kerog

When writing plugins and initialization g-code, it's often difficult to find the names of the parameters/properties that I want to access. MATLAB has a similar issue, which they solve by having a "what's this" tooltip on the label for each gui element that has an associated property that can be accessed from the command line. When you select the "what's this" tooltip, it gives a short explanation of the parameter and, importantly, the parameter's name (and options list if they exist). Cura should have a similar system. Doesn't have to be quite that sophisticated; just including the parameter name in the tooltip explanations would be enough.

My printer's firmware has heating commands built into the Z home. When you do a Z home, it heats both extruders to 120C before actually homing, so that any blob on the nozzle would be soft enough not to mess things up. This interferes with Cura's initial heat code, which goes before the starting gcode from the printer. What happens is that Cura heats things up to the set point, the Z home in the starting code then takes the temperature down to 120, and then I have to heat it up again. It would be nice if you could either (a) turn off the initial heating gcode (and then add it back in as part of the startup gcode), or specify special gcode to run before those initial heating commands. I can work around it by taking the G28 out of my startup gcode and making sure I manually home all before each print, but that's a pain. If anyone knows of a better workaround, I'd like to hear it.

Asking again. Can anyone explain what the deal is with the version fields? Looked in the wiki; nothing there. Tried to look in the code, but didn't know where to start, really. Put in my pull request and got comments back that my version numbers were wrong and had to be something else, but no explanation of why.

OK, I think I figured out the process and put in a pull request under the branch Felix_Profile. If this works out OK, I will post more profiles for other printers I work with. Still a little fuzzy on what's supposed to go into the "version" fields in the .json files. If someone could explain how that's supposed to work I'd be grateful.

OK, I've got a couple postprocessing plugins working pretty well. One copies the skirt to every layer (otherwise known as a draft shield). The other does the equivalent of a filament change for a dual extruder system. At a particular height it swaps from one extruder to the other. Now, there are a bunch of different ways one could implement this feature. I'll describe my approach, and am interested in suggestions for improvement. (1) At start, set second extruder to rest temperature (2) When specified height has been reached, (a) Execute specified g-code move (e.g. G0 X0 Y0), M104 current extruder to rest temperature, M109 new extruder to print temperature, and then select the new extruder. The G-code move allows the user to select a location that will involve a minimum of oozing over the part during the move. I use this in combination with the skirt on every layer so that the skirt primes the new extruder. I looked at using the extruder start and end code, but interestingly enough found that the [<setting>] syntax didn't get translated when I polled the setting as described in the previous post. BTW, what do people use those for, anyway? Once these plugins are decently finalized, where does one submit them these days?

When I try to run my postprocessing script, I get an error at this line: output_line += Application.getInstance().getGlobalContainerStack().getProperty('machine_extruder_start_code','value'); TypeError: Can't convert 'NoneType' object to str implicitly The implication to me would be that this is not working, but I don't know precisely what about it is not working. How does one go about debugging something like this? So far it's been (1) modify the python (2) quit Cura (3) restart Cura (4) reload the model (5) reconfigure the postprocessing script (6) save the gcode (7) check it, and check log for errors Kind of cumbersome. I imagine there's a more efficient workflow, and would like to know what other people are doing.

Thanks, but I seem to be clueless. I went and created a repo on GitHub: kerog777/cura, and pushed my changes to it. But when I try to do a pull request there I still get rejected. I must be missing something. Is there something I can do to get a more verbose response that would aid in diagnosis of exactly what I'm doing wrong?

Can yo Can you direct me to a tutorial or something on this workflow? Or maybe just write out a step-by-step? It didn't seem to be in in the workflow tutorial that came with GitHub desktop. Thanks for helping out a GitHub newbie! I use Git every day at work, but GitHub is a bit new to me.

Hi, I'm trying to update some of my old Cura 1 postprocessing plugins for the new Cura. One of them is a color change at height for dual extrusion printers. As part of the plugin I'd like to access some of the existing parameters, like rest temperature or extruder start/end gcode. Can anyone tell me how to do that? Also, is there any documentation anywhere on the plugin and/or postprocessing script API? All I have had to go on so far are examples...

OK, looking through the log got me where I needed to go and I was able to get my profiles working. I cloned the Cura repo from GitHub, made my changes, and committed, but when I tried to put in a pull request access was denied. What do I need to do in order to be able to submit a pull request?

Yeah, it's not working. I intend to file an issue on GitHub when I get a chance to write up the steps to duplicate in detail. Can you tell me where to look for these logs? And thanks for telling me about the Lulzbot profile info. I'll also try to get around to submitting those profiles.

