This article is designed to explain the basic processes and ideas behind 3D Printing in simple terms for complete beginners. If you believe you are beyond this stage you should skip this article.

The idea behind 3D Printing is very simple. The thought is that if we load plastic, in this case called filament, into rolls, and feed it into a machine that could melt it, then the machine can move around on a surface and form it into whatever we want to create! The machines that are used today contain a lot of moving parts and advanced features, but all of them accomplish the same goal, to form objects. The way they do this is by melting the plastic inside of the moving part of the printer, called a Toolhead, which then moves around a surface, called a Build Plate, depositing the melted plastic all across the plate. It does this in a very specified shape, called a layer. Each layer is a series of movements around the plate, that are then stacked on top of each other, with the Toolhead moving up a very small amount after each layer. The layers are incredibly small, .2mm or (.007in), so the object still looks cohesive and put together, which is why 3D Printing has risen to fame.

The machine does not actually understand what it is creating, however, which is where Slicing and .gcode comes in. When you have a 3D Model file, which is a model containing the geometric information used to create a 3D Object, you import the file into a Slicer. A Slicer is a program that slices the model into motor movements the printer can understand, timed to match up with the model. These movements are what make up a layer, and then tell the motors running the Toolhead to move it up. This file of movements is called a .gcode file, and it contains all the information the printer needs during the print.

All of these combined create for a wonderful tool for home and industrial applications that creates a whole host of possibilities for everyone who uses one. If you are interested in learning more, we do have more articles available.