Apart from blow up printers, the one scariest thing for me about a slicer is losing settings. You spend hours getting your printer dialed in, specific profiles per material and then…
You update your slicer software and it all goes away. I have now learned Cura does this. And does this a lot. Forum posts abound about it. Friends recommend I switch to Prusa because it happened to them. Unfortunately too late for me to write down my old settings, and they’re apparently not in the ~/.config/cura folder anymore. Nice.
I think if you have a project saved, you can open it up and it’ll prompt you to override the current settings. From there you can save them and backup
Big recommend to just jump straight to OrcaSlicer. It has Bambu Studio’s much-improved-over-PrusaSlicer UI but with features ported in from PrusaSlicer and SuperSlicer and compatibility with non-Bambu printers.
I switched from PS to Orca a few weeks ago, it is just a much better featured slicer. I also absolutely love that I can just click “print” and it automatically uploads and starts the print on my printer. Only had to enter the IP of my printer and that was it, extremely user friendly.
I’m not sure I agree the UI is better…it is different, and not entirely intuitive for me when looking for some settings.
FWIW, prusaslicer can also upload and print. The setting to enable it is a bit hidden though… (it’s in printer settings)
I tried Prusa Slicer and didn’t care for the UI. I ended up with Orca Slicer instead.
I’ve been on the prusa slicer side of things for a long time, and you won’t see me arguing in favor of cura. That said, you should probably consider doing daily backups of your home folder, using something like Borg/restic which have great incremental and compressed backups (practically backing up TBs in seconds).
My nephew wants to buy a 3D printer, and I’d like to warn him. I’m worried that I’m too ignorant to do it effectively, though.
What is a slicer? What is Cura?
Thanks in advance, folks!
A slicer is the program that takes a 3D model and “translates it” into the sequence of actions that the printer needs to do to create that model. It is called a slicer because 3D printers build the models in horizontal layers, or in other words, in slices.
Cura is one of the slicer programs available. There are many, divided between slicers for FDM printers (the ones that print from a spool of material) and slicers for resin printers (the ones that print from the disgusting goop that comes in bottles). Your printer tends to be packaged with a suggested one but usually you can use any of the appropriate type.
Slicing is one of the most important parts of 3D printing, and it tends to be the difference between ending up with a pristine figure or a very blurry one. In the most extreme cases, good slicing will be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful print.
Because he’s my nephew. I care about him. He’s only in high school, he’s saving up for one, and I don’t want him to be disappointed/frustrated and waste his money on a crappy printer. If I can steer him away from bad printers and software, great!
I also don’t want him to be discouraged. He’s smart, talented, and basically I want him to kick ass everything he does (I know that’s unrealistic, but hey, that’s the uncle in me talking). Plus, being good at 3D printing will be a valuable skill.
