Build Plate Adhesion
will tell Cura to print a brim or a raft to help the part stick to the
print bed. A brim is basically an extended first layer. It will print a series of concentric
perimeters around your model, starting at the edge of the model and working out. This provides
more surface area for the model to adhere to the bed with. A raft is a thin platform that’s printed
before your model begins to print. You’ll end up with your model sitting atop an easily
removable raft of plastic. Rafts can be very helpful with materials like ABS that can be tricky to
get to stick to the bed.
These (and other) settings work together to “slice” your model up into a series of layers
that are as thick as your selected layer height. The result of this is a set of instructions that your
printer will follow for each printed layer in the model. After the slicing process is complete, Cura
is ready to save out a “gcode” file, which is a list of instructions your printer will read in order to
print your part.
Going into the details of G-code is beyond the scope of this guide, but if you'd like to
learn more you can check out the following resources:
http://en.wikipidia.org/wiki/G-code
and
http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code
.
Now that you’ve got an understanding of how the main interface works, let’s move on
to…
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