Thanks for the reply, yellowshark. I'm aware of the process for making new printer profiles, and was experimenting with editing the json files directly already. The process works OK if you are just trying to set up Cura for your own personal use, but breaks down if you want to make a set of standard profiles for a group to use. With a shared Windows lab computer, everyone has the same Program Files folder in common, but each person has their own AppData folder. So ideally the relevant profile information would be saved in the former location. But if I just add a json file the the definitions folder there, Cura doesn't seem to recognize it, and it seems like it should. I guess an alternative would be that I could set up my own set of profiles, then copy my AppData folder to a group area and tell each new user to copy the Machine Instances, etc. folders to their own area. That might work, but it would be pretty clunky and hard to maintain. I see on github there's a place to submit profiles for other printers, but I don't know if they take submissions from individuals. For instance, there are no Lulzbot profiles, probably because they have their own branch of Cura that they are using. I wouldn't want to step on their toes by submitting an unsolicited unofficial profile.

Hi, I have a lab with several different brands of printers: Ultimaker, Lulzbot, Type A, RepRap, and a wide range of user experience levels, from newbie to expert. We want to standardize on the Ultimaker version of Cura as a one-stop shop, but are running into a few issues that I was hoping someone on the forum could help me with. (1) I want to set up profiles for some printers that aren't on the base Cura list: Lulzbot Taz5, single and dual head, and then our custom RepRap printer. (2) I want to set up the profiles (both printer and slicing) for these printers once, then copy the profiles onto each (Windows) computer and have them automatically show up in a printer list for anyone who logs into one of those computers. (3) My company tightly controls access to the Program Files folder, so it's tough (but not impossible) for me to edit anything in there. I looked at the resources/definitions folder and thought I could figure out what was going on, but the changes I made didn't seem to register when I restarted Cura. Anyone know how to customize this without branching from GitHub? I also tried going into my AppData/Roaming/cura folder and making the changes there, but there also the seemingly logical extrapolations from the existing contents did not yield me anything. Surely someone out there has done this. Any help on offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Keith

I installed on MacOS 10.11.2, and Cura wouldn't start. Double-click, get the warning about downloaded apps, then nothing. Nothing in the security settings on the control panel either. Any attempt to open the application after that does nothing that I can see.

15.04< Don't much like what I've seen of the new version yet.

Hi, I just recently wrote a plugin, and was wondering how to post it. It looks like the last post was in 2013. When I tried to login with my password for this forum, it didn't work, and when I tried to create a new account I just got a blank page in both Safari and Chrome.

I've written a plugin that takes a nominally single-color file and switches extruders partway through. How can I get it to use the start2 gcode (to properly prime the 2nd extruder) instead of the start gcode?

I use a standard tumbler I bought off of Amazon with a mixture of shot and nuts and bolts. But I have only used it with ColorFabb Bronzefill and Proto-Pasta Stainless Steel PLA.

Anyone know how to set up a default Cura profile (including settings for several different printers) that would apply to all users on a single windows machine? Thanks, Keith

Does Cura have any way of doing similar to KISSlicer's inset perimeter feature? I found that really useful for Print in Place, particularly the Make Magazine robot. Could I achieve a similar affect by artificially tweaking the nozzle diameter up by a bit? I would think that might have unwanted side effects, though... -Keith

The current one-at-a-time printing feature limits the height of the objects to the gantry height. It seems to me that this is a restriction that should only apply to printers like the Ultimaker that have two-axis gantries. For a single-axis gantry (e.g. Felix, Printrbot, Taz) if you know the gantry direction zero location, you should be able to print sequentially objects of arbitrary height. Is that a possible feature that could be added? A related feature, maybe harder to implement, would be a way of varying one or more slicing parameters over a sequence of copies of the same print, as sequential prints. For example, print the same object in fine, regular, and draft qualities in one print. Or vary extruder temperature. This would really help with doing parametric studies.

Ah, I see. That is a handy way to check. Thanks for the tip!

I don't think that was it, but I'll double-check to verify. If it were the issue, it would be nice if there were some sort of cue to the user indicating that it wasn't going to print sequentially. -Keith

Hi, I tried to slice the Make Magazine Shootout objects as a suite, selecting the "one at a time" option instead of "all at once". However, when I went to print it was still doing the objects all at once. Is this a known issue? Did I not use the feature correctly? I couldn't find anything about it in the manual. -Keith

Yay! Thanks for the quick response!