Learning Some Makerspace Tools
Howdy. Its been a while. Heres just a ton of information on most of the equipment I have accses to in the T3 Makerspace!
How to operate the laser!
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Turn On Laser (Switch on the Back)
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Turn on Water(Switch on Power cord)
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Pug in the ethernet cable into the side of the laser
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Plug the other end of the ethernet cable into your computer
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Go to the network page
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Go to the screen that says IPs
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Press Wired IP and put the IP address of the laser into your browser
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It will take you to a browser-based design program
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Import your DXF or PDF file based on what you’re doing.
[NOTE: I don’t recommend using browser-based software for designing. It can be clunky and slow at times and is overall unreliable on college public WiFi. I used to use Fusion 360 for my vector graphics but I have since moved to this free software called Krita, it’s simple, intuitive, and is stable. There’s a link at the bottom.]
To Use the X-Plus QIDI 3D Printer:
Link to slicing software at the bottom.
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Choose Your Software (Mac or Windows)
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Download and install it, your computer won’t necessarily like the fact that you’re downloading a .exe from a random website so you’ll have to just leap of faith and brute force the software to install.
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Now once you open the software you can select your printer, the Qidi Printer in the maker space is an “X Plus” After you’ve selected that printer click “select printer” and then you’ll get a little tour of the software. I just clicked through it, if you’ve used any 3d slicing software before you should be in a good enough boat to just hop right in, but if you want to, go ahead and take the tour, I’m not here to judge.
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Click the folder icon in the upper left-hand corner and find the file you wish to slice. I’ve only tried OBJ and STL files but I’m sure plenty of different file types are supported.
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For PLA Prints (what’s currently in the printer) you want to make sure under “Material” that PLA is selected and that your Temperature is 230° C.
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When you’re ready to start slicing go ahead and click “Prepare”
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Now Click “Save to File” and here’s where you would put it on your SD card or USB stick
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Then just go to the printer, stick the USB in and print that bad boy!
[NOTE: The X-Pro and X-Plus use the file type (.gcode). The software will default the sliced file type to whichever printer you’ve selected]
To use the MakerBot Replicator:
First off there’s a proprietary slicing software for this printer too and it can be found at the link down below.
This software also takes a variety of different file types and this slicer exports the files with the extension, “.makerbot”
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Just pop your file in there(Either by going through the file manager or by dragging and dropping)
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Export it with the big button in the bottom right hand corner
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Drag and drop it into a flash drive
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Print it!
[NOTE: Maneuvering the different menus is kinda weird with a scroll wheel but you get used to it just press in to select and press the bottom button to go back.]