Preparing our 3D printer
It's time to get our printer ready and start printing. For the remainder of this chapter, we will focus on printing out the #3DBenchy model. We will first prepare our printer before slicing our model into G-code. We will be using polylactic acid (PLA) to print our model.
The following steps will outline using the Ender 3 V2; however, these steps can be used with other modern 3D printers.
We will start off by leveling our bed. Using the G-code we wrote in Chapter 2, What Are Slicer Programs?, run the bed-leveling program and proceed as follows:
- Before we install the filament, it's a good idea to place the print head above the print bed so that we can verify that the filament has been loaded correctly. To do this, click on Prepare | Move | Move Z and set the value to 20.
- We will now load our PLA filament into our 3D printer. To do this, we have to raise the temperature of the nozzle. Using the control knob on the control panel, navigate...
