Preparing an object for 3D printing

We have been going over the process of designing an object, be it something decorative or a piece for a larger machine, but you have to know that you can't actually print an STL object directly on a 3D printer.

If you have been following this series, it is very likely you will have already bought, received, assembled, calibrated, and tested your 3D printer following the manufacturer's instructions. You may have even made some of your own designs using a computer assisted design program (like OpenSCAD [1] or FreeCAD [2]).

The next step is getting cozy with something called a slicer.

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