UM S5 display filament weight

[Thullen 0]

I have 2 Ultimaker S5´s and I love them, but there is one thing that bothers me.

The easiest way of knowing how much is left on a reel is to weigh it to ensure there is enough plastic left to finish the print, but the machine displays how much material the print takes in meters.

Is there a way to make the machine display it in grams instead?

I mean Cura shows in grams, but for various reasons I don´t have the computer near the printers, and I cannot connect the printers via network, so I use a USB-stick for the prints.

[Dim3nsioneer 471]

No, there is no way to change that on the machine by e.g. a setting. It would require a change in the firmware.

[Thullen 0]

Is there a logical reason why Ultimaker choose to display length instead of weight? It feels a bit unlogical for many reasons to not display as weight, not the least because Cura displays it as weight..

[XYZDesignPro 60]

Cura gives you both weight and length of the material to be used.  Just mouse over the little "i" icon in the lower right of your screen.

 

Edited June 15 by XYZDesignPro
Fixed my poor typing errors.

[Thullen 0]

30 minutes ago, XYZDesignPro said:

Cura gives you both weight and length of the material to be used.  Just mouse over the little "i" icon in the lower right of your screen.

 

I know, but as I said in my previous post that doesent help.

I dont have a computer near by the printers for different reasons, and I slice up to 10 jobs at a time and put them om a USB stick to print over a couple of days, then remembering what weight Cura displayed for each print is not that obvious.

Sure writing the weight down on a piece of paper is one way to solve it, but then that is an aditional step in the work process. I find it odd not to have the option of displaying the weight in the printer since Cura does it.

[johnse 8]

On 6/15/2019 at 10:52 AM, Thullen said:

I find it odd not to have the option of displaying the weight in the printer since Cura does it.

 

If I am not mistaken, the printer has no need to know the density of filament. It can easily show the length by finding the last extruder move command in the gcode.

 

To display weight, it would need to know the weight per meter.

 

You could calculate this factor for each of your materials, then simply multiply the stated length by that factor when starting a print. 

[Thullen 0]

2 minutes ago, johnse said:

 

If I am not mistaken, the printer has no need to know the density of filament. It can easily show the length by finding the last extruder move command in the gcode.

 

To display weight, it would need to know the weight per meter.

 

You could calculate this factor for each of your materials, then simply multiply the stated length by that factor when starting a print. 

Since Cura can display the weight, the printer should be able to do so as well.

I know I can manualy calculate the weight for each print, but the question was about not having to do so....

The printer knows what material, hence knowing the density should not be an issue, and it knows the length of filament needed.

It should not be a problem to have the printer display the weight pretty acurately for "standard" materials such as PLA, ABS, PETG etc.

[johnse 8]

You could make a similar argument that since Cura can slice the model, there’s no reason the printer could not do so. Some printer controllers such as octoprint can so this.

 

Cura does not get the density from the printer. It gets that from its own list of materials—to which you can add. It communicates with the printer using GCode, which does not have a way of communicating density.

 

Cura could add a comment that could communicate this, but as was mentioned above, that would require a firmware change, and it would only work for things sliced in Cura.

 

 

[Thullen 0]

1 hour ago, johnse said:

You could make a similar argument that since Cura can slice the model, there’s no reason the printer could not do so. Some printer controllers such as octoprint can so this.

 

Cura does not get the density from the printer. It gets that from its own list of materials—to which you can add. It communicates with the printer using GCode, which does not have a way of communicating density.

 

Cura could add a comment that could communicate this, but as was mentioned above, that would require a firmware change, and it would only work for things sliced in Cura.

 

 

You don't think that is comparing apples and pears?

 

This is an Ultimaker printer, using Ultimakers slicer, what does octoprint has to do with it?

 

I know it would require printer firmware updates to do this.

Perhaps you've never used an Ultimaker S5? The printer allso knows the material, Just as Cura knows, it is selected from a list within the printer when the material is loaded, so the density parameter should not be that hard to include.

 

I know it would require printer firmware updates to do this. Hence why I'm asking about it, requesting it so perhaps some clever engineers at Ultimaker can see it and give it a thought.