alkekmakerspace

We will sometimes get random flow errors and it will say the material is empty. You can then hit continue and it will work. From my experience this flow sensor is doing its job correctly. There is usually a small inconsistency in the extrusion. This occurs frequently with the PVA and it ends up looking a lot like snow instead of extruded plastic. This usually does not fail the print though. It can usually recover and continue printing. I don't know of a way to disable the sensor for just one extruder. There is probably a way if you put the machine into developer mode and then ssh into it remotely.

Like I mentioned above, if you constantly print with a PVA spool, it will tend to work well. I prefer that it leaves the PVA loaded, because it tends to break/snap off in the bowden tube if it is retracted too much. If I start another print within 30 minutes of the previous print finishing, I tend to not have any issues. Buy smaller spools of PVA, print it constantly until it is gone. Clean the print cores consistently. Clean the nozzle end consistently.

I'm not sure what the small issues are. The version I have running is working fine. I know when I first try to compile the exe there is an issue and I have to run a different command. This is what worked on my computer: python -m PyInstaller SpoolMaker.py --onefile --windowed --icon=.\icon.ico --add-data="icon.ico;." --add-data="gui.ui;." The readme files says this: pyinstaller.exe --onefile --windowed --icon=.\icon.ico --add-data="icon.ico;." --add-data="gui.ui;." .\SpoolMaker.py

I can also help with the windows side of things. I use this almost every day to rewrite tags. We also maintain the material profiles on 5 computers and 8 printers. You can see our filament usage metrics on our webpage if you scroll down to the power BI dashboard that shows patron demographics. The filament info is on page 4 of 8: https://www.library.txst.edu/spaces-technology/space-types/alkek-one/maker-space.html

You could do this by using the support blocker in Cura to encase the volume that you want to print with another material. Set the support blocker to be a cutting mesh using per model settings and assign it to the second material. You could do the same thing with a custom made object instead of the support blocker. If you wanted a sphere inside the model to be PLA and the exterior to be TPU, just put the 2nd STL sphere inside the model and make it a cutting mesh and assign each extruder respectively.

I manage a college makerspace that has 8 Ultimaker S5s with material stations. We originally printed PVA on all of them, but that became a nightmare to deal with. We now limit this to one printer to simplify things. PVA ALWAYS needs extra attention. If you don't use the spool CONSTANTLY, it will have problems. We fortunately burn through the stuff quickly because there are many students that want to create miniatures. Therefore our printer with PVA is running almost 24/7. We started buying the smaller spools of PVA to prevent it from going bad. We will only keep 2 spools in stock at any given time for the same reason. In the 4 years that we have been using these printers, we only recently replaced all the belts. We have not replaced any other major parts except for a random failed bearing in one of the print heads. We replace print cores only when they have obvious problems. We are still using the original BB cores that came with the machines. Each printer has roughly 18,000 hours on it. You can disable the flow sensor on the machine itself by the way. This will prevent it from stopping, but it will also ignore any under-extrusion problems. Your problems are with the material itself, not necessarily the printer. All printers will have problems with PVA or another water soluble material. These materials are just terrible to print. They degrade rapidly. I have not personally tried BVOH yet, but I may give it a shot to see if it does any better than PVA.

I finally spent some time looking into adding the ability to write the remaining weight to the tag in addition to the total through the UI. Originally, the UI would write the new total and remaining as the same value. Once I familiarized myself with the NFCSpool.py code, I realized that the functionality of writing the remaining amount was already coded into the MyFilamentSpool class. This was set to a default of None and if it is none, it will write it the same as the total. Therefore I modified the NFCSPool.py, SpoolMaker.py, and gui.ui file to be able to write the remaining weight to the tag. The defaults are set to 1000000mg for each. I have attached all 3 files to this post. I don't have a github, so if someone wants to update these on there, they are more than welcome to. Eventually I want to integrate this with a usb scale so that I can weigh a spool and write that weight in one, easy to use device. This is worth it for us because in a busy fall semester, we can burn through 2 spools a day and we are constantly moving materials around to 8 different Ultimaker material stations. SpoolMaker.zip

The problem with Digital Factory for our use case is that it requires an ultimaker login. This would require all students to create their own account which would just introduce more problems for us. Unless there is a workaround for that? You would think it would be that simple, but we still get a lot of patrons that just leave whatever it defaults to and hit print without thinking about it. It was defaulting to Ultimaker Blue PLA, then people would send a print job with that material, which we don't have. It doesn't make sense that it would default to a material that isn't there, that is just a bad user experience. Here's a screenshot after connecting to one of our printers. Setting the preferred material to Generic GFF CPE seems to have solved our problem. I would still like to find a more elegant solution.

