From the course: Additive Manufacturing: Optimizing 3D Prints
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Slicers and hosts
From the course: Additive Manufacturing: Optimizing 3D Prints
Slicers and hosts
3D printers are robots, and mostly not very smart robots at that. To create a 3D print, we have to tell them in a lot of detail what to do. There are two types of software that are use to interact with 3D printers; slicers and hosts. As we saw earlier in this course, models for 3D printing are typically created in a CAD program and exported as an STL file. Programs that take these STL files and turn them into commands for printer are called slicers. As their name implies, these programs slice a model into layers for printing. First, a user brings in one or more STL files and arranges those models on a virtual version of the printer's platform, a process called plating. The slicer produces a complex sequence of instructions for printer nozzle movements to draw each layer. Slicers output a file of these instructions, usually in a format called G-code. Host programs are used for real-time control of a printer. This includes telling the printer which G-code file to print. But host…
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