Improvement suggestions for Cura

[Asger-P 3]

Hi

I don't know if this is the right place for suggestions to improve Cura, if not please direct me to the right place.

 

First some for the slicer:
Fill massive walls with straight lines instead of 45 degree pattern
Retract everywhere if the distance are over X mm even with infill and support
Minimise travel by always start layer in the same corner as last layer ended.
Minimise is way more important then finishing one kind of printing before starting another kind.
Enhance strength in holes by letting second layer from top and bottom cross over the circles.

 

File handling:
Create local backup: save each gcode file to a local directory filename DateTime+Filename.gcode
Post process plugin should be saved with project and be by project

 

User interface:

Post process plugin window should remember its size.
Machine Settings window should remember its size.
It should be possible to set the removable drive letter permanently and then dim the button when there is no disk.
Ctrl+arrows should move the preview scrollbars
When the horizontal preview scrollbar reach the ends there should be an automatic layer change and the scrollbar should jump to the other end and start over.
Feed-rate colours should be the same on all prints, so that it is possible to know speed by looking at the color.

Thanks for a great program
Best regards

Asger

Edited January 21, 2019 by Asger-P

[burtoogle 513]

14 hours ago, Asger-P said:

First some for the slicer:
Fill massive walls with straight lines instead of 45 degree pattern

 

If you are talking about infill, you can use a different infill pattern and/or change the direction of the infill lines.

 

14 hours ago, Asger-P said:

Retract everywhere if the distance are over X mm even with infill and support

 

You an already do that when combing within infill (don't know about support).

 

14 hours ago, Asger-P said:

Minimise travel by always start layer in the same corner as last layer ended.

 

Unfortunately, because Cura can make use of multiple CPU cores it computes the print moves for each layer independently and so when computing layer N + 1 it doesn't know where layer N finished.

14 hours ago, Asger-P said:

Minimise is way more important then finishing one kind of printing before starting another kind.

 

Sorry, don't understand that, please re-phrase.

 

14 hours ago, Asger-P said:

Enhance strength in holes by letting second layer from top and bottom cross over the circles. 

 

Sorry, don't understand that either, can you describe some more or provide a sketch?

[Asger-P 3]

2 hours ago, smartavionics said:

 

1. If you are talking about infill, you can use a different infill pattern and/or change the direction of the infill lines.

2. You an already do that when combing within infill (don't know about support).

 

3. Unfortunately, because Cura can make use of multiple CPU cores it computes the print moves for each layer independently and so when computing layer N + 1 it doesn't know where layer N finished.

 

4. Sorry, don't understand that, please re-phrase.

 

5. Sorry, don't understand that either, can you describe some more or provide a sketch?

1. It isn't infill although it is affected by the infill settings, because if i set infill to 0% the wall will be hollow, but at only 1% the wall is totally filled with a 45° pattern (see first pic) stressing the printer a lot.
Changing the line direction have no effect when printing a square, it will at best only fix half the problem. 

 

2. That will just remove the stringing problem, the reason for my suggestion is the material that is missing after a travel, the material that produced the string. This missing material is weakening the printed part (see pic2), the material missing around the hole is after travel.  

 

3. Makes sense, but you could count the processors and the divide the layers between as many threads reducing the between layer travel a lot. 

4. The slicer seem to print finish each kind of print on a layer before starting on the next kind, outer wall, inner wall, infill.. See Pic 3 It starts the hole at the red dot ends at the blue, then it does a lot of other printing, then it comes back to the yellow dot after a long travel to print the last circle. the long travel have ozed out some material whioch is now missing as you can see in pic 2.

 

5. I tried to show what i mean in CrossOver.png (pic 4)

 

P.s how do you split a quote into several parts ?

 

Best regards

Asger

Edited January 22, 2019 by Asger-P

[burtoogle 513]

1 hour ago, Asger-P said:

1. It isn't infill although it is affected by the infill settings, because if i set infill to 0% the wall will be hollow, but at only 1% the wall is totally filled with a 45° pattern (see first pic) stressing the printer a lot.
Changing the line direction have no effect when printing a square, it will at best only fix half the problem. 

 

Ah, OK. That's where it has filled the gaps between walls. Yes, the standard Cura does not make a good job of that (or printing thin walls). My cura releases have a different implementation and works better in this regard (see https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s43vqzmi4d2bqe2/AAADdYdSu9iwcKa0Knqgurm4a?dl=0 for my releases).

 

2 hours ago, Asger-P said:

2. That will just remove the stringing problem, the reason for my suggestion is the material that is missing after a travel, the material that produced the string. This missing material is weakening the printed part (see pic2), the material missing around the hole is after travel. 

 

As I said, it can already be told to retract when combing travels are longer than a given distance.

