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rachael7

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rachael7 last won the day on August 3 2023

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  • 3D printer
    Ultimaker 2 (Ext
    +)
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    US

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  1. I agree, that API flag is likely your best bet for an alert on filament directly. Do you also have an alert for the printer status? There is a parameter exposed to the API that will tell you if a printer is stopped mid-print, such as when filament runs out. That seems like a worthwhile alert trigger as well, particularly since it would also catch other issues that require operator intervention.
  2. I didn't even know there was a material empty tag. The machine definitely does not use the amount remaining on the spool in any functional way. What it has is a sensor just inside the hole where you poke the filament into the material station. When the material is pushed in, it trips the sensor and the machine reads the tag to see what you just stuck in it. As the print is running, if that sensor trips back the other way, that means the tail of the roll just passed the sensor, so the machine takes that as empty and does the unload cycle on the remaining filament. The inside of the material station is such that if the machine kept printing past that point, the material could get stuck in there, so that's why it won't print the last meter or two of filament.
  3. It takes well over a meter of filament to get from the spool in the Material Station to the print head, maybe even more than 1.5m, which amounts to more than a few wraps left on the spool at the end. One might hope or expect that it would just keep pulling the filament in until it actually ran out at the print head, but it does not. As soon as the tail end of the filament passes the sensor at the entry point, the machine considers the material empty and whatever is inside the machine gets pushed back and usually coils back around the spool. I don't know if the amount left in the machine comes out to 40g, but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable number. I doubt they deliberately put extra on the roll for that purpose though, particularly since you could be using the filament from the back spool holder (which has a much shorter path) or on another machine like a 2+. More likely, in a high speed filament production line, it is just easier to err a little on the heavy side, rather than risk shorting a customer and facing a complaint or regulatory action.
  4. I'm not sure if Spoolmaker will be the right tool for that, but if you're able to read the registers, you can get the values directly and modify them if you wish. Here are the ones I know about, with the memory address followed by the parameter: 2E: Total spool weight 2F: Remaining spool weight 31: Printing time (in seconds). Only uses first three bytes, leave 4th byte alone. The data is stored in hexadecimal, with the weights in grams, if I recall correctly. It might be milligrams, but it's some multiple of grams, anyway. Hope this helps!
  5. In theory, it certainly is. I feel like it is probably one of those "devil is in the details" situations though. Moving blocks around isn't too tough, particularly if they are commented and separated; but there are so many opportunities for issues, such as the final and preparatory rapid moves pointing to the wrong place. I'll spare you the "put up or shut up", but if you get something up to a beta stage, let me know and I'll be happy to help test and debug it with you.
  6. Yes, she/her, thank you. And yes, I have output the model as a single STL, but that still doesn't give any sort of control about what portions of the model print in what order since in that scenario it is all one object. There may be something I didn't try, but like you, this was one of many little annoyances that has led me to use Cura less these days, so it hasn't come up in a while. I'll play a bit more next time it comes up. Also, the workaround is for sure helpful and I might even use it myself for certain things. I didn't mean to imply it didn't have worth, only that it isn't really a "solution" per se.
  7. I have had several cases where the design of the model was such that slicer-generated supports simply would not do the job, so I built the supports as objects in CAD. I've been using Solidworks for over 20 years, so sometimes I get better results designing the supports while I'm making the part. Anyway, when I brought the models in, each support structure was a separate object, along with the actual part of course. As is normal, the supports print at the same time as the part, so all-at-once mode is necessary. The print order became important because the slicer chose illogical orders for printing the supports and the part, which not only cost a ton of print time, it degraded the part by passing the nozzle over the model many more times than was necessary (some supports were inside the hollow part and some were outside). These were transparent PMMA (acrylic) prints, so the wall defects substantially affected the quality of the finished parts. Had I been able to set the print order, I could have saved perhaps 5% on the not-insubstantial print time as well as reducing the visual defects by 75% or more. I'll grant you that it is not a common use case, but it isn't hard to think of others that would be far more common.
  8. It's not clear though, that's the point. I do very much care about print order in all-at-once mode, and as a user of this forum, when I see a "Go to solution" button, I expect it is solved. I certainly hope it is addressed in the next release, as has been suggested; but in the meantime, marking it as solved is deceptive and could result in less pressure to release an actual solution.
  9. Please remove this marking. It is at best a workaround, not a solution. It also doesn’t address the case of all-at-once printing. Marking it as a solution gives the false impression the issue has been resolved, when it most certainly has not been resolved for me and others printing in the more common all-at-once mode.
  10. That isn't the problem. The issue is that because the supports are separate objects in Cura, it doesn't print the supports in any reasonable order. Imagine there are two rings of supports, one inside a vaguely ball-shaped object, and one ring outside. It makes sense to print all the inside ones or outside ones first, then cross the part once to print the other set. That minimizes strings and marks crossing the walls of the part. But what Cura does instead, no matter what I try, is alternate back and forth, one inside then one outside, so it repeatedly crosses back and forth over the walls of the part. I minimized damage as best I could with z-hop and retraction settings, but the material (PMMA) was an especially stringy one and all the strings getting dragged across the part negatively affected the clarity. I went round it for days, there simply is no solution other than manually editing the g-code, without an option to set the print order.
  11. Where this really bites me on the butt is when I build custom supports for complicated parts. The supports are drawn in CAD, as separate objects, imported to Cura, and set to print as support. The workflow functions fine, but since it is a print all at once mode, the order in the list makes no difference, and because all the supports have to be in a specific position, I cannot move the parts around the plate to get them to print in the order I want. As I mentioned previously, this significantly impacts the quality of the part due to extra crossing of the perimeters and the associated flaws (made more obvious because I'm printing in clear material). There is no workaround and no alternative that I can find or that anyone can suggest. Manually specifying the print order is a feature that needs to be implemented. Pretty please?
  12. These are the ones I bought most recently. They work fine as long as the spool is rotated to place the tag within the antenna. https://nfctagify.com/collections/stock-nfc-stickers/products/clear-nfc-stickers?variant=45259880857894
  13. I’m not sure at all, no. In fact, not long after that post I had to give up on the air manager altogether because it kept killing my long prints with random unrecoverable errors.
  14. That doesn't really give us the ability to control though, if we're honest. Yes, you remove all the items from the build plate and load them again, perhaps; but what if you've already done a fair amount of prep work on the parts? Added per-part settings or support blockers, or other changes that you'd have to redo completely if you deleted and re-added the parts. I reject that as a "solution" - at best it is a workaround - but it is a clunky workaround that really isn't practical in daily use, especially when the proper solution should not be difficult to implement.
  15. That is a fantastic bit of sleuthing, thank you for sharing. I was encountering the problem (before I disconnected the Air Manager) on prints with high chamber temps. That likewise would have produced a slow fan speed, so I suspect it was the same cause you discovered. I'm going to try it without the filter and see if that makes it reliable enough to use the Air Manager again. It's getting to be a real hassle trying to control the chamber temperature by opening the lid/doors just the right amount.
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