 Prusa Slicer. Is it the best slicer for 3D printing? Let's take a look. My name's Jim and this is the edge of tech. So I've been using Prusa Slicer since July of 2019. I've pretty much swapped all of my printers over to Prusa Slicer now. I really really like it. Now I really liked Kira as well, but Prusa Slicer is super simple to use. It's very easy to configure and I just love the quality of the prints that I got from it. So I slowly started bringing all of my printers over to Prusa Slicer one by one. Today we're going to go through, install Prusa Slicer, configure it for the first time, set up this Ender 5 Plus as a printer inside of Prusa Slicer. You could do that for any printer. You just need to change your bed size and your build volume, which is not that big a deal. We're going to go through adding a print. We're going to go through all of the configuration and I'll show you all the different tabs. Prusa Slicer is really cool. So it has beginner all the way to advanced modes. So you can see little tabs if you're starting out or you can expand it to see all the advanced stuff in the advanced part. It's real easy to use. We're going to walk through it step by step. I'm going to show you how to do it and by the end of this video, you're going to have your first printer set up on Prusa Slicer and ready to slice a print. If you've ever wanted to stop your print and change the color once or even multiple times, Prusa Slicer makes it really easy to do. If you need to throw magnets in your print, maybe you need to pause, throw a couple magnets in and then keep going. You can do that too and it only takes two clicks. By the end of this video, we're going to have you up and rolling and you're going to be able to use Prusa Slicer like a pro. In the description below, you're going to find everything you need for Prusa Slicer and I'm also going to throw files out there for some of my printers to get you started with a profile you can begin with. What I would do is take those profiles and use them as a starter profile and then build off of them. Dial your printer in using the steps and the settings we're going to go through today. That way your printer prints awesome too. Well, I think it's about time to do it. Let's roll. So the first thing we want to do is install Prusa Slicer by going to prusa3d.com forward slash Prusa Slicer. Right in the center right now, they have the download latest version, but I like to go to software, drivers, firmware and manual just in case that button is not in the center in the future. Right here in the center, you'll see all the different versions you can download. I have windows, so we're going to download the windows one right here. When it gets done, run it and you'll see these settings here. Now, I like to use all printers in mine and I just hit next. Yes, I want a desktop icon hit next and then hit install. When you're done installing, you'll get the icon on your desktop and double click it. When it opens, you'll get this window right here. It's the window that opens when you first open Prusa Slicer for the first time. We hit next on that window. The next window here takes us to all the Prusa printers. If you have a Prusa printer, this is where you want to choose which printer you have and which one you're going to print with. I don't currently have a Prusa printer, but that's okay. We're going to hit next. If you have a Prusa SL1, you can choose it there. I'm using the Ender 5 Plus, so we'll choose Creality under other vendors. The one they have in here is the Ender 3 and I'm going to leave that in with the .4 nozzle, so we'll hit next. What I want to do is set up a custom printer. We're going to define a custom printer profile by clicking this little box right here. Once we click that box, we're going to actually go down under the custom profile name and give it a name. In my case, I'm going to type in Ender 5 Plus because that's the printer we're going to add. Click next. What type of firmware we are using? Marlin, so you want to choose your firmware. I use Marlin, so we'll hit next. Now we're into the bed size. In the Ender 5 Plus, we have 350 by 350 by 400, so we'll type 350 and 350 in there. It is rectangular. I don't have any texture files or any model files to load. If you did, you could actually load those here now, but I don't have any. This is good. We're going to go to the next screen. Once we get into this screen, we want to tell it what nozzle size we have and what filament diameter we're using. In our case, .4 and 1.75. The next is going to be the extruder and bed dumps that we want to use for our filament. In my case, I like to start my co-exit about 210. I usually print it at 220, but I like to start at 210. My bed temperature at 60. We'll hit next. This is where you can add in pretty much any of the pre-loaded profiles for filament. You can check them all here. When you choose the different generic Prusa or Creality printers there, it will actually show you the different types of filaments that are pre-loaded here. You can actually go down right here and click all as well and then hit next. I like automatic updates to check and I like the automatic built-in presets to update as well. I'm going to leave those checked there and click next. Reload from disks. You don't have to do anything from here. If you want to reload, you can, but that doesn't have anything to do with our setup now. The next thing is your view mode. Remember, I talked about simple all the