Transcript:
This video is about the best 3d printing mobile phone apps. Some that you can even use to start prints when you’re not even at home. [MUSIC] [Music] ready? Printing is a very empowering technology. It allows people to do things at home. They couldn’t dream of only a few decades ago. Mobile phones are pretty similar in that aspect, so it makes sense to pair them up together to get the best experience possible. This is a video guide to some of the best apps that you can use to do with 3d printing as well as signing and controlling 3d prints through off to print plugins. When you’re not even at home now. I don’t have any iOS devices so this video will be slightly biased towards Android. I can’t help it, but I’m sure there’s equivalent ones out there for you to pursue. The first apps will be from the heavy hitters. My mini. Factory and thing of Earth’s. Let’s start by looking at my mini factory. My mini factory has their own app and it features most of the things from their website. This includes the ability to browse and search and has a pretty slick interface throughout. When you click on an item you’re taken to the detailed page and there is a 3d view, although with my shady. Internet, I couldn’t get anything to load, but I’m willing to give this one. The benefit of the doubt there’s also a one-click cloud, slicing and printing with limited, slicing control but more on that later in the video well. My mini factory is off to a good start, so what about? Thingiverse Thingiverse also has an official mobile phone app But unlike my mini Factory and has many. But not most of the features from the website, it does have the ability to browse and search, but some things are definitely broken. For instance, when you click on the comments for a thing, it switches to an embedded web view of the normal website, things don’t fit and it’s really hard to navigate, although you can view the auto-generated pictures of Stls, There’s no 3d preview for any of them, and there is a limited cloud 3d printing. If you have a Makerbot printer, some good features but generally some big holes as well and there is a button there for a Thingiverse apps that for me did nothing and when I look this up. It looks like it only works with Makerbot printers, fortunately for Android. At least there is a better option. In the 3d geeks app, it’s designed to work with, but in my opinion and easily outperforms the default. Thingiverse app. Let’s have a closer look. This app only works with Thingiverse but it does a much better job than the original. It now has more features, which means most of the ones from the website are present that includes the ability to browse and search and has a slick. Ui throughout like the official app, you can view the JPEGs that are Auto generated by Thingiverse. But it does a much better job than that. If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see all of the files for that thing listed. And when you click on the 3d button, it will download it and render a version of the STL. Right inside the app, you can change the color rotate, zoom in and out everything that you would expect. The comment section has its own properly formatted tab, so that problem is fixed, but the most important addition is when you click the. Save icon next to any of the parts. It will come up with an extensive menu, including the option to upload that part to octoprint back in the top menu. We can see, there’s a lot more options that you find on the website but are omitted in the factory. Thingiverse app. But with each of these, we can browse websites for files to print. But what if we actually want to print one? Well, in that case, we need to introduce octoprint and I’ve made a video previously on what that is and how to set it up. My manufactory has a plugin that can be installed directly from the Plugin manager in Octoprint and for 3d geeks. You’ll find a link in the description where you copy and paste a link that also goes into the Plugin. Manager of Octoprint. Either option is pretty easy to do and won’t take you more than a couple of minutes before we look at them in detail. Let’s have a brief word on the dangers of exposing your 3d printer to the outside world to setup either of these plugins. You’ll need your API for your instance of octoprint. It’s extremely important that you don’t share either the QR code or the key to anyone else because it’ll give them a shortcut to gaining access to control of your 3d printer. This article came out last year and details thousands of octoprint installations available to the public. Internet without any type of login required. This opens you up to a malicious control of your printer. Stealing of your information as well as your G code. This article, also linked in the description is a guide on various ways that you can make your public facing up. Print incidents become much more safer. I recommend picking and following one of these to make sure your installation is as secure as possible. It should absolutely go without saying that you need a secure a username and password before you even think about attempting any of these. I’m not going to make a guide on how to set up remote access to your 3d printer because it’s just not my area of expertise to please know the risks and proceed with caution with that in mind. Let’s have a look at one-click printing from my mini factory for my mini factory. Three printers are completely free, whereas everything else requires you to pay for a premium subscription. Once you’ve found an object that you’re happy to print you, click the print button to start the process. You now need to select your 3d printer