The story behind India’s first 3D printing platform — C6

And yes, it is free for all !

Anyone who has worked or works with 3D printers knows how important a Slicer software is. If someone creates an 3D part file for their 3D printer to model, the printer needs a set of clear-cut instructions to fabricate the model precisely. Slicer software performs this job. The Slicer software will take this STL file and generate a G-code (geometric code) for the 3D printer to interpret and process.

There are many slicing software used by users across the world today. Some are free and open source, and others offer additional advanced features for a premium subscription.

Cura, Repetier, Slic3r, etc are some free open-source software tools. These software tools have amassed a loyal league of users over the years. They offer some exceptional features to their novice as well as professional clientele. Even within India, they have a wide base of users. Most Indian 3D printer manufacturers and 3D printing service providers thrive on such slicing software. C6 is a latest addition to this list of Slicer softwares.

C6 is a slicer cum 3D printing platform developed by Fabheads. This is a spin-off product of India’s first carbon fiber 3D printers developed by Fabheads. C6 boasts a complete eco-system of 3D printing tools and features required for any 3D printing user.

Slice large complex files in your browser with C6

In this blog, we will look at few of the unique things related to C6 -

• Why we created our own slicing engine and platform at Fabheads ?
• Why a web-app
• C6 platform — User focussed features
• Print modes of C6
• Future of C6

So, to begin with, the question arises — if such slicing softwares already exists, …

Why did we create our own Slicing Engine at Fabheads?

Fabheads seeks to continually optimize industry’s approach to 3D printing and its corresponding facilities. Through this, we endeavor to develop a more cohesive 3D Printing ecosystem. Let’s walk through the reasons behind our decision to develop C6.

1. C6 is not just an Engine, we have developed a full Slicer platform

While a slicing engine signifies the algorithmic backend to slice a 3D part file, C6 also contains a UI platform, a cloud based server and DB to facilitate user and project management, and much more

2. To make a universal software that can process multiple materials

In our latest venture, we have diversified our range of products into two series of 3D printers — F series and G series.
Our F series is built to support and comply with MTP (Miniaturised Tow Placement) technology, proprietary to Fabheads. These machines can print high-quality materials like Continuous Fiber composites. However, printing these high-performance materials requires special slicer settings and advanced instruction sets. Such features are not offered by typical slicers in the market today. So in our quest to provide optimum functionality with our 3D printers, we had to develop our own Slicing engine.
Since we were already developing one, we wanted to offer our clients more freedom to handle multiple materials. Hence we decided to expand and make a universal software that can support our G series (FDM Printers) as well as other 3D printers out there.

3. To offer easier user and project management

Most other slicers offer limited provisions for project handling. They only allow the slicer to slice one file, and finish off. Being a product development company ourselves and having multiple in-house teams who use 3D printing on a daily basis for both R&D and production use cases, we understand how important this feature is. So we have added a project management feature where all your sliced files can be saved to be accessed later.

4. To offer a comprehensive range of features

There were also various secondary reasons that influenced us to develop our own slicer engine. One was bridging the gap between features offered by open source and proprietary software. Open source has certain commendable features that are sometimes not serviced by proprietary ones and vice-versa. This inspired a need to offer a holistic panel of features to our customer base and make a more enterprise-based version.

5. Support local 3D printer users with regional languages

India supports a diverse spectrum of industries — small as well as large scale. These small-scale industries are run and maintained by tinier state-wise units. The workforce operating these units sometimes struggles with the language settings offered by international slicer software. To make slicing software more accessible to our local audience, we wanted to provide software that can support regional languages as well. This way, 3D printing technology can be adopted on a larger scale by such small units as well.

All these ideas sparked a genuine desire to advance our existing 3D printing technology to the next level. So after months of rigorous designing and testing, we developed India’s first indigenous Browser-based Cloud-powered 3D Printing Platform — C6 .

C6 with a 150mm x 50mm aerospace bracket sliced model

Why a Web-app ?

The very first thing to notice is that C6 is a web-based Slicer, with the C6 engine as its core. In other words, you can access the Slicer just like any other web-app like Facebook, Gmail, etc, and the Slicing engine sits in a cloud server, processing your files and generating g-codes for you.

We chose to develop C6 as a browser-based app for the following reasons:

• It is compatible with most operating systems. The app just requires a browser on any operating system to run.
• Updates are constantly pushed to the app. So users do not need to update or re-download from their end. This ensures latest features to our clients with zero delay.
• The engine and user files are all stored in secure cloud storage, so they can be accessed by users later, anytime, anywhere.
• Browser based design allows users to access their C6 account from anywhere — Office, home, shop floor ….
• Because of the browser-based nature of C6, future versions of C6 can be accessible on Smartphones as well (with limited features). Users will be able to manage their files and monitor their prints remotely.
• With the ability to server 3D printing related features on web, we intend to make C6 a complete eco-system for 3D printing, with features like ordering a 3D print online, upload your own files for the community, etc. These features are difficult with a OS specific software design.