way to expert or advanced. What I'm going to do is put it on expert to show you all the settings. You can leave it on simple or whatever you want, but I'm going to leave it on expert for now. Hit finish and that's it. Now that the initial config is done, this is your build surface in Prusa Slicer. You can drag it and move it around just like any other slicer. We're going to go up here to print settings to start though. This is where we look at all the different printer settings and I'm going to start on the general tab. One thing we need to do is change the Z height, so the max print height to 400, because that's what our Ender 5 Plus uses. As you can see, the 350 by 350 is in here because we set that earlier. We can go down the list. We don't need to change the Z offset or extruders or anything else in here, but you can go through it and check it out if you want to change anything, but it's all pretty easy stuff. Now, every section I do, I'm going to save. Hit the little button there and then click save. We'll go to custom G code. This is where you can add your starting and ending G code. I'm going to add some custom start G code because we need to add the G29 for the Ender 5 Plus because it has the BL touch. This is the G code I use on all of my printers currently that have ABL on them. I copied and pasted them in. Like I said, the G29 is in there. Then I can put that in the file in the description below as well. The End G code, I'm going to paste mine in as well. I'll copy that and paste that in right here. This is the End G code that I use on all my printers as well. Take the space out of there. Now my start in End G code is in. I should be set and I don't need to do anything else so I'm going to save it. The next thing I want to do is machine limits. Now, there is a bunch of normal stuff. This is the settings I like to use so you can pause your screen and check these out. I just saved those. I like to spare a little time so you don't have to watch me type them all in. Extruder here is what size nozzle, your layer height limits. Your min, your max, all that stuff. Your retraction is down here. I'm going to change mine to five for my under five plus. We might have to dial that in a little bit but I started five on all my new profiles. You can go through and check any of these. Don't forget to save. All that is good. Now notes. You can type any notes you want about this printer in this section and then this tells you any dependencies on all of that section. So we can keep moving. There's nothing special there. This section is your filament section and it has everything to do about all of your filament. So we start at the top with the filament tab and we can go through and right here is your extrusion multiplier. This is the same thing as flow rate in Kira. So if you need to change your flow rate, maybe you did your E steps and flow with the video I have. This is where you would do it in that extrusion multiplier there. You can do color. You can do the cost of the filament. Maybe it's $20 a kilogram so we can throw that in there. You can change your temperatures and all of that. So we save that. We can go to cooling and I like to keep my fans always on. So I just do that because I print mostly PLA. So I want to check this box right here to keep my fans always on. The next cool feature is auto cooling and you can see that right here. Now auto cooling will vary your fan depending on the print and you can read the little blurb about it right here if you want to. But I like to use it but I like to use it a little less drastic at 80 to 100%. You can change it as much as you want but that's where you do change it. I save my settings and I move to advanced. Once you're in advanced you can actually do a lot in this tab. You can change the type of filament you're using by any of these right here. You can change the speed. Maybe there's a speed override you need. Any of the speed settings or cooling or anything like that with like cooling moves and stuff is going to be down there. We're going to hit save because I don't need to change anything and go to filament override. Now I don't change any of the filament overrides here. You can see there's length and there's a lift of Z. But if you have a special filament maybe you need to change this. You can do that there. Another custom gcode tab. Some notes if you want to take notes on this specific filament and dependencies. There are a couple on this one. Nothing special we need to look at. The next one I like to look at is the print settings. This has everything to do with all of your different print settings. So we're on the layers and perimeters tab and we can change this. I'm going to go to 0.12 just for the heck of it. This is your first layer height. You can actually change this to a percentage. I like to do mine at 105%. So if you click over here it'll ask you if you want to go to percent instead of millimeters. You say okay and it'll change that to 105%. You can do millimeters or percent whatever you prefer. Three perimeters is your walls and Kira. I don't mind three in this case. Why not? If you want to do vase mode that's spiralized vase and then down here are the solid layers. So the top and bottom. There's a lot of extra stuff down here with perimeters and your Z-seam. You can do a random or nearest or lined or rear. I like to keep mine aligned and we'll go to infill. You can change your infill right here to make it anything you want. You can change the fill