How to know whether E-value means "filament length in mm extruded" or "filament volume in mm^3 extruded"?

[PrintingPete 0]

Hey there,

I would like to know if it is possible to see from the plain GCode whether the E-value refers to the volume of extruded material [mm^3] or to the length of filament that is drawn into the extruder [mm].

I have read through a couple of posts here and found both interpretations of the E-value. It would do me a great favor if somebody could shed some light on this as I have been struggeling with this question for quite some time.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Best,

Peter

[Nicolinux 288]

It depends of the gcode flavor you have set. If you haven an UM2, then Cura is set to "UltiGcode" where values are in mm^3. Regular gcode refers to mm of filament.

You can set the gcode flavor in Cura in the menu -> "Machine" -> "Machine Settings" -> "Gcode flavor".

[PrintingPete 0]

Great, thanks for the quick reply! Do you know by any chance whether there is a way of retracing the GCode flavor from a G-Code file? I could imagine that this information might be hidden somewhere in the code.

[gr5 2,271]

Well there are several ways to tell. One way is to check for if the temperature is set. Only reprap mode sets the temperature (near the top of the file) of the nozzle (and also the bed if you have it). I think there are other ways if you look at the comments.

Also realize that if you are in cura you can go to the file menu and choose "load profile from gcode...". Every gcode file has all the settings encoded at the bottom - cura can read this and set all your settings to those values then you can go through leisurely through all the cura menus and see what the settings were at when you created the file but I don't think it will tell you if it was ultigcode mode or reprap mode. But everything else is in there.

[Nicolinux 288]

Or just slice the same object twice and in between change the gcode flavor. Save the two .gcode files to disk and then use a diff tool to see the textual differences.