On today's episode we're going to take a look at a couple plug-ins for cura.
They might be helpful to you so we're going to check them out right here on Filament Friday.
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Sometimes you get prints that curl up in the corner. This is a common 3d print problem an
easy solution is to put a brim around it but what if you just want it in certain locations,
that's where there's a plug-in to put tabs in the corners. Go to marketplace
and then there's the tab anti-warping plug-in.
I installed it so it shows install but normally you click install and then have to restart cura
and then it'll show up here on the left hand menu. You can adjust the size of the tab and
also the gap between the tab and the print. And to install it you just go to where you want to tab
and click where you want the center placed so I'll put one at each corner
of this CHEP cube and now we've got those tabs in place. I can take a top view and you can see it's
at each corner going to hold down these corners or try to help hold down these corners from warping.
There's one more step that isn't quite so obvious and that's under supports. You need to check
enable support brim. That's how this thing works. If you don't, let me show you what happens. I'll
slice it and then look at preview and look at it just draws lines. They're very grid like. They're
not going to do much at all, so you have to check enable support brim. Then when you slice it and we
look at preview you can see they're solid. They're going to print solid and hold the corners down.
One of my tabs wasn't centered to the corner. To move it you just click on it and then use the move
tool and you just drag it to where you want just like any object in cura. Real easy. Now if you
want to delete a tab, just click on it and then click on it a second time and it'll delete it.
Just click on it, click a second time. Now if you want to change the size you can adjust the size
here in the menu and then when you click to put a new tab it'll be that size. In this case they're
way too big. You can also adjust the gap between the tab and the print. I put it at 0.8 here and it
leaves this gap which I don't understand the point of this because it's not holding down the corners.
So I always use point two that way it touches and holds the corner but still easy to break away. And
here's the way it will print. It'll print those tabs on the first layer and then build the CHEP
cube up from there. I'm testing a really low cost printer that doesn't have a heated bed so these
tabs may come in handy because I have seen some warping on the CHEP cube. And here's the print
using the tabs it's holding down really well. I stopped it after a couple layers but it looks
like it's working. I know this works on my Ender three as well but I don't have as many problems
with warping on that thing. But it definitely works here on this non-heated bed printer.
Another plugin I've just started playing with allows you to export
your cura settings to an html file under the file save project menu.
I've installed this and I had to restart cura and I'll show you in a minute where it shows up. What
I really like to do is easily compare my profile 0.2 to the standard quality cura 0.2 profile
so I'm going to go file > save project > click save and then I'm going to put
it in the downloads. But instead of that 3mf here's the html. You select that html
give it the name so I've got the standard selected right now so I'll call it standard and save it.
Now I'll go back and select my profile and do this again. file > save project > save
select html and give it a different name. Just call it 02 and then save that as html file. So now
with a browser I can open it up this is in safari browser on my mac, open file > select the file,
and now I can go through every setting that's in this and it'll even tell me what cura version
was used. Now I can save those files I can post them to my CHEPclub website, all kinds of things
because now it's in HTML format. I can also open those in other programs like excel so I can take
those two and then open them in excel and then combine them into columns. Here I have standard
on the left and my CHEP version on the right. And then I can scroll through and see the differences.
I highlighted them in yellow here. So I just went through the file to see the differences.
What they're doing and what I'm doing and maybe I'll learn something just by looking at what
they did versus what I did. So it's very very handy to be able to export these as a HTML file.
So there you have a couple plugins to play with. Check them out and let me know what
you think of them in the comments below. If you like what I'm doing here maybe check
out some of the videos that are popping up, and if nothing else click on that CHEP logo
and subscribe. I'll see you next time right here at Filament Friday.