We are printing over the network from a set of 5 computers to (8) Ultimaker S5s with Material Stations. Each printer has a reserved IP. Each user logs in with SSO to the computer, which will almost always be a new user since they are erased on a 14 day cycle. Almost every time they open cura it will act like a new instance. Editing the "preferred material" in the Ultimaker S5 definition file will set it to whatever is in there when you first connect to one of our networked printers. Ideally I would like this to auto select one of the configurations that is in the drop down list. It really doesn't matter which one, I just want it to be an actual config that is printable. The reason for needing this is because most of our users are first timers and forget to select a material. They then send a print job to the machine with a configuration that it does not have (even though we train them to not do that). Most of the time we have to cancel this job and have them set it up again. If it just auto-selected the 1st configuration upon connection it would really streamline this process.

No I was not aware of that setting. Where is that located? I don't see anything in the material drop down section or in the general settings in cura.

Just bumping this up to see if anyone has an insight. I have tried a "empty_material" but that does not work. Checking the cura log file shows the following: - WARNING - [MainThread] cura.Machines.VariantNode.preferredMaterial [99]: Could not find preferred material empty_material, falling back to whatever works For the time being I think I will just set this to a material that is not compatible with the print core to prompt our users to click and change it.

I have dealt with jammed and broken PVA soooo many times. The worst scenario is when a piece breaks off in the path underneath the material station. I have cleared it twice by opening up the bottom, which is not difficult, just annoying because you have to remove the printer and put it upside down. I later learned that most of these jams can be cleared by manually pushing a piece of filament through from the front. For your situation you could unplug everything, then manually push a piece of filament into bay F to push the broken piece of PVA out. When you get to the decoupler on the back, the small piece of pva can sometimes get stuck at the corner before it goes into it. Pulling that section of tubing out is nearly impossible, so you have to keep trying to get it to move through the decoupler.

I am wondering if there is a way to set the default material when connecting to an Ultimaker printer over the network. I specifically have (8) Ultimaker S5s that we connect to from 5 PCs and every time someone connects to one of the printers, it defaults to Ultimaker Blue PLA. Some of our users don't always know that they need to select a material from the drop down so that it will match what's on the printer. I have found the printer definition file. Where it is set as the "preferred_material", and I imagine that I can change this to another material name. The issue with this is that the material will always be different depending on what is loaded in the printer. Is it possible to have the "preferred_material" reference what is loaded? Is it possible to use a variable to get the first material option from the drop down? This would prevent users from sending prints that are not configured correctly. EDIT: I tried just using the following "preferred_material": "" which then set the material to be Generic GFF CPE This may work as a temporary solution since that material shows incompatibility with the print cores, but I'd still like to find a more elegant solution.

The work done to create this is amazing. I personally manage a MakerSpace at Texas State University and have been using this to rewrite our old Ultimaker Tags and put them on 3rd party filament. We have (8) Ultimaker S5s with Material Stations and send prints from 5 different PCs. Since most of the people using our printers are new users, it is super helpful for them to just be able to pick the material they want thats already loaded on the printer within Cura. We have also started to recycle our waste material back into filament using a Filabot setup. When we are busy, we typically go through 6 spools a week. Our busiest month was 26k grams of filament. I am now looking into ways write the total weight and remaining weight through the GUI. @Bunnyman21 what would it take to include that functionality in this GUI?

I'm starting to look into this now that we have multiple S5s with material stations. Since the material station reads and writes to these chips, is there a way to do that ourselves using the material station? I have tried a PUT request via the API to the material station using an empty spool that is currently loaded. I attempt to set the material remaining back to 1, but it never updates. I was hoping it would be that simple, but of course it's not. I do get a 200 response, but the number never updates.