RepRap’s Josef Prusa recently interviewed Slic3r author Alessandro Ranellucci in Prague.Ranellucci initially used Skeinforge to prepare his 3D models for printing, as did most small scale 3D printers of the day. Like everyone else, Ranellucci was baffled by the monstrously complex parameterization of Skeinforge when trying to print small architectural models on a ShaperCube. He says:
Even if the kit was very good, I had to learn a lot before I got good prints. Of course, my first problems were with the software tool chain: Everybody knows Skeinforge, which is a very complicated piece of software and I got my first print with a totally random combination of settings. So I just froze them and just decided ‘I Won’t Change Them Ever Again’.
Ongoing Skeinforge difficulties motivated Ranellucci to develop Slic3r, which now seems to be the most popular software used for preparing 3D models to print on RepRap machines. Ranellucci indicates he’s had approximately 25,000 downloads of the binary version of Slic3r for each release. That’s a lot of RepRaps!
View the whole 20 minute interview at the link below.
Via RepRap
