When you first get into 3D printing, the process of turning a digital model into a physical object can be both exhilarating and overwhelming. Every project starts with an idea, which is then turned into a digital 3D model that needs to go through the process of "slicing." Slicing is a crucial part of 3D printing, as it breaks down a 3D model into layers and converts them into instructions that a 3D printer can follow. But for this to be as smooth as possible, you need a good slicing tool, and that’s where Obico online slicer comes in.
Obico offers an online slicing solution that’s easy, powerful and accessible from anywhere. This makes it perfect for both beginners and advanced users who want flexibility, control, and ease of use.
In this article, we’ll go into detail about Obico’s online slicer, from its features to a step-by-step guide on how to use it. Whether you want to print functional objects or creative sculptures, we’ll take you through the entire slicing process with Obico so you can get from model to print in no time.
There's a game I like called Dark Souls, made by From Software. It's an action RPG known for its difficulty, and it has spawned its own subgenre of games, though most imitators miss the most important part about Dark Souls: Everything that goes wrong, even if it's not your fault, went wrong for a reason you can learn from and avoid the next time. Every failure gets you better at the game. 3D printing is like that. As you see above, in the prints since my successful first print, I've had a lot of print failures. Let's go into why they failed, how I know how they failed, and how I fixed them.
A lot has happened since my last post. To start, on Sunday, March 7, we finally passed the thirty million Detective Hours milestone. The Detective has kept vigilant watch over your prints for almost 3,500 years of time. While she was busy watching your prints so that you don't have to, this is:
You guys have been sharing a series of beautiful prints of The Detective on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and we're floored by the response. Every day, there are new shares and we've got more Detective Hours to give away. Please keep it up - the usernames to tag are below, and we'll give you 200 free, never-expiring Detective Hours for every print you share where you tag Wekster and us.
Five days ago, Wekster contacted me to let me know that he had split the bust model for full multicolor printing. Below, I've included zips of the STLs for the multicolor base and the new, fully multicolor detective.
Since then, I've been trying to print her. This is how that went:
We're excited to announce that there's a new 3D-printable model of The Spaghetti Detective available for printing, designed by the great Wekster (if you don't know him, check out his stuff. He designs some of the coolest models you can print). At the end of this blog post, there are links to download it and information about how you can get 200 free Detective Hours for printing it, sharing photos of your prints, and tagging us and Wekster. You might even win a whole year of Pro service on us. Share and enjoy!
Two weeks ago, I contacted Kenneth Jiang, the creator of The Spaghetti Detective, and said that it would be cool to work with a 3D designer to make a 3D printable version of our mascot, The Detective. I'd been contributing code to The Spaghetti Detective infrequently for about a year, and over that time it's become indispensable to me, and I thought a sculpt would be a cool thing to give back to the community that helped it grow. Kenneth liked the idea and told me to run with it.
I reached out to Wekster and told him what I had in mind (a stylized, film noir-style sculpt of The Detective herself, with a silhouette similar to the logo), and he liked it and agreed to try. A few days later, he sent a concept he was toying with:
I was blown away; I couldn't look at TSD's logo anymore without seeing that haircut in her silhouette.
A couple prototypes and about a week later, he had a beautiful little bust that was support free, had the eyes and hat ribbon separated for multicolor (so I could print them glow-in-the-dark), and had a base ready with our logo:
I wanted to print her in TSD's colors (black, white, and purple) and to make her eyes and hat ribbon glow in the dark so that, in appropriately noirish conditions, she'd look like our silhouette, a dark detective with glowing eyes and an upturned collar. For this, I chose FilamentPM's graphite black PLA for its dark glittery intrigue, Fusion Filaments' beautiful Plutonic Purple HTPLA for the bust (printed at a high temperature for extra sheen), and MatterHackers' blue glow in the dark PLA for the glowy bits. This is how she turned out:
We will credit 200 free, non-expirable Detective Hours to anyone who prints out The Detective, post a picture or a time-lapse of her to a social platform of your choice (twitter, facebook, or instagram), and tags us and Weskter.
On March 20th, we will choose one print at random that we've been tagged in and upgrade the TSD account of whoever printed it to a free Pro account with UNLIMITED Detective Hours for the next 12 months. If you win and already have a Pro account, you can choose to gift this to a friend or a fellow maker.
