Printing Process Overview - Mass Portal Pharaoh XD Series User Manual

Printing process overview

Mass Portal® 3D printers use process called Fused
Filament Fabrication or FFF — printing objects out of
melted plastic layer by layer.
How it works
Thermoplastic printing material (the filament) is melted in the
3D printers printing head, and pushed through a nozzle. This
process is called extrusion. The nozzle moves according to
the geometry of printable object, depositing the melted plastic
and drawing the object layer by layer. When a layer is finished,
printing head moves up a single layer and draws the next layer
of melted plastic upon the previous, that has now somewhat
hardened, until the object is finished. The layers of plastic bond
or melt together, forming a single finished object.
Slicing and G-code
The movements of the nozzle, the temperature settings of the
printing head and of the printing bed are controlled by computer
instructions called G-code files. G-code is generated from
3D models imported to software programs called slicers. The
process of generating the G-codes is usually called slicing. Mass
Portal uses the Simplify3D program for slicing and printer control.
Although G-code is used to control many 3D printers, it generally
must be created for each particular printer. You can store the
generated G-code files for later use on the computer or in the
internal memory of the printer.
Standalone printing and host software
When using the printer in standalone mode, printing G-code files
prepared earlier and in the printers internal memory or USB flash,
no computer is needed to operate the printer. The printing is
controlled by the using built-in software, Pharaoh Touch TM . This
can be useful for longer prints when you don't want to leave your
computer connected to the printer, or when what you do on the
computer might interfere with the printing.
In other cases it makes sense to control the printing process from
a computer using so called host software. It also allows control
of the printing process, displays printing progress visualization,
temperature graphs and more. The printer is shipped with
Simplify3D, but the printer works with other programs as well.
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