Now that you have printed all of the files on the sd card that came with your printer, you have searched for something to print and downloaded a stl file from one of the many download sites, but how do i print it as it is not showing on my printer? This is where your slicer comes into play you will need to install some slicing software on your computer.
Head over to https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura/ and download the latest version. Once the download has completed you will have a file named cura or cura.exe, Double click the file and let your computer do its thing, You may get a pop up warning saying that you are about to install an exe file are you sure you want to continue, click more then continue anyway.
Once your computer is finished installing cura you will have an icon on your desktop, double click it and cura will start up.
Now that cura is installed you need to add a profile for your printer cura has some default profiles hopefully yours is one of them, if not add a custom profile. Go to settings > printer >add printer where you will be greeted with this screen.
Select Non Ultimaker printer and scroll to find your make and model, I will use an ender-3 / ender-3v2 profile.
Click add and you will be taken to the machine settings tab.
As i am using an ender 3 i can simply use the default settings and click next, The printer is now added to the slicer software.
To use the software you need to add your model.
click on the folder icon in the top left corner
This will open a folder view on your computer look for the folder where your downloaded file was stored when you downloaded it this is usually downloads
now click on the .stl file you wish to print and it will appear in the build plate of the virtual printer.
At this point you could just hit the blue slice button in the bottom right corner, as you can see from the screen it is using a 0.4 nozzle the generic pla profile and standard quality which is 0.2 layer height with a 20% infill.
your model is now sliced and ready to print, The slicer estimates 4 hours 23 minutes take that time with a big pinch of salt.
Insert your sd card into the computer the click the blue save to disk button which will open a window that will allow you to search for the sd card usually e or f drive but make sure you check so that you don’t over write one of your other drives.
Once you are sure it is the sd card click save cura will write the file to the sd card you can then right click and eject the removable drive, Take your sd card over to the printer and insert it into the sd card slot after a few seconds the file will be available on the screen to print.
Is the other ways to get the file to print without using the sd card?
Yes! if you have a cable for your printer and the printer is close to the computer you could connect the printer to the computer using the cable. You will then have the option to print straight from cura.
Another option is to buy a raspberry pi, install octoprint and connect you printer to the raspberry pi. you can then send the file direct to the printer via the raspberry pi.