 

2 hours ago, Asger-P said:

3. Makes sense, but you could count the processors and the divide the layers between as many threads reducing the between layer travel a lot. 

 

Would adding that complexity really make a big difference? Rather dependent on the model being sliced I think.

 

2 hours ago, Asger-P said:

4. The slicer seem to print finish each kind of print on a layer before starting on the next kind, outer wall, inner wall, infill.. See Pic 3 It starts the hole at the red dot ends at the blue, then it does a lot of other printing, then it comes back to the yellow dot after a long travel to print the last circle. the long travel have ozed out some material whioch is now missing as you can see in pic 2.

 

Yes, the way that Cura is structured means that it often doesn't exploit locality as much as one would like. Outer and inner walls should often be printed together if the optimize wall print order setting is enabled.

If you are losing material from oozing it means your settings are wrong (retraction length/speed, temperature, etc.)

 

2 hours ago, Asger-P said:

 

5. I tried to show what i mean in CrossOver.png (pic 4)

 

OK, thanks. Well maybe that is stronger or maybe not. Is it proven to be stronger?

 

2 hours ago, Asger-P said:

P.s how do you split a quote into several parts ?

 

By highlighting only the part of the text you wish to quote!

 

[Asger-P 3]

7 hours ago, smartavionics said:

My cura releases have a different implementation and works better in this regard (see https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s43vqzmi4d2bqe2/AAADdYdSu9iwcKa0Knqgurm4a?dl=0 for my releases).

 

Which version do I need to download, the one that seem to be the latest ?
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s43vqzmi4d2bqe2/AAAF232ISfhlamx53I9bPJ10a/Cura-mb-master-win64-20190118.exe?dl=0

 

7 hours ago, smartavionics said:

Would adding that complexity really make a big difference? Rather dependent on the model being sliced I think

 

Of course not always, but minimising travel is always good, the result do tend to get better. Cura 3.6 is way better then 3.51  
One thing that should be avoided though, is going back over a finished surface to fill tiny gabs in the corners, they should always be filled either first or during the closest print.

 

8 hours ago, smartavionics said:

If you are losing material from oozing it means your settings are wrong (retraction length/speed, temperature, etc.)

No it was because 'Max Comb Distance With No Retract' was set to 0, for some reason that setting wasn't visible in my settings window, it is now set to 3 and that helped a lot. :-) Thank you very much.
 

 

8 hours ago, smartavionics said:

OK, thanks. Well maybe that is stronger or maybe not. Is it proven to be stronger?

I don't know , because I don't know how to make Cura slice that way.:-) Anyway now that no material is missing around my holes, I'm not so sure anymore.

Thanks for all the good info

Cura is great.:-)

Best regards

Asger

[burtoogle 513]

6 minutes ago, Asger-P said:

Which version do I need to download, the one that seem to be the latest ?

 

Yes, the latest is generally the best. I keep a few old releases around just in case something gets broken. These releases are based on the Cura master branches + my own mods. So it's always possible that they have new bugs or problems that haven't been discovered yet. The releases don't get a lot of testing other than they are what I use for all my own 3d printing. I don't release stuff that is known to be broken.

[mantis3347 0]

I would like to see the following feature added - when I send a file to my Ultimaker S5 machine via WiFi, a copy of that print file is also saved to the USB plugged into the front of the machine.  This way, I can reprint or restart a current or past print from the machine.  This would be very convenient.  Sometimes, a print fails or I need to stop it to change a core or filament.  At the machine, there is no way I know of to restart or reprint an old part without going back to my computer.  Thanks!

[TDielemans 0]

I may be a late to this thread, but I was wondering if a suggestion could be made to make it possible to set the layer height differently depending on the print head. Of course these would have to be equal intervals of each other (I.e. Core A = 0.1mm layers, B = 0.2mm layers).

Reason I ask is that we often make multi-material nests, with the TPU top coat for reduced marring, and I was thinking of way to improve throughput would be to print the base with a 0.8mm nozzle and as coarse as possible. But then the TPU with a 0.4mm nozzle and a more fine finish.

You'd essentially print 2 layers of the one material for every 1 layer of the other. This would then be 3 passes per set value, instead of 4 passes per set value.

 

Thanks in advance.

[csermie 0]

I have no idea if this would actually save material, but I hate prime towers. Would it be possible to just trace a small line on the print bed like a purge line to prime the nozzle instead of building a huge tower?

[gr5 2,167]

You need to do that on every layer.  And if the part takes up a huge part of the bed you have to be careful not to touch down too close to your part.  And if the part is tall enough it will eventually be sticking up through the gantry when you are drawing this "purge line".

