Heating speed-up plugin

[RStei 0]

When printing small parts I got a bit embarrased because Cura G-Code first heats the bed, waits for it to reach its temperature, then the nozzle. So I decided to code a small Cura 15.04-plugin to start heating the nozzle while in parallel heating the bed.

The code:

 

#Name: Parallel Heat#Info: Start pre-heating the nozzle while heating the bed#Depend: GCode#Type: postprocess#Param: temperature(float:170) Preheat Temperature (deg C)__copyright__ = "Copyright © 2016 Roland Steinbach  - Released under terms of the AGPLv3 License"import refrom Cura.util import profilewith open(filename, "r") as f:lines = f.readlines()with open(filename, "w") as f:f.write("M104 S%f\n" % (temperature))for lIndex in xrange(len(lines)):line = lines[lIndex]f.write(line) 

 

Save this as "parallelHeat.py" and place it in your plugin-folder. Then activate it and set a somewhat reasonable temperature for the nozzle.

Now when starting to print, the nozzle gets heated in parallel with the bed. This speeds up the print appr. your bed-heat time.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Guest

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

What material do you need such a behavior for? Heating up the nozzle should take much less time than heating up the bed. Cura heats the bed up to a certain level and then starts to heat the nozzle in parallel. On my UM2 with 35W heater the two are pretty well synchronized.

Please be also aware that legacy Cura you wrote the plugin for is not supported anymore by Ultimaker.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Guest

[RStei 0]

This is especially for the impatient

My nozzle usually takes appr. 2 minutes to heat up for ABS, think of a small print with about 5 min printtime. This saves you almost 25% of printing time (in fact the time the nozzle needs to heat up).

Most important in your post are the words "and then" it heats the nozzle, this is done in parallel with the plugin.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Guest
last chapter added

[ultiarjan 1,223]

If you use tinkergnome firmware you can already preheat the while you're still slicing.... if you are really impatient.... it makes sense when doing abs with the bed at 100c....

[RStei 0]

I know (I also can do that in Repetier Host) but OTOH sometimes I do have the object already sliced and just want to print it.

Don't know if it's worth the discussion, the plugin helps me and I just wanted to share if someone is similar impatient ;-).

[tinkergnome 927]

@ultiarjan

Someone should add: this does not work with an UM2 (resp. with UltiGcode).

I assume, Roland uses this for an UMO or a different printer.

[RStei 0]

With UltiGCode the heating is done in the firmware, not in the GCode, so no luck there. I don't have an UM2, so could not test that.