C6 Platform —User focussed features

The C6 Engine has been designed keeping in mind the needs and demands of different industrial sectors. As mentioned earlier, we are the first enterprise in India to launch something of this scale in the market. So we have carefully designed a console of features to optimally serve the needs of our Indian clients. Not only does this software support our own FabMachines, but it can also support third-party 3D printers.

Here are some User focussed benefits/features that C6 slicing platform provides —

• The ability to access files anytime and anywhere since it is a browser-based app. So you can access the app from any computer with just your login credentials.
• The ability to configure your settings based on your regional language
• Easy management of projects with other team members and ease of collaboration
• Real-time updates and without the need of installing additional packages
• Cross-platform compatible (can be accessed on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge)
• The ability to save all your sliced and non-sliced parts project-wise
• The ability to support multiple materials and server-side computation
• Realistic simulations like the playback feature which shows how lines are printing in a particular layer and the number of layers
• Ability to connect to remote 3D printers and start prints, monitor, pause and stop prints.
• Ability to access previously sliced print jobs, edit them and create new versions
• The ability to customize or set predefined settings for each machine, OR save setting presets in Database , which you can access later
• The option to operate the software in either light mode or dark mode

Our C6 Engine is extremely user-friendly. It provides ease of use to beginners and has great features for professionals. Also, we are in the process of setting up online resources for anyone starting from scratch to learn quickly and for a beginner to learn the advanced features in a systematic manner.

C6 playback feature showing how a layer is printed (fast forwarded)

Different print modes of C6

There are two print modes in C6 — one is basic and the other is Fiber.

1. Basic mode:

It provides all the standard features like material selection, infill type, infill density, and nozzle diameter. We have also provided tooltips to provide help regarding different settings.

2. Fiber mode:

An important feature of advanced mode is that it is compatible with Continuous Fiber Printing. As mentioned previously, this is a feature that is not available in most slicers. The C6 provides excellent features and settings for working with Continuous Fiber Composites. Some of the functionality includes the ability to change the number of walls, extrusion parameters like flow, print speed, wall speed, control over material temperature, and it also supports retraction, fiber routing options for continuous fiber prints.

C6 — GUI features

Other than this, it supports the majority of the necessary slicing parameter such as —

• The ability to drag and drop, rotate and scale STL files
• Control over the temperature of the nozzle, bed, etc.
• Layer head control
• Control over the speed and flow of each entity individually — walls, infill, solid infill, support and helpers
• Easy breakaway support features
• Control of infill angle
• Support structures for overhanging parts
• Multi-file slicing
• Saving the job/order of a particular file
• Shows printing time, and toolpath simulation layer by layer and line by line (either in greyscale or in various colours)
• Print monitoring
  — Serial/USB Print monitoring
  — Web-cam based monitoring
• Supports 5 different infill patterns — honeycomb, grid, rectilinear aligned, rectilinear, concentric

C6 — Aerospace bracket with concentric infill

• Print time and material calculations
• Legend and color based display of each entity — walls, infill, solid infill, support and helpers
• Over 50 unique settings in the Slicing platform to explore and experiment with

C6 Project detail view — Print settings details for a print (Light Mode)

C6 — Other features

• Third-party printer management — C6 will have a list of default third-party 3D printers (other than Fabheads) with default settings. Users can just select the printer based on their requirements and they will get suitable print settings for the best print on that printer
• Dual nozzle slicing — You can slice a part with C6 so that it can be printed with multiple extruders in your printer. E.g. Supports can be printed with Extruder 2, while rest of the entities are printed with Extruder 1
• Custom G-code save — You can save a G-code for a range of layers. This way you can start the print on any layer desired.
• Quality assurance — C6 has added a unique module for users to perform their quality related tasks in C6 itself. Users can now use C6 quality module to mark non-conformances, add images for issues and mark parts Pass/Fail.

Quality assurance module in C6 allows users to perform quality tasks on each printed part

• Library — The library module in C6 gives user a list of pre-verified STL and g-codes to print. These can be used to test out your printer with an initial print. We keep adding new files to library which can be useful to users.

Future of C6

All the features mentioned above are just a beginning of an awesome eco-system we are building with C6. While we cannot reveal all the changes we are bringing to C6, here is a list of some exciting features you will see in future

1. Mobile based slicing and print monitoring — All the features of C6 right in your smart phone. Slice a file, start a print, monitor running prints — all from the comfort of your phone
2. 3D part file marketplace — You can upload your own 3D part files for others to use, either free or paid.
3. Direct print order from C6 — You can order a part’s 3D print right from the convenience of your browser
4. Inventory management — Since you can print parts directly form C6, C6 will mange your material inventory as well and will warn you when you’re low on materials.
5. Organization management — Where the admin of an organization can assign different features of the software to different users. For multifaceted enterprises, delegating the workload becomes simpler using this feature and also provides the managers with a single dashboard where they can review the overall status of multiple machines and take quick actions accordingly.

If you wish to learn more details on the C6 Engine’s capabilities, features, and access, please visit our C6 website and register with us.

If you have any questions or doubts, comment them down below!