I’m Andy Gleadall, a lecturer at Loughborough University. In my PhD, I developed atomic scale simulations for the degradation of bioresorbable polymers. I then went on to 3D print the same polymers for tissue engineering research. From the very first time I used a bioprinter, I felt hugely constrained by the software, so I started writing my own scripts for GCode from the outset. 

In the first few years of additive manufacturing research, I wrote scripts of gradually increasing complexity, from simple square-grid GCode generators up to an STL slicer with incorporated print-path previewer.

Upon becoming a lecturer, I realised that many students and researchers wanted to generate their own GCode but did not want to write scripts. They spent a lot of time learning programming and writing scripts, and had less time for doing the actual additive manufacturing work they were interested in.

That led me to see that a framework for GCode generation, based on simple human-understandable instructions, was needed. 

I iteratively developed FullControl GCode Designer, and am now sharing it in the hope that people will find it as useful and empowering as my collaborators and I have. It’s allowed us to do things that would be impossible with scripts or slicers.