Technologies

The Best 3D Printing Slicer: Prusaslicer, Cura and more

Every 3D printer user needs a good slicer. We’ve tested them all, so you don’t have to.

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to 3D printing. Obviously, having the best 3D printer is great, but did you know you also need specific software to make a 3D model ready for printing? These programs are called slicers, and they are essential for making your 3D printer, well, 3D print.

What is a slicer for 3D printing?

A slicer is a piece of software for your PC, Mac, or laptop that can convert a 3D model file — normally with the file extension .STL, .3MF or .OBJ — into a file that is usable by your 3D printer. A printer is essentially a sophisticated plotting machine that moves to certain coordinates told to it by the slicer in the form of something called GCODE.

A slicer does exactly what it sounds like; It cuts a 3D model into small «sliced» layers that are printed individually but stacked on top of each other. A slicer is also responsible for:

How hot the printer should be
How fast the printer should go
Where to put the supports on the model
How much infill is required for the model
Where the print head should be at any given second
How much material to extrude in each layer
Many many more settings that can be tweaked

Basically, everything that makes your printer useful is told to it by the slicer, so it is the most important piece of software you can own.

Now that we know what a slicer does, we can talk about which ones are the best to use. Which slicer will be determined by what kind of 3D printer you have and what you use it for. Resin printers often require different slicers to FDM machines, so this article will tell you which is which.

The best 3D printing slicer

3D printing slicer FAQ

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for March 25, #1740

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for March 25, No. 1,740.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle begins with a letter I just never guess, but once you get that, it’s an easy one. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with W.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with R.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a person who is smarter than another.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is WISER.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, March 24, No. 1739, was BROOD.

Recent Wordle answers

March 20, No. 1735: OASIS

March 21, No. 1736: SLICK

March 22, No. 1737: BASIL

March 23, No. 1738: SERIF

Technologies

Pokemon Champions Release Date: When Does the New Competitive Standard Come Out?

The new Pokemon game will provide the standard battle format for the 2026 Pokemon World Championships.

Pokemon Champions, the competitive pocket monster-battling spin-off game announced during the Pokemon Day 2025 livestream, will be released on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on April 8.

Champions is completely free to play, but it will be launched alongside an optional paid starter pack bundle. This pack includes extra in-game Pokemon storage, a special battle song and additional in-game currency to recruit Pokemon for battle.

The latest Pokemon game unifies professional-level play under a single battling format, which will be used for the 2026 Pokemon World Championships in August. While a whole host of battling mechanics from past games like Z-Moves and Terastallization haven’t been shown off in any of the promotional materials, Mega Pokemon will be available in Pokemon Champions as soon as the game is released.

We’ve known for a while that Pokemon Champions will largely use Pokemon Home for teambuilding. Pokemon Home is a subscription service that stores Pokemon in the cloud and allows them to be transferred in and out of multiple games, including Pokemon Go, Pokemon Sword and Shield, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and Pokemon Legends: Z-A.

What we didn’t know is how players without a Pokemon Home subscription would build their teams — and frankly, it looks like a bit of a mess. Free-to-play users will be limited to unlocking one new Pokemon a day from a random pool of available pocket monsters.

These Pokemon can be used for a week before they disappear from the player’s account. It’ll take six days to build a whole team, and by the time a player does so, their first party member will nearly be rotated out. What a hassle.

On the upside, scoring wins against online opponents will reward players with a currency that allows them to unlock multiple Pokemon in a single day — and even keep them permanently. Hopefully, this currency is plentiful enough that Pokemon Home doesn’t feel like a requirement to engage with competitive Pokemon battling in the future.

One of the most exciting parts of the impending release of Pokemon Champions will be seeing how the new Pokemon Legends: Z-A Mega Evolutions fare in classic turn-based Pokemon combat. Legends: Z-A launched with a real-time battle system that pared down complex parts of Pokemon battling in order to create more fluid fights. When these Mega Pokemon come to Pokemon Champions, they’ll receive new abilities that could completely change high-level play.

A recent blog post by The Pokemon Company teased some of these abilities, showing off how Mega Meganium and Mega Feraligatr now have access to harder-hitting grass- and dragon-type moves, but there are many more Mega Pokemon that could gain potentially meta-defining abilities when Pokemon Champions is released in April.

A mobile release of Pokemon Champions with cross-platform multiplayer battling is planned for late 2026, but no official release dates for iOS or Android have been announced yet.

Technologies

NASA’s Ignition Program: Skipping the Lunar Orbiter and Going Straight for a Moon Base

The new initiative includes a base on the moon, a nuclear-powered flight to Mars and a replacement for the ISS.

For the second time in as many months, NASA is flipping the script and changing its planned missions for the moon. At the end of last month, the agency pushed back its moon landing to the Artemis IV mission while vowing to complete lunar missions more quickly. This time, the agency said it’s scrapping the Lunar Gateway, a lunar orbiter scheduled to launch in 2027, in favor of building a base on the moon.

NASA formally introduced the new initiative, dubbed Ignition, during a 3-hour press conference on Tuesday. Ignition houses many plans for NASA’s immediate and long-term future, including replacing the International Space Station before it becomes unusable in 2030, and building «SR-1 Freedom,» a nuclear-powered spacecraft scheduled for launch to Mars in 2028.

«NASA is committed to achieving the near‑impossible once again: to return to the moon before the end of President Trump’s term, build a Moon base, establish an enduring presence and do the other things needed to ensure American leadership in space,» NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.

The new moon plan is set to happen in three phases over the next few years. Phase one would be to replace one-off missions with a «templated approach» to gain learning through experimentation. Phase two would see the construction of a «semi-habitable infrastructure» on the moon. Phase three would add permanent infrastructure to that moon base.

NASA hasn’t set a concrete timeline for any of these objectives, but Isaacman said the «clock is running in this great-power competition,» presumably alluding to China’s goal of putting humans on the moon by 2030. During a speech with various aerospace companies, international space agencies and Congress during an event at NASA headquarters, Isaacman said the entire initiative would take seven years and cost $20 billion.

This new plan also involves halting the construction of the Lunar Gateway station. The orbiter has been under construction for years and has been criticized for being a wasteful distraction from the real goal of putting humans back on the moon. Isaacman hinted that the orbiter will be repurposed for use on the lunar surface, which will no doubt come with its own set of challenges.

What else is NASA working on?

Ignition came with other announcements, including that the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is ahead of schedule and under budget, the success of DART’s mission to change an asteroid’s trajectory by ramming into it, the Parker Solar probe’s continued success in studying the sun and a host of additional projects that are launching between 2026 and 2030.

Much like when it overhauled the Artemis missions last month, NASA is continuing its mission to get things done as quickly as possible. And while the moon base and the Artemis missions are the forefront of NASA’s current plans, according to Isaacman, thousands of ideas are being worked on behind the scenes.

«The whole point of today was not to come and give you a bunch of great PowerPoint [presentations] and sit and wait for it all to come to fruition,» Isaacman said. «This is about action right now … We want to get moving.»