 

But what you *can* do is disable prime tower.  You get these tiny "sausages" when the nozzle that isn't in use extrudes a little bit.  One on each layer but if you don't care about having perfect quality it's fine.  And if you have a um3/s5/s3 they are pretty dialed in now (for the basic pla/pla and pla/pva profiles) that you can pretty much get away with no prime tower.

[csermie 0]

Well yes, but the problem with the purge tower to me is that i need it on every layer. I was thinking that it has to have a certain amount of space behind the model so the whole gantry can touch down to the bed. Kind of like the space along the edge of the bed for skirts and brims. This would decrease your effective build volume, but then if you were to need that volume, you could just go with a prime tower instead. I have a 2-in-1-out system, so i need to prime the nozzle every time. I just wish there was a way that saved my precious filament.

[GregValiant 1,245]

Hello @gr5 and @csermie.

The prime tower does have a couple of settings that determine how much material it uses for purge.  The diameter (Prime Tower Size) and the volume (Prime Tower Minimum Volume) would seem to cover the situation.  Having to drop down in the Z is never a good idea with a print on the plate.

A couple of questions arise...

#1)  How would you know what height to go back to?  If G60 (save current position) and G61 (return to saved position) are enabled in the firmware it can be done but otherwise there is no way to order the printer on-the-fly to "go back to where you were".  And you better make the Z move first.

#2)  What would be the XY start location of the purge line(s)?  Would that location need to index so the Z is always 0.  If you always go to the same position and purge on top of a previous purge line then wouldn't that also be a sort of prime tower?  Instead of being round it would be one line width wide by however mm's long and it would still be a volume much as "Prime Tower Minimum Volume" provides.

There is going to be material lost in any switch over.  Going from any color to white is always an issue as the white takes a lot more mm's of filament to clean out the previous color.

 

There was a poster here who came up with a pretty cool idea for a wipe station.  He added a stepper to a brush contraption mounted on the X beam.  In the main Gcode file he would call a "cleaning routine" using M32.  He had enabled G60 and G61 in his firmware so he could save the current position, go to the cleaning station, the brush would move back and forth, and then the print head would return to the saved position.  It was a nice setup.  Instead of a brush there could be a bucket to extrude into and a wipe feature to take the last booger off.  But in the end I think that the amount of material used to purge would be the same in any scenario.

 

What would be nice is if within the Cura prepare scene the Prime Tower representation had a grip so it could be dragged to a different location.  Currently the location must be typed in manually in a trial and error sort of way.

 

And now the rain has stopped and it's time to go fishing!

[Gero 54]

at this point i have to say that i have got used to the purge tower. 
i tried printing without the purge tower for a while, but since my main focus is on a clean print image, it's the lesser of two evils if you have a reliable flow of material after each nozzle switch. 

i now also have a printer from bcn3d that works with purge buckets. in fact, i have to say that they don't really replace the purge tower because they are attached to the outermost sides. the resulting travel move is so long that oozing ruins the print image. 

a purge tower fulfils its purpose best when it is placed as close as possible to the print object. 
i have just suggested that there should be a function that automatically places the purge tower as close as possible to the print object. apparently this feature is already planned. i therefore hope that this function will appear in the foreseeable future. 

[csermie 0]

Well, okay guys. That makes a lot of sense and I am no G-Code expert by any stretch at this point. I think I figured out another way for myself anyway by just using my machine in a way it was not intended. I have a Sovol SV02, which is a dual bowden extruder single nozzle printer. It has marks on the bowden tube for where to load the filament to and then when it switches it goes the right amount to the nozzle. I will just put the filament past this point and it will go too far and automatically purge the nozzle. This will leave massive surface artifacts, but I can just use some pliers and a distinct lack of care for print quality and then I'm done!

[GregValiant 1,245]

Practice, practice, practice...

[csermie 0]

Could you change the viewing to zoom in on your cursor like in CAD instead of the actual center of the volume? That would be MASSIVELY helpful.

[GregValiant 1,245]

If you are in the Perspective view you can go to "Preferences/Configure Cura/General and in the Viewport Behavior box is "Zoom towards Mouse Direction".  It doesn't work when in Orthographic but it's fine when in Perspective.  Those settings are in the General section as well under Camera Rendering.

[csermie 0]

I had no idea. Thanks!

[narutojuanna 0]

Where  can I post suggestion to Cura? They need to make Cura on iPad Air They already have other slicing app but Cura is behind and hasn’t have one for iPad yet while other slicing app already here I use my so card on my iPad to do my design and go to people house to design there product what they need made I’m trying to set up a 3d printing business mobile in a van and travel people house to print and fix stuff but I wish Cura slicer was on iPad.

[GregValiant 1,245]

You'll need two vehicles or a bed in the van.

It would be easier and faster to buy a real computer.

Suggestions go on Github.