Installing Pronterface/PrintRun and Slic3r on Lubuntu ThinkPad T41

We got an older laptop to use for one of our 3D printer builds, and so we set out to set it up for 3D printing. The laptop is an IBM ThinkPad T41, and because the processor doesn’t support PAE, we weren’t able to use the latest versions or Ubuntu or Mint. Mint 13 installed okay, but the default window managers gave us some trouble, so we ended up installing Lubuntu 12.04. This version doesn’t require PAE.

After installing and updating the operating system, we set out to install pronterface (Printrun) and slic3r from the git repository. Here’s what we did:

First install python support for printrun, and git.

sudo apt-get install python-serial python-wxgtk2.8 \
 python-pyglet python-tk
sudo apt-get install git

Create a directory for RepRap stuff, and clone Printrun to it from the git repository.

mkdir RepRap
cd RepRap/
git clone https://github.com/kliment/Printrun.git

Next comes build-essential, perl, and cpanminus — all required for slic3r.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev \
 libwxgtk2.8-dev libwx-perl libmodule-build-perl \
 libnet-dbus-perl
sudo apt-get install cpanminus

Go into the Printrun directory, get slic3r, and then dive into that directory where we’ll test it to be sure it all works.

cd Printrun/
git clone http://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r.git
cd Slic3r/

Grab the cpan modules required for slic3r, and test it to be sure it loads up properly.

sudo cpanm Boost::Geometry::Utils Math::Clipper \
 Math::ConvexHull Math::ConvexHull::MonotoneChain \
 Math::Geometry::Voronoi Math::PlanePath Moo Wx
./slic3r.pl

Step up one directory and make sure pronterface works well.

cd ..
python ./pronterface.py