- Today, I wanna walk you through the process of setting up
Cura for the Monoprice Select Mini Three Printer.
(upbeat music)
First off, I'd like to thank Taylor Parsons
for suggesting the idea for this video.
The Monoprice Select Mini is a great 3D printer.
The version two is also excellent.
They're inexpensive.
They're reliable.
And they're super easy to use.
They really do give good results
for anybody who's into 3D printing whether you're a beginner
or you've been doing it for awhile.
That being said as soon as you wanna print
any of your own 3D models, you need to use a slicer.
A slicer is a software program
that literally slices the 3D model into layers,
so that the printer can print them layer by layer.
It also creates the G Code file
that the printer understands.
There are tons of options available for slicers.
Some you have to pay for.
Some that you don't.
I recommend for this printer just using Cura
which is a totally free slicer.
If you go to ultimaker.com,
or just do a google search for Cura, you'll find the website
where you can download the software,
and there are tons of versions for both Windows...
And Mac OS.
All of these versions are free,
but there are some differences between them.
The new versions are quite advanced, and really fun to use,
but I recommend using an older version
for the Monoprice Select Mini to get the best results.
Everything I'm going to be going over today
is based on Cura 15 point 04 point two,
which is an older version but like I said,
gives the best results for the Monoprice Select Mini Plus.
Once you're in Cura, this column on the left hand side
is really where you can adjust all of the settings
for each individual print.
So every time you're gonna print a 3D model,
you can come over here and adjust your settings accordingly,
especially if you're downloading anything
off of ThingIverse or prebuilt things.
Sometimes the creators will give you
the best settings to use.
This is where you can put those in.
Before you can even get to that though,
you need to set Cura up to handle the Monoprice Select Mini.
If you go up to the Machine menu,
you can have multiple machines.
So if you have multiple printers,
they can each have their own settings.
I have two Monoprice printers that I use with Cura,
the Mini and the Maker Select Plus.
The difference is if I click on the Maker Select Plus,
you'll see the bed size now increases,
and some of the setting have changed.
If I go back to the Mini, then it brings up
those specific settings for that printer.
If you need to add a new machine,
all you have to do is click on add new machine,
and it will walk you through titling it,
and doing all the settings.
I've already added the Mini,
so here are the settings that I use.
And you can change the settings at any time
in the Machine settings menu.
Really, the most important settings
in this menu to set are the bed size,
which for the Monoprice Mini
are 120 millimeters by 120 by 120.
That's gonna give you the correct bed size,
so that the printer doesn't try
to print larger than it's capable of.
It only has one extruder so that's simple.
It does have a heated bed so you wanna click on that.
The build area is square.
You can leave G Code Flavor at RepRap Marlin Sprinter.
And all of the printer head sizes,
you can just leave straight at zero.
And these two settings, serial port and baud rate,
you can leave at auto, and that's it.
That's pretty simple.
And you just click okay.
And jump down in here for a print.
Now, over on the side here is where you can start
adjusting some of the more fun settings for your prints.
You've got layer height.
The good thing about Cura
is any time you mouse over an option,
it will give you a quick explanation.
It's not always exactly what you need,
but it's pretty helpful to have.
Layer height usually is point two.
You can go point one if you have a little more time,
and you want finer detail.
You could even go up to point three if you are in a hurry
and it doesn't have to be the most detailed print.
Typically point two works very well.
Shell thickness I usually leave at point eight.
You definitely want to enable retraction
which will help the printer give you
finer details with less stringing.
If you click on these ellipses next to any settings,
then you'll have the option to kind of adjust more.
I keep most of these basically at the default.
When it comes time to print your fill density,
we'll change based on the print that you're doing.
Print speed.
This is what I've done to get the best settings.
50 millimeters per second.
With a temperature of 205 for the extruder,
and a bed temperature of 50.
Sometimes depending on the weather,
or the room that you're printing in,
if it's colder, you may need to up the bed temperature
to closer to 60 just to get the prints to stick.
Supports depend on the print.
And for filament, you wanna leave this the diameter at 1.75,
and the flow at 100%.
In the Advanced menu setting,
the Mini has a nozzle size of point four.
Retraction speed can be left at 40.
Retraction distance should be set to four point five.
In the quality menu, initial layer thickness
should be point three.
Initial layer line width should be 100%.
Cut off object bottom should be left at zero.
And dual extrusion overlap should be kept point one five.
