Ordered an Orion - coming next week!

[dwrowley]

I took advantage of AdaFruit's Thanksgiving sale and picked up an Orion - can't wait! I have a BfB Rapman 3.1 that I haven't used in a while (no heated bed, 3mm filament) - I did some cool stuff with it but it was definitely showing its age.

Looking forward to playing with some of the new filaments too!

What software stack do people recommend? Slic3r? Cura? Simplify3d? (I've been reading the s/w forums)

Cheers,
David

[BenTheRighteous]

I like Cura. I've seen people recommend KISSlicer, but I haven't tried it. Slic3r would give me bad top/bottom layers, so I don't recommend that one.

Congrats on the Orion, and good luck!

[Jimustanguitar]

You ought to use MatterControl. It's a host program with multiple slicing engines baked into it (including Cura).

The software itself is a little 'young' still, but it's been coming along impressively, and includes everything that you'll want to get started with out of the gate. You can also make it text you when your prints are finished, that's my favorite feature of theirs

[Eaglezsoar]

Hey, that's great that you bought the Orion, you are going to love it!
I welcome you to the forum and let you know that you can leave us a queston or comment anytime.
Happy Printing!

[0110-m-p]

If you feel like you are still new to 3D printing and don't have a good handle with all the settings/intricacies then I would go with MatterControl software and use Cura within MatterControl for slicing. If you feel very comfortable and want to play around with slicers a bit, I have had really good luck with exporting gcode from KISSlicer and printing from Repetier-Host, MatterControl, and the SD card.

[dwrowley]

Thanks for the feedback, all! Looking forward to trying out all the above.