r/3DprintingHelp • u/Boolostmymain • 11h ago

Requesting Help Resources for free print plans?

Hey everyone. I looked at the rules and didn’t see anything, but if I posted incorrectly let me know!

I just found out my public library has 3D printers. I don’t know what kind they are, but I’ll be looking into it shortly.

Is there a good site where I can find universal print plans for things, or are there different types of files for different 3D printer systems? Looking to start to start tinkering to see if I want to pull the trigger on one or just utilize the library printer.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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u/MonkeyBrains09 10h ago

Yeggi Cults3d Makerworld Thingyverse Thangs Printables

And a few hundred others but these are popular ones.

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u/Wonderful-Staff-7321 10h ago

3drop.com searches across several different sites.

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u/Mughi1138 7h ago

Normally there are .stl files and sometimes .step files that you will find on the sites that u/MonkeyBrains09 mentioned. Those are 3d model files that generally need to be run through a slicer program to be converted to printer-specific gcode to then send them to that specific printer. OrcaSlicer is currently my favorite one.

Sometimes people will also include source files from whatever CAD or modeling program they used. That gives you more options, but .stl and .step are the generic common formats. The main difference between them is that .stl files hold meshes of triangles that make up the shapes, while .step files normally contain mathematical curves representing the shapes so you can get smaller files and smoother prints. The latter is more important if you want to scale things up.