pattern. You can do top fill, bottom fill, anything you want to do right in the section here. There's a ton of features you can just walk through them and if you hover over them they'll tell you what all of them are. So we save if you change anything. If not go to skirts and brim. This is where I like to do. With the Ender 5 Plus I'm just going to do one loop for a skirt because it's quite a big bed. And six millimeters away is fine. If you're going to do a skirt you can change this to the height. I'm sorry to one layer and that's what I like to do is just one layer on that. And if you're going to do a brim is what I meant. You can change it here. The next one is support material. You can hit this to generate supports or you can take that off. There's auto-generate supports right here. There is raft layers. There's all sorts of different options that you can do that I usually don't play too much with on a normal basis. The next one I like to look at is your speed tab. This is where you can change your speeds for pretty much everything for your infill. These are the settings I like to do. You can see them in the orange. You can pause your screen and see those and then we'll hit save and go forward. Multiple extruders. I don't have multiple extruders so we'll just leave most of this default. But if you did you can change it all right in here. Maybe a little ooze prevention or have to do with the wipe tower. All that is right in there. So I don't do anything there but that is where you would find that setting. So the next one is advanced. You can do everything you need to do with extrusion widths, overlaps, flow, some more slicing things like if you have a gap or maybe a resolution or an elephant foot compensation that we're going to talk about in a minute. But I like to do a little bit of changes and you can see those there. So this one right here is your output. I don't do anything with this tab. Notes again. You can take notes and hear your dependencies. And once you walk through all those I'd save that and you are done. Now across the top here we have a simple mode. As you can see you got rid of some stuff and I'll show you that here. It definitely gets rid of a bunch of those tabs and this is perfect. If you're just starting out you don't need to see all those tabs. If you click expert it adds quite a few more options in there. So if you want to use simple mode go for it. If you want to use expert that's okay too. Let's load a print on here. So I'm just going to go into my 3D prints and maybe just grab something quick. Maybe this AA battery holder like this right here. And as you can see it drops it on the plate. That is a really cool thing. You can move it around at the top here. Here's an auto center or an auto placement button. So once you move it all around there you can click this and it'll actually center it back. If you click this button you can actually multiply many times and then recenter them like that if you want. I like that there's a back button right here and there's a forward button if you want to redo. So you can undo and redo things if you messed up which is really cool. So once you get it all set maybe you want to tip it sideways. So go over here to rotate maybe tip it over this way or that way. And then maybe turn it a little bit here. You can do all that. One of the cool things is to place flat on face. So you can hit that button and click any of those highlighted areas and it'll go flat on that face. Maybe center it again. On the right side you'll see supports. You can do build plate for enforcers only or everywhere. And this is your infill percentage over here. If you want to brim you can click that little checkbox there. Down here is where you change the print itself. So maybe we want to go to 150%. We can do that and make it bigger or smaller. You can do anything you want to do and then hit that little slice button and you'll see it exported. It's going to take five hours eight minutes or if you have stealth mode four hours 58 minutes. You can hit export and then save that. I loaded a new print here to show you some really cool things. We can walk down through the layers after it's sliced and this is a little bit bigger print. But if you click this button on any of the layers it'll actually allow you to do a color change. And if you right click it you can change that color. So maybe I want to do a yellow and a blue moai. So I go to that layer. I hit the color change and then you can see right in the slicer what it's going to look like. Maybe we want to do another one right here. So hit it again and then right click. Oops, my bad. Right click there and maybe we want to use pink. Now how about red? Let's use red. We'll click OK. And then next thing you know you have a three color moai. And that'll actually automatically stop and pause the printer so you can change the filament out at that layer. Go down here and hit that slice button again and you can see what it looks like fully sliced as we pull it down. And that is a really cool feature that's built right in. I really love that feature. If we want to add something like a magnet so you can come down maybe one of the first layers. Click over here again and then click pause print. Then you can actually put a note in so this will actually tell you on the printer place magnet in base. So at that layer your printer will pause. It'll tell you it should show you that blurb that you just typed print magnet in base. And you'll see a