Your first print

Before you start

You need Encrust installed (Install Encrust) and a small model as STL, OBJ or 3MF. Encrust has no test model of its own, so bring an exposure test or a part you have already printed with another slicer. From your resin’s maker, have two things ready: the exposure they give for your printer, and the resin’s safety data sheet (SDS).

On a first run Encrust has no printer and no resin. The profiles it ships are a library you add from.

Add your printer

1. Open Settings: File, then Settings…, or Cmd+, (Ctrl+, on Windows and Linux).
2. With no machine added yet, Settings opens on the library, titled “Add a machine”. Click your printer’s brand, then the model. The search field, “Search every machine”, finds it by name.

Your printer now appears in the Machines list on the left. If it isn’t in the library, Custom printer starts an empty profile for you to fill in.

The library holds 100 printers, and one of them is proven: the Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra has printed a file Encrust wrote. The other 99 are built from the makers’ published specifications. They are likely close, but nobody has cured resin with them yet.

Add a resin and enter its exposure

1. Under your printer in the Machines list, click Add resin.
2. Pick one of the shipped resins under “From the pool”, or New resin to start from empty.
3. Find the card named for your printer, “Exposure on the Saturn 4 Ultra” for example. Set Layer height first, then Exposure, Bottom exposure and Bottom layers to the values your resin’s maker gives for your printer.

Set the layer height first because Encrust rescales the Exposure when it changes, and says so in a hint under the field that starts “Carried from”. There is no save button: the form saves as you edit.

The four shipped resins carry their own numbers for five printers. Standard grey on the Saturn 4 Ultra, for example, opens at 0.05 mm layers, 2.3 s exposure, and 28 s for the 6 bottom layers. On any other printer a shipped resin starts from its general values. Nobody measured any of these on your bottle, so treat them as a starting point: your printer’s and resin maker’s instructions come first.

Choose the printer and resin for the plate

Adding a printer in Settings doesn’t put it on the plate. Close Settings with the X at its top right. In the panel on the left, above Plate contents, the Print block has a printer picker that reads “Select a printer”. Click it and choose your printer. The resin picker under it switches to the first resin you added on that printer.

Load the calibration piece

Press the + at the foot of the tool rail, on the right edge of the window (Cmd+I, or Ctrl+I on Windows and Linux), or drop the file on the window. Encrust repairs the mesh as it reads it and stands the model in the middle of the plate.

If the repair changed something or found a problem it couldn’t fix, a mark appears at the end of the model’s row in Plate contents and lists what it found: “Repaired 12 faces flipped”, “3 open edges”. Above the Slice button, Height and Layers show how tall the print is and how many layers that comes to.

If the calibration piece fails, you lose a few millilitres of resin, not a night. If it needs hollowing or supports, those come next: Hollowing and drain holes and Supports.

Read the layer check before you slice

Press Tab, or switch from Prepare to Preview at the top of the window. Encrust cuts the plate into layers and checks every one of them. The column on the right then reads from the top down.

First comes a section headed with your printer’s name: Resin, Volume, Weight, Price and Time. Check that the resin is the one in your vat.

Under it is the Issues card, the one that matters most. “No issues” means the check found nothing it knows how to measure. “Fails at layer” and a number means an island: a part that cures over nothing, sticks to the film and stays in the vat. Fix it before you slice. “Likely to fail” marks a lever or a peel problem. Read the layer check explains each one.

Lower down, This layer shows the layer the slider is on. Drag the slider to the bottom: the heading says “bottom block”, and its Exposure should be your Bottom exposure.

Slice and check the file

1. Press Slice to .goo (the extension follows your printer’s format) and choose where to save.
2. Open what you just wrote: File, then Open sliced file….

When the file is written, the status bar reads “Wrote” with the path, the layer count, the volume in ml and the weight in g. The opened file shows its own Format, Machine, Panel, Stack, Layer height and Exposure, which is what your printer will read rather than what the profile says. You can open a file of the same model from a slicer you trust the same way and compare. File, then Close sliced file, takes you back to the plate.

Copy the file to your printer and start the print there.

If the piece comes out right on a printer other than the Saturn 4 Ultra, use the “Report a test print” button on that printer’s page under Printers. One report is how a profile gets confirmed.

If something goes wrong

The Slice button is greyed out

Hover over it to see why. “Load a printer profile to know the panel to slice for.” means the Print block has no printer chosen (see above). “Nothing visible on the plate to slice.” means the plate is empty or every model on it is hidden: click the eye at the start of the model’s row.

The status bar adds “layers cut off at the edge of the panel”

Part of the model stands outside the printer’s screen. In the Select tool, press Center or Scale to Fit to bring it back over the plate, then slice again.

The model’s row says “No consistent orientation: slicing will be unreliable”

The mesh is broken in a way the import repair can’t fix. Repair it in the program that made it, or use another file.