Step3 of 3D Printing

Once you have your orientation decided. Next action is pressing the PRINT button...again just like everyday printer.
What happens behind the scene once you press the print button is that another software called SLICER kicks in and slices the model bottom up. See the image below.

and slices are sent to the printer and will be printed on the top of each other starting from bottom to build your 3D model.

First three steps (Till slicing) stays the same doesn't matter what brand, size or technology you are using. The last step, how the slices are printed can differ depending upon the technology and the brand of your 3D printing machine. That is what we are going to look at next...what are some of the popular technologies out there and how they work....

Note: Slices can be really thin depending upon the resolution of the machine, in some cases you won't be able to even see them.

The video shows steps of 3D printing.

Refrences
Image from "Coho 3D Learning"
Video from "Mashable"