gray line right here where any pause is. So that's not a bad layer. That's actually a pause line. You can hit slice again and that'll slice that pause in and show you the whole thing completed. And that's a pretty cool thing. I really love these features because it makes it real easy in the top left here. You can actually see the pause and then all three colors at what layers they're going to pause to let you change the color out too. So that'll show you that in the top left and it's just a really cool interface. I sliced this again and we have a little elephants foot so I think we should fix that. So we go to print settings advanced and you see an elephant foot compensation right down here. Now by default this is turned on to 0.2 but you can take it away. You can add or subtract more if you want to. But I wanted to point that out that it is by default turned on at 0.2 and that's a really cool thing. The next thing we can do up in the top right is these are all different. The settings, your filament is right here and right now we're looking at the Ender 5 plus filament because that's what we loaded. But why don't we change that? So we go into your filament settings. We click that little gear. It'll take you straight there. Maybe we want it 220. Maybe we want it a yellow filament. So we click yellow. We hit OK. And now we have a yellow filament at 220. And you know what? We're going to save that under a different name because this yellow filament is totally different. So we'll call it yellow filament. It can be maybe Creality. We'll call it yellow Creality. How about that? And it's PLA so we'll put PLA. We'll hit OK. So now we have a yellow Creality PLA filament right here in the settings. So we can bounce back and forth between any filament you load in here. You can actually do that with anything in this section. So once you add the yellow or any other colors in, it'll see it there. And you can add printers and print settings the same way. So I want to click on... Why don't we click on the Ender 3 here? And we can actually go into Filaments. And you can see all the Creality presets that loads when you click that preset for the Ender 3. Maybe you have a PETG you want to run for generic on the Ender 3. You can go in here and see actually what settings are running for PETG. You can change the color. You can see they're using 240 and 70, which is good. So as you can see, the Moai is on an Ender 3 bed now. But I want to create an Ender 5 profile. So I'm going to click the gear next to the Ender 3 and go into the General tab. And we need to make some setting changes for the Ender 5. So maybe we go up here to Set. We change this to 235 and 235 for the X and Y. And then we're going to hit OK once we get that done. And we're going to change this to 300 because that's how tall the Z is on an Ender 5. Then we're going to go up here and hit Save. And we're going to change this to Creality if I could type. We're going to change this to Creality Ender 5. And that's going to save that Ender 5 preset. It's going to save that Ender 5 preset right in your presets now. We have an Ender 3, an Ender 5 Pro, and an Ender 5 Plus. That is how easy it is to add printers in Prusa Slicer. It's so easy. Once you get your settings, you may want to import or export. By doing that, go up to File and Import or Export right here. If you want to import a config bundle or a config file here, you can do that. Or you can do the same thing for exporting a config or a config bundle, which means the print settings, filament, and printer. That's a pretty cool thing. We go back here to this. I want to show you right down here in the corner. You can click this little icon here and save it directly to a SD card or a microSD card that's in your computer. I thought that was a really cool feature. If we go back to the build plate and you go to Help, there's some really cool keyboard shortcuts too. So I wanted to point this out because not a lot of people know that Prusa Slicer has the keyboard shortcuts. If you look through here, you can kind of study what they are and use them how you want. And I think it's a really cool feature of Prusa Slicer. Just another really cool thing that they add in. And that's about it. So that's it. We're done. We actually set up Prusa Slicer. We configured it for an Nr5 Plus. We configured some filaments. We walked through a whole bunch of settings. We've checked out some of the really cool features, including adding different colors in a single print. And I think you're on your way to using Prusa Slicer from now on. As far as it being the best slicer for 3D printing, I think it is. But I think you need to try it, even if it's just one print or a couple prints to dial it in. And then let me know in the comments what you think of Prusa Slicer after you set it up for your printers. I mean, it is real easy. If you have an Nr3, the profile is already there. You just take their profile and you build on it. Don't forget in the description below, there's going to be a link to a couple of my profiles that you can use. So feel free to check those out. Use them as starter profiles to build yours and get your Prusa Slicer world started. Remember, Prusa Slicer is free and free is good. Joseph Prusa and the team over there do a really good job of keeping it updated, of throwing out release candidates for everybody to check out, and then adding features all the time. Well, I hope you learned something today. And as always, keep printing.