ahoeben

Yesterday something dropped on the display of my trusty UM S5, and the display stopped working. It doesn't display anything, and the printer does not respond to touches on the location where the buttons would be. At some point I am going to have to see what is broken (does the display need replacing, or do I just need to reseat a cable?), but I would first have to find a screwdriver that will let me open the bottom of the printer to access the electronics. Thanks UM for making that extra-hard because you picked a PSU without a housing! Anyway, I was left without a display for the foreseeable future, so I needed a solution. I found a very simple workaround: access the touchscreen UI via VNC! Important caveats * You can either use/see the touchscreen or use vnc. With the above modifications, the touchscreen will probably not show anything (I can't tell for sure; my display is broken). * There is no password or other security; anybody on your network will have access to the printer interface via VNC. How to enable VNC control of the touchscreen UI You need to log in to the printer as root (default password: ultimaker). That means developer mode must be turned on. If you don't already have it turned on, and your display is broken, then I am afraid you are out of luck until you repair the screen. Two files must be edited. Unless you are the type of person who likes editing files with vi, you may want to install nano: apt update && apt install nano The first file you need to edit is /lib/systemd/system/okuda.touchui\@.service. Change line 13 from Environment=QT_QPA_PLATFORM=linuxfb to: Environment=QT_QPA_PLATFORM=vnc:size=800x320 The second thing that needs to be changed is the firewall, so that your favorite vnc client can access port 5900. In /usr/share/griffin/griffin/network/firewall/nftables_firewall_off.conf, add the following line (around line 20): add rule ip filter INPUT ip protocol 6 ct state new tcp dport 5900 accept Finally, reboot the printer. Once rebooted, the touchscreen UI will be accessible over VNC, on port 5900.

The reason for the limitation is that when switching extruders, the printhead may be moved to an arbitrary location (eg to prime or to wipe, or in the case of Ultimaker printers to actuate a lever) by the firmware. This move may make the head collide with previously printed models. You can disable an extruder via the "configuration" selector in the top bar (where you change nozzle sizes and materials).

That setting is disabled for printers that have more than one extruder enabled. Workaround: disable all but one extruder

The screenshot shows a button to disable the plugin. It does not say that the plugin is disabled. If the plugin were disabled, that button would change to "Enable", and the plugin icon and name would be shown greyed out. Regardless, to know the reason why a plugin is not loaded (which does not seem to be the case for the G-Code Writer plugin), you would need to look at the Cura.log file, which can be found via Help -> Show configuration folder.

> also when i try to print directly from the octoprint dashboard it will not extrude the material That sounds like you are printing a gcode file with the "Ultimaker 2" gcode flavor, not the "Marlin" flavor.

That's because you have installed the Sidebar GUI plugin. The Sidebar GUI plugin moves the Extruder and Material selection to top of the sidebar. All functionality of that top menu is still available, but it has been moved to an (in my humble opinion) more logical location. You can disable (or uninstall) the Sidebar GUI plugin via the Marketplace dialog (see the "Marktplatz" button in the top right).

The default start gcode has this snippet: G1 X15 Y0 F4000 ;move X/Y to front of printer G1 Z15.0 F9000 ;move the platform to 15mm G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G1 F200 E10 ;extrude 10 mm of feed stock G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again G1 Y50 F9000 With the comments, that should be easy to follow. One thing you could do is decrease the amount of "feed stock" getting extruded, to eg 5 (yeah, feed stock is a bit of a strange term that you may not recognize). So you change the 3rd line of the above snippet, like this: G1 F200 E5 ;extrude 5 mm of feed stock This will reduce how much "prime string" gets created, and as a result how much gets dragged into the print. This is effectively closer to what printing via SD-card does. You can also experiment with having that "prime string" extruded against the bed instead of in the air, thus creating a blob which sticks to the bed. However, you risk that blob not sticking to the bed or worse, sticking to the extruder. So I'll give you another suggestion and that is wiping the nozzle on the bed. G1 X15 Y0 F4000 ;move X/Y to front of printer G1 Z5.0 F9000 ;move the platform to 5mm G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G1 F200 E10 ;extrude 10 mm of feed stock G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again G1 Z1.0 F3000 ;move the platform to 1mm G1 Y5.0 Z0.0 F3000 ;squish the platform to the extruder G1 Y10.0 Z0.0 F2000 ;wipe the extruder along the bed G1 Z15 Y50 F9000 ;move the bed down, leaving a prime-smear behind I have not tested this gcode. So try it out, experiment, and learn about gcode in the process.

You don't need the plugin for that. In the Materials pane of the preferences, you enter how much material (in Kg) you have on a spool and what a spool costs you. So if you enter you have spools that have 1 Kg of material, and each spool costs you 110 (dollar? euro?), then the material costs you 11 cents per gram. (Quite the expensive PLA!) What the plugin will let you do is make changes like this for lots of materials in a spreadsheet and import that back into Cura, instead of filling this in material by material in the Materials preference.

