Recently I bought a Monoprice Voxel (a rebranded FlashForge Adventurer 3) 3D printer, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks getting to grips with it. I’m very impressed – it works well and I’ve had a lot of fun building parts of my projects.

One interesting this about the printer is that it comes with its own slicing software called FlashPrint. This seems to work quite well, slicing all the models I threw at it and sending them to the printer. However, I was curious if it was possible to use the printer with the Ultimaker Cura slicer, which has some more advanced features and is supported more widely by the community.

How can you print from Cura to a Monoprice Mini via USB on a MacBook Pro? My understanding is that some versions of Cura are compatible with Mac OS systems, and that you can download the official software from ultimaker directly for Mac OS. Use the following instructions to install and set up Cura for Mac for your Robo C2 and Robo R2. Step 1 Download and install Download and install Cura for mac. Download Now Step 2 Add printer After the initial setup, open Cura and you will see an 'Add a printer'.

I did a load of research and found some interesting topics on reddit and Ultimaker forum, I also examined the .gx files produced by FlashPrint and thoes sent to the printer by PolarCloud. I’ve gathered all this together into a this guide for using Cura, but it stands on the shoulders of a whole bunch of other people in the community, so thanks to those people you really helped me figure all this out.

• The latest version of Cura is 15.04 on Mac Informer. It is a perfect match for the Design & Photo category. The app is developed by Ultimaker BV. And its user rating is 5 out of 5.
• Posted July 12, 2017 Loading Cura onto a MAC system for use with a Monoprice MINI-Select Printer I am just starting out with 3D printing and purchased a mono price mini-select system. Since I use a MAC system the CURA files that came with the system will not work.
• Cura is an advanced 3D printing software application. Cura is the advised software for preparing 3D print files. Cura will help you converting 3D models into 3D print files within a couple of seconds and shows you a preview of the print in order to ensure everything is as you would like it to be.

Disclaimer

Every model I have printed in this way has worked well and I am very pleased. However, follow this guide at your own risk – If something bad happens to your printer, on your own head be it.

Observations

FlashPrint and the printer appear to use a custom file format for printing – .gx. This is identical to the .g file used by other printers but with some additional metadata at the top. I suspect this is the image of the model that’s shown while printing, as well as the print time estimation.
The printer is perfectly happy to print .gcode files, provided the file extension is changed to .g first. While printing a .g file the time estimation on the printer screen does not count down the remaining time, it counts up the elapsed time. Also instead of a small image of the model being shown, a generic icon is displayed.

Getting Cura

Firstly, you need to install the latest version of Cura from the Ulimaker website.

Adding a custom printer

1. In Cura select Settings > Printer > Add Printer
2. Select “Custom FFF Printer” and change the name to something meaningful

3. On the machine settings, change the Height, Width and Depth to all be 150mm. Then tick the “Origin at Center” and “Heated Bed” settings.
4. In the Start G-Code box, remove the text that is currently there and enter the following:

5. In the End G-Code box, remove the text that is currently there and enter the following:

6. On the “Extruder 1” tab set the “Compatible material diameter” to 1.75mm

7. Click “Next” to save your custom printer. You can now use Cura to slice your model as with any other printer.

Use The Sliced Model

Now that you’ve got your model into Cura and sliced with with your settings of choice, you need to get that onto the printer. To do that you have four options…

USB Stick

You can save the .gcode file from Cura onto a memory stick, move it to the USB port on the front of the printer and select the file from the build menu.

However, you must manually change the file extension from .gcode to .g or the printer will not see it. Unfortunately there’s no way to convince Cura to save it with the right extension – you’ll just end up with a .g.gcode file if you try.

With Adventurer Client

I recently released a little tool that allows you to quickly send files to the printer by dragging them into the app (no need to rename them as with FlashPrint). I’m still building it out with more functionality, but is available here now for both Windows and macOS.

With FlashPrint

If you rename the exported .gcode file to .g, you can simply open it with FlashPrint. This will allow you to print the file over the network. As this is an already sliced file, FlashPrint will not re-slice it – it will just send it to the printer.

[Advanced Users] With AdventurerClientDotNet

I wanted to know how files actually got transferred to the printer, so I spent some time sniffing the network traffic between FlashPrint and the printer. Then with the help of this command reference and DarkDiamondV’s comments on this thread I wrote a little library using C# and .NET core.

I’ve uploaded the source to GitHub here – its still a work in progress, it supports reading some information off the printer and transferring .gcode (no rename required) files from Cura.

A self contained build for Windows can be found on the releases tab – Simply run the .exe file and follow the prompts.

Using this method is obviously very experimental, so is probably best used only if you’re comfortable with digging into things when they don’t go to plan. I wrote it more as a interesting challenge as much as anything. Obviously, use this at your own risk :).

Video

You can also follow this guide as a video, below.

Monoprice Cura Download

Wrap Up

I’ve tested all of the above with the Monoprice Voxel, which should be the same as a FlashForge Adventurer 3, and possibly other FlashForge products, but as I do not have access to them right now, I’m not able to say with certainly.

If you do try this, and it works (or not) on your device, I’d love to hear your feedback or anything you learned along the way – leave a comment or tweet me.

Monoprice Software Download

Website: https://ultimaker.com/en/products/ultimaker-cura-software

Monoprice Cura Software Download

Cura is 3D slicing software from Ultimaker that prepares a 3D model for printing, suitable for use with students at Upper KS2 and beyond.

Cura is simple but powerful 3D slicing software produced by Ultimaker. The print profiles are optimised for Ultimaker 3D printers, but the softwre will slice 3D files for any 3D printer brand/model. The software supports STL, 3MF and OBJ 3D file formats and also has a function that will import and convert 2D images (.JPG .PNG .BMP and .GIF) to 3D extruded models. The software will allow you to open and place multiple models on the print bed (each with different slicing settings if required). This allows you to print multiple models at a time, making classroom management of the printing process simpler.

Cura is desktop software that can be downloaded free of charge from the Ultimaker website and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

We recommend Cura as the default slicing software for all schools as it is free of charge, powerful, quick to slice and very easy to get started with. Students in upper KS2 and beyond after some instruction can independently use the software to slice using the default profiles. However although simple to learn, the software contains over 200 expert settings, so more advanced users can tinker with the settings to produce prints of the quality they require.

Learn Cura

There are a number of online resources available to help teachers and students to learn Cura.

Cura Monoprice Maker Select V2

The Ultimaker website contains a comprehensive online Cura Manual, containing everything you need to know to use Cura, it also contains downloadable PDF quick start guides. In addition to this you can access a number of Cura Quick Start Video Guides on the Ultimaker YouTube channel.

The CREATE Education Project use Cura as the default slicing software as it is free to download, powerful but quick to slice and simple to get started with. As each project may require different slicing settings in Cura, CREATE Education provide detailed slicing settings where required in all our project teacher guides to make learning and using the software even easier for beginners. We also provide a number of Cura specific resources to help you to learn some of the software features.

Cura Software Download Mac Monoprice Software

Note: Please bear in mind that recently the Cura software has developed further and has a new interface. This means that the screenshots in our older resources may not appear to look like the current version – however any functionality described in the resource still exists in the current version.