I want to cover up this QR code on my ender 3 v2
but a Filament Friday sticker didn't match the color scheme.
I'll show you how I made this two-color print using z offset and Cura on today's Filament Friday
Filament Friday is brought to you every week by the generous donations
of these Patreon supporters. I've had this design for the CHEP symbol in Tinkercad for a while.
Here it is with its normal white background. It's actually two prints; one is the white
base and the other is the CHEP symbol. Now I'm going to print the base in black but what I'm
going to do is separate these two as two separate stl's. So I'll export the base as an stl and then
I'll export the CHEP symbol as a separate stl. I brought the base file into Cura so I could
slice it. Now I'll bring in the CHEP symbol as a separate stl file. And here the two files are.
So what I actually want to do is get this thing to print on top of the base. Dimensions
of these guys are both two millimeters tall and 40 millimeters x and y. So I'm gonna offset the CHEP
symbol by two millimeters and it should slide right over this to make sure everything fits.
And there it is. It's sliding right over nicely. So this is the way I want to print it,
black on the back, the base, and red for the CHEP symbol. But if I sliced them in Cura like this,
it would slice it all as one file. And I don't want that. So I'm just going to get rid of the
CHEP symbol and let's slice just the base first. For this first one I'm just going to use a 0.28
layer height 20 percent infill. It's really not super important, and then I'm going to send this
to the printer. And then while that's printing let's go back to Cura and load back in that CHEP
symbol. So here it is again. Now remember I need this two millimeters off the bed when it prints,
so I can offset it here by two millimeters in Cura in the image, but the problem is
it needs to offset that in the g-code. So if I slice it, it's just going to print it flat like
this. No offset. So that'll basically interfere with that base. It's not going to print on top
of it. That's where z-offset comes in. So let's just search for z offset and .... there's no z
offset in Cura. Well there's a fix. You go to marketplace, you go into plugins,
and z offset setting is one of the plugins. Install that and then once it's
installed you will get an agreement you gotta click on, and then you gotta restart Cura.
And here's the black, it finished, so I'm ready to send the red to it. So let's slice this guy with
that z offset. So let's search for z offset again, and this time it shows up because the plugin is
installed. It just offsets the print by whatever you put here. So I'm going to offset it by two
millimeters which is what I want, and then we'll slice it again. And I slice it, and then we'll
do a preview, and it doesn't show it offset. So Cura preview doesn't show the offset. But what
it does do is show me I have a skirt here, which I don't want. I don't want that you know falling
around this thing because it's going to be two millimeters in the air. So let's go back and shut
skirt off. I'm just going to say none. And then we'll re-slice it and then once it's re-sliced,
here it is again. It doesn't show it's two millimeters off, but the g-code will do that.
So now we'll take this and we'll send it to the printer and hopefully put it right
on top of that black piece that we just printed. Before I started it I changed to a red filament,
it ran the test strip, and then it moved over to the print lifted two millimeters in the air, and
started printing right on top of the base. Just the way I wanted it. Now I didn't use pause at
height or filament change or any other plug-ins, because this allows me to do the two prints
whenever I want. Finish the first one, come back later do the second one, and here's the results.
After seeing this I think I'm going to go back and make another one using ironing, so it's nice
and smooth. But just using double-sided tape, I can stick it to the machine and it looks great.
So I may make more of these for all my Creality machines,
but that's an easy way to make a two-color print using the z-offset plug-in in Cura. 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