Netfabb Studio tutorial

Draft

Introduction

“netfabb Studio is a software tailored for additive fabrication, rapid prototyping and 3D printing. It includes the ability of viewing, editing, repairing and analyzing stl-files or slice-based files in various formats.”. This version is free.

Netfabb Studio (or Pro) is a must have tool for printing with the RapMan.

A pro version is available plus a commercial unexpensive g-code generator for rapman that you could use instead of skeinforge

Two parts in Netfabb

See also:

• Meshlab for RapMan tutorial (for layer merging)
• Skeinforge for RapMan for printing with a RapMan

Base functionalities

Positioning and resizing

Positioning is really easy because one can quickly choose a view from one of seven views (e.g. top, bottom, left, right, front, back) and then either move the object or drag a corner of the (green) bounding box rectangle.

For precision work, e.g. align to z=0 one can use a popup.

Simple Mashup example - duplos for grown ups

Get a ready made duplo without caps

• Get a parametric DUPLO for Thingyverse: parametric lego duplo by danielkschneider
• A good piece is the duplo-2x2x1.5-sans.stl

Open in Netfabb

• Project -> New
• Project -> Open the .STL file

Create 3D text

• Click on the "Create Primitives Icon" (second to the left)
• Set Height to 20.mm and depth to 2.0 or 3.0 mm
• Double click on Text and enter a letter, e.g. "Y" (read the next item about "webdings")
• Change the Font to Webdings (double click), select bold and select size = 72
• Click on Apply.

Writing 3D text with webdings in netfabb

Align

Use each of the seven views to align and make sure that the symbol will be on top.

3D text DUPLO aligned in Netfabb

Selecting webdings

• Read Webdings and wingdings
• Basically, under Windows open the character table, then copy and paste.

Merge the two

• Since you can't do this in the free version, you will have to export both parts
• Menu->Part->Export Part; Select .STL (ascii)
• Now save the whole thing as Netfabb project (Project->Save), in case you did something wrong.
• Then import both exported parts to Meshlab and merge layers. Meshlab is a really difficult program, but merging two layers is very easy. See the Meshlab for RapMan tutorial
• Call the file something like duplo-symbol.stl

Clean up the .STL

• Import the combined duplo-symbol.stl to netfabb
• Then clean it up by pressing the "+" button.
• Click on "automatic repair"
• click on Apply repair
• Now export again as part: Menu->Part->Export Part. You can overwrite the duplo-symbol-stl since its broken anyhow.

Printing

• Now you can import the fixed .STL file to skeinforge
• Recommended settings for our Rapman v3.1 (have to check this a bit more):

- Carve -
Layer thickness                 = 0.4 (0.45 is sort of ok)
- Speed - 
Feed rate (head spead)          =  16
Flow rate setting (RPM/10)      = 450 to 500 (this is a lot, but it's for the top)
Perimeter feed and flow rates ) = 0.9
- Fill -
Solid surface thickness         = 0.4
- Raft -
Base Layer thickness            = 2.5
Base Feed Rate Multiplier       = 0.90
Interface Layers                = 2  (1 should be enough too maybe)
Nozzle lifts (all three)        = 0.35

In addition I tried using cool (for orbiting) but removed all the temperatures in the g-code.

Cleaning

Cleaning of .STL files is an absolute must and this software usually does a great job. Click on the red plus sign, then commit.

Export

In the free version, you only can export single object (part) as .STL. Use Meshlabs to merge several objects :)

Links

Download

• [Netfabb]