alkekmakerspace
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Posts posted by alkekmakerspace
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On 2/9/2024 at 8:30 AM, gr5 said:
There's 3 ways to print that I know of:
DF (digital factory)
network
USB flashdrive
Which do you use?
With the first 2 methods you have to connect to a printer with Cura. It used to be that when you connected you could then choose "auto". I forget if it was for the printcore, the material, or both. Probably both. So it would be on the PREPARE tab of cura where it shows the materials.
I can't test this now as my printer is off and I am hundreds of miles away right now. I have been using USB flashdrive for years and I've never used DF but I'd be surprised if this feature went away or never got incorporated into DF.
I'll ask around.
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. -
23 hours ago, gr5 said:
Yeah I don't know much about this. I have an S5 but don't use digital factory. But there is a setting in cura where for material you can have it automatically choose the material based on the printer you are connected to. I haven't enabled that for years so I don't know much about this feature. I assume you noticed that feature?
It was when you click on the material to choose the material, there was some kind of "auto" option. Once set to auto it stays there. I didn't like that as I was often slicing for the *next* print which was a different material.
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.
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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 worksFor 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.
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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.
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On 11/11/2022 at 5:11 PM, rachael7 said:
There is the full weight, which lives in data register 2E, the remaining weight, which lives in register 2F, and the elapsed printing time in seconds (it's shown in hours in the GUI, but stored in seconds), which uses the first three bytes of register 31.
If you used the GUI to make the tag, and after writing, it is showing the same weight for total, remaining, and "new", along with 0.0 for the printing time, you should be correctly set up as a fresh roll. The GUI doesn't let you change the remaining weight or the printing time, only the "new" weight number, so if you want to make it a partial roll, you can make the tag with SpoolMaker, then manually edit the data registers using nfctoolsgui or something similar.
Here's what mine looks like after making a tag for one of my materials:
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.
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35 minutes ago, robinmdh said:
so did we when implementing the initial version of the digital factory, UX voted against this because it was harder to procure color LED strips that where properly white balanced so with the next printer they went with more consistent but only white LED's.
It depends a bit on if you have a S5 with A U on the side or with an ultibot on the side, if there's an ultibot on the side the connector exists and you can just connect the led strip, AFAIK. the connector is marked as P3 in the schematic, you would have to find a common anode RGBW led strip (4 chanels of RGBW and one for the positive voltage)
If you have an U on the side it gets more complicated:
So the led strip used I2C but sending commands to it would be disabled in the S5 firmware. look for the ledRGBWUpdate function in the marlin firmware, this part of the software is open source and you should be able to request a copy from support!
if you can get a similar PWM chip you could enable it https://github.com/Ultimaker/Ultimaker3/blob/master/PCB files/1548-I Ultimainboard/Schematics and layout pdf/Schematic Prints.PDFshows we used a PCA9632DP2 IC. you can connect it to the I2C lines via the cables going to the flow sensor, but that would likely not do for the current/voltage you need.
Anyway this would require soldering, connecting IC's and some transistors etc.
TL;DRYes you can plug in a RGBW strip, but only if you have an ultibot on the side of your printer iso a big U.
Good to know. We are actually running 8 S5s with the ultibot logo. So it sounds like it might be possible to just swap the LEDs for my situation, but I'm not going to do that on relatively brand new machines. Does that then explain why the brightness of the lights changes when I attempt to change the H and S values via the API? Are those pins connected to different pins on the white LED strips?
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2 hours ago, robinmdh said:
A shame that https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012087619-Using-the-Ultimaker-APIs misses some of the API's on the printer.
Each of the API's has a swagger based description and generated documentation on the printer, we currently have 4 API's on the printer that I'm aware off:-
printer API - base URL http://<printer-ip>/api/v1/ - documentation in: http://<printer-ip>/docs/api/
More info on the authentication on this: Auth is only needed to set data and start print-jobs, etc.
Though if you only use the cluster API to queue/start print jobs then you will not need to do authentication.
The next ones have the base URL and documentation in the same place. - cluster API: http://<printer-ip>/cluster-api/v1/
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material station API: http://<printer-ip>/material-station-api/v1/
This one is only available when you have a material station attached. -
fault API: http://<printer-ip>/fault-api/v1/
This shows any error/warning messages that may be blocking the screen of the printer.
the Cura questions I would trust @nallath on that.
So I take it that the material station is not accessible via the cluster? Will this ever be implemented in the future?
EDIT: I spoke too soon. I realized that within the printers endpoint that it returns the attached material station with material attributes.
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printer API - base URL http://<printer-ip>/api/v1/ - documentation in: http://<printer-ip>/docs/api/
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2 hours ago, robinmdh said:
yes 😞
I'm still a little sad colors got left out when we build the S5, I would have much preferred colors to indicate printer-state or allowing the user to set a color for the printer.
27 minutes ago, Carla_Birch said:Would have been good if was color, so if eg a filament run out happened it would for eg flash an red color so it could be easy to spot. Could someone swap the led strip for a RGB one or is it a limit on the board?
Yes that's exactly what I wanted to do. When a print finished, change to a certain color, when there was an error, change to another color, etc.
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3 hours ago, nallath said:
The S5 doesn't have color lights. The UM3 does. Since they share a codebase it's still in the API.
ahh I see. So all I can do on the S5 is change the brightness?
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I have been attempting to change the color of the LEDs in my Ultimaker S5s using the API, but it never seems to work.
When I set anything other than 0 for h or s, it just dims the lights.
I get a 204 response code.
I can then do a GET request and it shows me the values that I just set, so I know the printer is getting the data.
Is this part of the API broken?
See code below that I found on the forum and changed a little.
def set_mainled(ip, h, s, v): api = initAPI(ip) # read the current LED status led = api.get("api/v1/printer/led").json() print ("current LED state: ",led) if h is None: h = led["hue"] if s is None: s = led["saturation"] if v is None: v = led["brightness"] # Change the LEDs print(api.put("api/v1/printer/led", data={"brightness": v, "saturation": s, "hue": h})) led = api.get("api/v1/printer/led").json() print("set LED state to: ",led) -
On 7/9/2020 at 4:08 AM, ahoeben said:
@alkekmakerspace, to identify and hopefully fix the problem it helps if you at least answer the same questions as asked above:
Logged in on my laptop, not logged in on the other 4 windows 10 installs that I tried. Disabling the UM3network plugin seems to stop cura from using too many resources, but that also stops the ability to print over the network. We do not have octoprint. The camera streams are active, but they go in and out. I rarely connect to them.
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I have the same exact issue with Cura using too many resources until the computer is unusable.
I have installed Cura 4.6.1 on multiple windows 10 machines in a lab setting as well as my own laptop. All computers experience the same problem.
I have to load my model, send the print job, and then exit Cura. I cannot leave cura running for more than 5-10 minutes since it will become unusable.
Set Default Material When Connecting to Printer
in UltiMaker Cura
Posted · Edited by alkekmakerspace
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.