That is not true. Each printer "instance'" in Cura can have its own set of temporary ("user") setting values, you don't have to save them before switching. Edit: hmm, I must admit that I am not sure how this works with multiple "networked" UM printers. I have only one. What I said is true for non-networked printers.

Cura is not a 3d modeler, but a slicer for FDM printers. In other words: Cura is not meant to make edits to STL files.

Where did you put it? It needs to go after the homing command. Homing will undo the coordinate system adjustment.

Cura can not mix two layer heights in the same layer. Doing so would risk having the nozzle collide with previously printed parts of the same layer. Theoretically, you could "sort" the layer parts by lowest part first, but that is not something Cura can currently do.

STL objects will generally not maintain their relative positions. However, you can select multiple models loaded as separate STL files and "merge" them. This will first move them together, relative to their original position, and then group them. You can still select individual meshes in such a group (eg to set which extruder to print it with) by using ctrl+click. Alternatively, you could try saving multiple models as one 3MF file. 3MF files normally do keep their original location.

MeshTools 3.7.2 is now available in the Marketplace, fixing the issue opening the Cura window. Thanks @nallath for a speedy review and testing of this new version!

Do you have the Sidebar GUI or the Settings Guide plugin installed? And/or do you use Microsoft Powertoys on your computer? There seems to be an interaction between those plugins and that software tweak that can cause major slowdowns.

No, that is not possible.

This is indeed due to a bug in the 3.7.1 release of MeshTools. See the post linked to above for a clarification and for instructions how to fix the problem. You can either uninstall the plugin, downgrade to 3.7.0, or install the fixed 3.7.2-DEV version. I have withdrawn the 3.7.1 release of the plugin from the Marketplace and submitted a new version of the plugin. It may take some time before that version is available in the Marketplace.

Thanks for checking. I have submitted version 3.7.2 to the Marketplace. It may take some time before it is available.

That seems to be a bug, worthy of reporting here: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues Be sure to include your clear before/after situations.

A possible fix is available here: https://github.com/fieldOfView/Cura-MeshTools/releases/tag/v3.7.2-DEV Please help testing if this fixes the issue, so I can push a fixed version to the Marketplace soon.

A new version of the MeshTools plugin (3.7.1) was published to the Marketplace last week. I was made aware of an issue launching Cura with this new version of the plugin installed. In order to prevent users from installing this version and from being unable to launch Cura, I have withdrawn the release from the Marketplace. Unfortunately this means that the plugin is currently entirely unavailable from the Marketplace, since I can not simply put back the previous release. The problem is that the Cura 5.3 window does not open after the loading of the application is complete. Cura will continue to run, but no visible user interface shows. This does not happen on all launches; some users report Cura opening 30% of the time. Other users may see the issue more or less frequently. The problematic version of the plugin was extensively tested before release, not just by me but also by the UltiMaker Cura team. I am sorry this slipped through. I am currently finding out what the problem with the new version of the plugin is. The problematic release was a fairly minor update. I hope to release a fixed version and restore the MeshTools plugin on the Marketplace soon. If you installed the 3.7.1 release of the plugin, and you are affected by the issue, here are some things you can do. Edit: MeshTools 3.7.2 has been released to the Marketplace. If you can still open Cura, you can update the MeshTools plugin via the Marketplace. If you are unable to open Cura, the easiest thing to so is to first remove the plugin. Locate the plugins folder in the Cura configuration folder: Windows %APPDATA%\cura\<Ｃｕｒａ Ｖｅｒｓｉｏｎ>\plugins or C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\cura\<Ｃｕｒａ Ｖｅｒｓｉｏｎ>\plugins Linux ~/.local/share/cura/<Ｃｕｒａ Ｖｅｒｓｉｏｎ>/plugins Mac OS ~/Library/Application Support/cura/<Ｃｕｒａ Ｖｅｒｓｉｏｎ>/plugins To remove the plugin entirely, it emove the entire MeshTools folder. You should now be able to run Cura again, and you can reinstall the 3.7.2 from the Marketplace dialog.

Probably not a setting but a rounding issue with a non-flat surface. You could try slightly adjusting the layer height, or the initial layer height. Better yet: make the model truely flat on top, not "approximately flat".

As far as I know, it should do exactly the same as the "Discard current changes" menuitem used to do.

This may have to do with your settings. If you save a project (File -> Save project...) and post that file, we can see both the model and all your settings. As is, I can only say "it works for me"

You could add something like this to your start gcode: G0 Y2.5 G92 Y0 This moves the y axis to what the printer thinks is 2.5 off the 0 position, and then tells the printer to regard that as the 0 position. If that adjusts it in the wrong direction, try this instead: G0 Y0 G92 Y2.5