Converts a GLB into a printable STL. Two things have to happen that a naive extraction skips: every node transform has to be applied, and metres have to become millimetres.
Node transforms are applied
Extracting the raw vertex buffers without walking that tree gives you every part stacked at the origin, which is a classic failure: the model looks like a heap rather than an assembly. Here the full transform chain is composed and applied, so every part lands where the scene puts it.
The thousand-fold scale
Automatic unit conversion multiplies by 1000. If your glTF was authored in millimetres already, turn it off, or you get a model a thousand times too large. The bounding box reported after conversion tells you immediately which case you are in.
Everything that is not geometry is dropped
Primitives that are points or lines rather than triangles are skipped and counted; they cannot be printed.
Draco compression is refused
Other names for this
Also searched as “glb to stl for 3d printing”, “gltf to stl”.
Questions
- My model is a thousand times too small.
- Unit conversion is switched off, or the source was in millimetres. Check the reported bounding box against the real size.
- All the parts are stacked at the origin.
- That is what happens when node transforms are ignored. They are applied here — if it still occurs, the scene itself has everything at the origin.
- It says my file uses Draco compression.
- Draco needs about a megabyte of decoder. Re-export without it, or decompress with a desktop tool first.
- The model was animated.
- You get the rest pose. STL has no way to store animation.
- Is my model uploaded?
- No. The parsing and rewriting happen in this tab. Models are frequently confidential — an unreleased product, a client’s part, a scan of something proprietary — and none of it is transmitted. Turn your Wi-Fi off and the tool keeps working.
- How large a model can I convert?
- There is no imposed limit; the ceiling is your device’s memory. A desktop browser handles files of roughly 2 GB and a phone about 400 MB. A 200 MB STL — around four million triangles — converts in a few seconds on a laptop.