3D printing from your Raspberry Pi

Introduction

Ultimaker Cura is a free 3D printing cutting software provided by the Ultimaker company. Cura works by slicing the user’s model file into layers and generating printer-specific g-code. Once complete, the g-code can be sent to the printer to manufacture the physical object.

The open source software, compatible with most desktop 3D printers, can work with files in the most common 3D formats such as STL, OBJ, X3D as well as image file formats such as BMP, GIF, JPG and PNG.

To install Ultimaker Cura on the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to use an application manager called “Pi-app”, which allows you to install any type of software on your board, and can be downloaded from the following link:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Botspot/pi-apps/master/install | bash

Once you’ve downloaded the link, click on the icon that appears on your desktop to confirm that you want to run the file:

Once the manager is installed, you will need to search for Cura :

Once you’ve found it, all you have to do is install the software:

Here’s how the installation works:

Once installed, you’ll find Ultimaker in the menu of your Raspberry Pi. Just click on it to configure it:

We accept the following rules of use:

You will then be asked whether or not you wish to participate in improving the software:

Here you can create an account to retrieve your projects from the cloud or share them with others:

You are then asked to configure your 3D printer so that it is recognized by the software. To do this, you can connect to your 3D printer from your network, or by cable if it cannot be connected to the network:

 

Once you’ve set up your printer, all that’s left to do is print your first 3D printout: