So one of the things very important to printing success is the plate adhesion methods. These are known as skirts (think hoop skirts), brims (the brim of a bowler derby) and raft (what Huck Finn floated on). Here’s my take on them.

• Skirt – This really doesn’t have anything to do with plate adhesion. It draws a line around the print object before it starts printing. This has no connection to the print job. Think of this procedure as priming the pump, it lets the plastic flow freely and starts the print job smoothly. Recommended regardless if you need extra adhesion.
• Brim – This is a base that is attached to the project and adds extra support for skinny/tall jobs that are prone to moving the taller they get. Set the diameter and thickness and know you’ll have to cut this ‘slag’ off but your print job will work.
• Raft – Basically builds a raft which your project is printed on. This should never be used as if you have to do this there’s something wrong with your plate and you need to fix that.

I’ve finally gotten the printer to play nice. The key to this is in the software that you use to ‘slice’ the 3D diagram. This is very specific to the printer and manufacturer. It is immensely important that you follow the directions for setup. In my case I’m using Ultimaker Cura. Knowing next to nothing about 3D modeling software this is just what came with the system, do yourself a favor and go find the latest version, it did not ship with it guaranteed. This Cura software is open source and seems to be well developed so I’m rather happy with it. I still need to find some tutorials to learn to use it, for the most part I’m just finding stuff to print but the goal is to be able to create stuff to give back to the community as well as print stuff I need.

My particular printer can hook up to a computer but recommends putting the file on a SD card and sneaker netting it over to the printer. I’m honestly fine with this for the most part but it does bring up an interesting observation. Everything that happens after you push the print button on the unit is defined in this file, print temperature, bed temperature, flow rate, X, Y, Z positions… EVERYTHING. This should reaffirm the first paragraph in that you mush have the software setup properly so that it has all the settings that your printer has. Just do it!

So let’s look at file types. When you’re hunting print objects, you will find them (mostly) as .STL files (stereolithography). STL has several acronyms such as “Standard Triangle Language” and “Standard Tessellation Language”. This file will be opened with the above mentioned software and then converted (sliced) to a *.gcode file that is specific to your printer. This is the file you select to print.