i'm tom, and today i'm going to show you howto prepare and fix stl files that would otherwise probably crash your slicer. so stl files are the basic file type thatrepresent the physical part that you want to print. all big cad suites like solidworksor inventor, but also sketchup, openscad and blender can export stls. an stl file simplyis a bunch of triangles that define only the
prepare model for 3d printing, surfaces of your part. and the more complexyour parts are, the more can go wrong when your program tries to decide how to arrangethose triangles to make them as similar as possible to the original part. modern slicerscan automatically work around some of these errors, but you're usually better off doingthese repairs by yourself since these can
often introduce artifacts that will only showup once the part is printed. another common problem with printable files is that theyare often not oriented properly - so unless you want to make heavy use of support material,you should check that the part you're going to print has a large, flat surface that canstick to the build platform and is oriented in the right direction.for this job, we're going to be using netfabb studio basic, which is a popular free toolmade with 3d printing in mind. in fact, the professional version also includes a slicer,which is what the first ultimakers used. so let's get started. if you haven't installedit yet, you can download netfabb from the link in the description below. after installing,you will need to register it using a valid
email address. when you open up a file, it'lllook something like this. you can rotate the view while holding the right mouse buttonand zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. you can select a part by clicking on it. well,this is how it works on windows, if you're on a mac, i suppose you can figure out theequivalents to those buttons. in the bottom right corner, netfabb will show you the dimensionsof the part you just opened. this is an important spot to check if you're using parts that wereimported from imperialistic programs. stls only store dimensionless units for the sizes,so reprap tools generally assume those units to be millimeters. however, some programsuse inches or centimeters when exporting, which will result in parts that appear waytoo small. to fix that, we can use the scale
tool, which is up here. use a scaling factorof 25.4 if your part was exported in inches or 10 for centimeters, then hit scale anddouble-check that the reported dimensions are now correct. now, you might have noticedthe little warning icon down here, which indicates that your part still has errors in the data.you'll often see these errors as red spots on your part. the best way to deal with theseis by using the automated repair, which, for me, has managed to get almost every mangledfile back into a printable shape. to start, click the red cross up here and select automaticrepair, then choose the default repair and hit execute. at this point, the file willusually print just fine. if the automated repair didn't pick off all errors, you mightwant to try the remove degenerate faces option
in the actions tab. choose a tolerance ofabout 0.01 and hit ok. this will completely remodel your file and give you another chancethat the automated repair picks off all errors, so run that again. when you're done, hit applyrepair, remove old part. the last step is orienting the part, whichis super simple in netfabb. use the align to bottom plane tool and simply double-clickthe side of your part that you want to stick to the build platform.to save the changes you made, using the save command in netfabb isn't going to be muchuse. instead, make sure the part is selected and green, then click part, export part, stland choose where you want to save the stl. and that's the whole process of preparinga file for the slicer! i run through this
process for every part i print, and once you'vefigured it out, it's super fast to do as well. let me demonstrate. and the part is ready to print!so, as always, thanks for watching!