and I need to scroll down and select my Prusa i3 mark 3 and then after a few seconds, it’ll give you a preview of how it’s gonna look on the build plate. If you scroll down to copies, you can turn on and off the various objects and even change the scale. Now you’re seeing an error here that the printer is busy. Because after you finish a print, you’re meant to click this button and I forgot to do so. Fortunately, back on the phone app, there was a button to override this and I could cancel the print, clearing the queue and making it possible to print this new one. Once the queue was happy again, All I needed to do was to click print and then, after one confirmation, I clicked the button and I was off. No other information is provided apart from a progress percentage. It is pretty easy to use and does pretty much live up to the one-click printing label, but there are downsides, firstly. I had to use this one on my brochure. Mark 3 because it’s almost stock and let me explain some of the pitfalls of that when I did my first print this key ring and printed on a raft in a pretty quite well. I’ve got no problem peeling that off, So I didn’t think it was much of an issue, but when we get to things like this headphone stand which I started from Interstate, it’s got support material in a raft and it just doesn’t need it for this type of print. This is going to use up excess plastic and excess time, in fact, in some cases, like with this ready bench. II it might even ruin the print. This ready bench is not designed to be printed with a raft or with support material, and all of the geometry is buried underneath and highlights the problem with one-click printing. Although it’s easy for some as soon as you advance past a certain level, it’s gonna get in the way. I can’t change this to print abs. Instead of PLA or any other filament, I have no access to any of the controls at all. I couldn’t even use it on my end of three because my end of three has automatic bed leveling and a different print surface that requires a higher temperature. None of which I have control over with this setup. These are not necessarily criticisms of the one-click print system, but inherent problems that come with this type of approach. Let’s have a look at the 3d geeks app system, which gives us a lot more control but comes at the expense of increased complexity And please remember that it only uploads to octoprint. Therefore, we need to introduce a second app to slice and start the print to be able to upload to octoprint. You will need to pay a one-time fee for the pro version. Once you’ve picked your thing, you’ll scroll to the very bottom till you get to the files, and then you click on the. Save icon. You pick the top option to upload to off to print, and then you’ll have a loading screen where it shows the progress of your upload next up. I’m using them. Octoprin’t client for Android called print Id. It’s fully featured and has a really slick interface. In my opinion, there are three versions. You can do this with a free one, but you’ll have a much better experience. If you want to pay for one of the other two, the other thing that you’ll need is secure a legacy slicer plugin for octoprint and you’ll also need to make a simple, slicing profile in an old version of cura before uploading it to your copy of octoprint in print. I’d 2 Click the Magic Wand Next to your STL file. Change your printer profile if necessary, if you have more than one, select the desired profile and then click slice slicing on a pie is not super fast. But it’s much faster than waiting until you get home now. All that’s left to do is to click the print icon next to your g-code to start the print. If you’re using one of the paid versions of print Id, you can click the camera button and then it’ll bring you off a live feed, so you can check that all as well. So now we have a lot more control, But at the expense of increased set-up time, although we can have different slicing profiles we’re still using a very old version of cura, so we’re going to be limited by that one question you might be asking why for some. It’s just going to be a silly novelty and for me. I wanted to get it working just for the challenge, but I do have another scenario where this can actually be really useful for me, my. CAD software of choice on shape is not as popular as fusion 360 but it does come with a pretty fully featured and workable app version here. I use it to Orient apart, so it’s facing the right way to print, and then I export the STL. Downloading it to my phone. I can then upload the STL directly to print ID and then proceed with the same, slicing as I showed earlier in the video. If I want to, I can download the g-code to my phone and then run through it to make sure everything’s good before starting the print when I got home, my prototype was finished and I could do a test fit before printing the final versions this stringing shows that the old version of Kira is not quite as good as what I’m used to, but it’s still an invaluable tool for saving me time. I understand this is not for everyone, but hopefully you find it interesting to see the type of progress that’s been made, that’s really printing to be more acceptable to the masses. Do you think this is worthwhile or a waste of time? I’d love to read your opinion down below in the comments. Thank you so much for watching and until next time, Happy, 3d printing. Gday, It’s Michael again. If you liked the video, then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click. Subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification. 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