see the support material you might be able to click on preview
but currently preview is not showing you very much so click on slice and then you can see the
actual support material that occurs with that print now as you can see over here it says save
to removable drive you can do that if you want or you can even click over here and then you can
print via USB but what i normally do is i slice it here copy out the g code that it creates being the
file that tells the printer how to move and then usually i paste it into something like
OctoPrint so let's see if uh well I'll show you OctoPrint some other time because that's going
to take a little bit too much time but I'll show you what the local print environment looks like
now as you can see right here you can actually send a g-code so let's try sending a g-code to
the printer m119 and then press enter now we've sent it but we don't actually get a response back
telling us what the state of the actual end stops are that's because they filtered that out so what
you could do is you could type i don't know g28 and see if all your axes actually home and you'll
know this by the actual movement of your printer now mine is currently homing as we're speaking
so it does work it's just you're not going to see a response so that's basically how it operates
and g28 was actually this command right here for both the x y and z that i sent to the printer it
also tells you what your current temperature on your extruders are and then your build plate so
it does show you the feedback graphically but it won't tell you anything else so one of the
questions that i did receive from a viewer they were curious on how to actually create a printer
that has multiple extruders and as you might have guessed if you've been watching my discord channel
I've been talking about a little bit around the edges I'm actually working on a printer
that I'm gonna show you how to modify in order to do multiple colors that will be coming in the
next couple of weeks I'm still working out issues with the extruder apparently the extruder that i
purchased is not very reliable so I'll tell you about that in the video when it actually occurs
but for now what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to show you how to create another printer
so if you click over here and you want to add a printer when you go to add a new network
or excuse me a new printer you can say let's say add a printer and this is non-networked
and what we're looking for in this list is actually the custom section which is right here
so I'm going to click on custom we're going to call the printer for the moment custom ff printer
and we're going to say add
and then in here what we're going to do is actually leave these two alone for the actual
start codes we're going to say that it's the same size as the build plate for the C reality so it'll
be 230 by 230 by 250 and as you can see the build plate is forming in the background behind here
as we're doing this but now we have the part where it says number of extruders
we're going to be doing multiple extruders so I'm going to show you two to start with
you could probably figure out from there what to do but now we have two extruders
so what I'm going to do next is I'm actually going to click on the first extruder
and as you can see the nozzle size is 0.4 which is what we're going to be working with
but our actual compatible material we're going to change that to 1.75 for the filament and
then we're going to do the same over here of 1.75 that will take care of both our extruders
now there is a change that you may need to make in here so when i showed you this earlier in notepad
what i was showing you was the actual n codes so the end code currently
does not show us that it's turning off everything so you're gonna have to add those in per what you
find in the other combination of the CURA G codes that we went over before it's basically turning
off your heat bed and both your extruders this is a step you should not or never forget to set
so I've emphasized it a lot it's for your safety and the safety of those around you so please
follow that advice so I'm gonna click next and as you can see now we've actually generated
a custom printer right here and it's got two generic PLA(s) you can actually change these to
other types of PLA if you so choose but for now we're just going to stick with the generic
and this will be a primer for the video that i will be doing now for all of those out there
that have been kind enough to tip me on PayPal or purchase something on amazon I'm greatly
thankful that you did in the future if people want to see them at the end of the video when they do
send a PayPal tip in please specify that you're okay with me using your name and i will display it
in the credits at the end of the tutorial so thank you very much for your time and have a nice day