For speed, you can leave travel speed
at 150 millimeters a second.
Bottom layer, 15 millimeters a second.
And everything else can just be left at zero.
And for cooling minimal air time should be left at five,
and you definitely do want to enable the cooling fan.
And then the Plugins and the Start End G Code menus,
are ones that you can get into if you really start
wanting to customize your prints.
For example, you could have pause points
where the print will automatically pause at certain points,
and you can switch out the filaments
to change the color or the material.
That gets really complicated.
I tend to even stay away from that.
So you don't need to mess with either
of these two menus just to get started.
I would just stick with basic and advanced,
and that will get you started.
Just to give an example, I'll run through a sample print.
So for a test print, I went to ThingIverse,
and found the 3D Benchy by Creative Tools,
which is a great benchmark test
just to get your printer all calibrated.
The Mini usually does it very well.
This is a cute, little print.
But the reason it's a good test print
is because it has all of these different angles
that are pretty tough for the printer.
If you really look at this,
there's a lot of different slopes and angles and circles
that are tough for printers to do.
And so if you get this printed well,
that means your printer is calibrated properly,
and the rest of your prints should come out great.
So if we go to thing files,
there's a lot of different options.
We're just going to download the regular Benchy.
The full print by itself as a STL file.
Then in Cura, I'm going to load that STL file.
Now Benchy has been loaded into Cura.
So Benchy requires a layer height of point two,
and an in fill of 10% which is what we already had.
You can right click to then spin it around,
and see it from different angles.
You can scroll to zoom in or out on the print.
And Cura also puts the estimated amount of time
for the print up here along with
how much filament it will require.
If you wanna make any changes,
down here is where you can scale things up
based on axis or by whole model.
You can also mirror it if you wanna move it around
and switch it in different ways.
We don't need to do that with this print.
You could even get different views happening
if you wanna do the layers.
This is what the slicer does.
It slices that three model into layers.
You can scroll down to see each individual layer,
and how it's going to be built up.
And this blue line is the path of the extruder nozzle.
So it's going to start in this corner.
Come over here.
And then start with layer one,
and go all the way up to 240...
Layers.
Now, in here...
This pattern is the in fill.
So at 10%, that's what that looks like.
What we can do is switch that up to say 50%.
And now viewing the layer you can see
that it's much, much more dense than 10% was.
But we'll go back to 10 because that's what we need.
And there we go, there's 10% in fill.
That's all that's needed for this print.
When it comes to support, you have a few options.
Touching build plate would mean anywhere
that support needs to be generated over the bed itself.
It will be created.
Benchy doesn't need any supports.
But if this angle were any sharper than 45 degrees,
supports would probably be needed
to connect this to the bed.
Doing supports everywhere means that even inside the print,
so even here where it might need some supports.
It will create supports that are connected
to the print itself rather than the print bed.
I pretty much never use that,
but you may need to use it from time to time.
Platform adhesion are just different settings
to help the print stick to the bed.
For Benchy, you don't need any.
A brim will create a little bit of an outline.
And a raft will create sort of a platform
that the print is printed on
that then just pops right off afterwards.
I use rafts for smaller or taller prints
that might not stand or stick on their own,
and just need a little extra help.
So once you've got your settings ready to go,
all you have to do is click save.
Give it a title.
3D Benchy works great.
Gonna save it to my desktop and click save.
Now to load the print into the Monoprice Select Mini,
all you need to do is grab the micro SD card
from the printer, load the print onto it.
Go into your printer.
Select the print.
And click start.
If you go to 3dbenchy.com, this is the creative tools
website where Benchy came from.
And on the analyze page, they actually give you
all of the different measurements you can take
to see how the print came out.
If it was accurate or not.
And how your printer may need to be adjusted.
Of course you don't always have to go into this much depth.
You could always just eyeball it,
and see if you like the quality
that came out once the print is finished.
And that's it.
So I hope that was helpful.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
And remember, my settings are just the ones I recommend,
but as you get to know your printer a little bit more,
you might need to adjust them
specifically to suit your needs.
It's always important to remember
that 3D printing is about experimentation,
and sometimes it might take you a few tries
before a print gets going well,
but that's kind of part of the fun.
So that's it.
Thanks for watching.
Please check out some of the videos
I have about 3D printers.
If you any questions, feel free to send them my way.
I'm always happy to help or help you figure out
the best answer to your question.