Coding in 3D Printing
Over the weekend I had the chance to speak with one of my friends that has been having a bit of fun with his new 3D printer and wanted ideas of what he should get his printer to make and how to go about it but I myself am pretty new to 3D printing technology and how exactly it works. All I knew from watching videos on social media is that people would download certain models from different sites that have these models, add it to your printer and it’ll start the process. I then came to find out that there is actually some coding that goes into 3D modeling within the software and also creating the models itself.
The 3D Printers actually use a programming language called “G-Code” that transforms the 3D models into instructions which the printer can understand.
G-Code again is a programming language designed for the use of 3D printers to be numerically controlled made up of a series of commands, most of the commands start with the letter G but some of the most common machine specific commands start with M (like the commands in the picture above). These commands are all the actions being sent to the 3D printer telling it what to perform like where to move, what speed to use and what temperatures it needs to be set to for different moments when creating a model and many more. The language is pretty basic knowledge of what you need to know when owning a 3D printer it seems as it also helps you understand how to use it, maintenance it and debug any little problems that may appear.
For the most part you don’t realistically need to use G-Code to create the models manually since softwares like Simplify3D help you to create them graphically and then just splice them over to your printer to automatically generate that code through G-Code. Even though you can automatically have code generated for models you’d like to create, it’s fun to learn all the different commands G-code holds like Homing routines or linear movement only for the printer so if you want to manually change the style of a model you are trying to print you can easily customize the commands to change it up. I’m honestly thinking of buying a 3D printer just seeing all the interesting things you can create 🤔 maybe hard code a model all the way.
