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rogerclark

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Posts posted by rogerclark

  1. Hi,

    I'm trying to print a mount for a go pro camera that I designed

    http://www.rogerclark.net/uploads/gopro_mount.stl

    But I can't seem to get Cura (14 or 13) to generate the support makerial needed for the overhangs, for the outer left and right part of the model.

    I've looked in the settings and I can't seen any minimum distance settings etc, I've tried changing the settings in the Expert popup, but it doesnt seem to make any difference in this case.

    I've made sure I set the support option to "Everywhere"

    I've noticed that Slic3r also doesnt produce support for this model, and the only slicer that seems to work is KISSlicer. But I'd prefer to use Cura if possible.

    Could someone advise me, how I can get Cura to generate support material for this model?

    Thanks

    Roger

     

  2.  

    @JonnyBischof

    Isn't your request basically what the Platform Adhesion - Raft function do ?

    You can set the Raft height in the expert settings to the height of your layers, so you'd only get one layer of Raft

    Personally, I think its still a pain to have to remove the raft and punch out a load of small holes and makes things messy.

    It would be better if Cura does what Slic3r does and only puts an outside perimeter / skirt.

    BTW one other thing you can try is setting the skirt spacing to be quite large e.g 20 mm, I think I did some tests and this worked some of the time, but I don't think it was a usable solution all of the time.

     

  3. Yes.

    On Windows, V13 and V14 seem to have this feature (not tried V12 as its quite out of date).

    I didn't notice the feature until I connected an old USB web cam and expected to need to use a separate timelapse program, but a new tab appeared in the Print dialog, showing the a preview and allowing some setting changes like folder to save to and some colour correction stuff (possibly associated with the camera driver)

    However on a print that lasted an hour, the timelapse video only lasted around 10 secs, so I wanted to change how often a picture (frame) was captured.

    Looking on GitHub there are various bits of code that seem to control the timelapse.

    e.g. https://github.com/daid/Cura/search?q=timelapse&ref=cmdform

    https://github.com/daid/Cura/blob/722656b7ba94d44cdfa993e12f50a6285e939e0b/Cura/gui/util/webcam.py

    I've just had a trawl though the code and it looks like this bit of code causes the camer to take a new image

    def mcZChange(self, newZ):

    self.currentZ = newZ

    print 'Z:%f' % newZ

    if self.cam is not None:

    wx.CallAfter(self.cam.takeNewImage)

    wx.CallAfter(self.camPreview.Refresh)

    (see https://github.com/daid/Cura/blob/4d1c0da752fe45ffaf6e9257bd5d1abe86d53fe0/Cura/gui/printWindow.py)

    So I'm no expert, but it appears to be taking a photo every time the Z changes.i.e once per layer, so as my object only has 75 layers and the resultant movie is probably 24 fps, the movie is only just over 3 seconds long (which is a bit short for a 1 hour print :wink:

    I suspect that if its not too much overhear, that perhaps it could be put into

     

    
    

    def UpdateProgress(self):

    e.g around line 458, where it appers to get the print time.

     

    
    

    printTime = self.machineCom.getPrintTime() / 60

    so we could take a picture every 10 seconds using this code (probably... Note its been a while since I did any python programming :wink:

    if self.cam is not None && printTime%10 == 0:

    wx.CallAfter(self.cam.takeNewImage)

    wx.CallAfter(self.camPreview.Refresh)

     

     

    Edit.

     

    I implemented basically the change I described above, and it appears to work, however I did a print and it hung after about 10 minute.

     

    However I don't think this is necessarily a consequence of taking the timelapse video, as I have issues with power glitches, and in this case I'm fairly sure there was a brownout that hung the print.

     

    So I'll try again today and see if it hangs this time.

     

    Note. Even 10 seconds doesnt give a very long or smooth video, as at 24 fps playback, a photo every 10 secs is 1/240 normal speed, so a 1 hour print is compressed to just 15 seconds, which I think is probably too short, unless the build print is very very long, i.e even a 4 hour print would only produce 1 minute of video.

     

    Probably a better time lapse setting is between 1 and 5 seconds per frame, depending on how long the print is estimated to take.

     

    i.e Perhaps the best way to approach this is to add something to the UI where you enter the desired length of the final video e.g. 1 minute,. and the code calculates how often to take the individual pictures, based on the Estimated Print Time.

     

  4. Hi,

    The timelapse recording works well, but on small prints the video is very short, so I'd like to change how often a picture is taken, but I can't see anything in the settings about this. I've also looked in the manual, but there doesn't seem to be anything about it all all.

    I'm happy to change python or even c++ code and recompile etc, can someone point me in the right area.

    Thanks

    Roger

     

  5. I've recently started to use Cura (on my MendelMax 1.5), and have the same issue as Albert.

    I guess I could try @ illuminarti 's solution, but it sounds like a significant overhead and may add far more retractions in the main body of the print.

    I've not tested this, but is it just the skirt that doesnt retract or is it anything on the first layer?

    I gues one alternative if its not everything on the first layer where retraction doesnt work, would be to turn off skirts and add some custom GCode e.g. via a plugin, that drew a few lines near the side of the print bed to effectively prime the printer which I think is basically what skirt is doing now ??

    Thanks

    Roger

     

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