Material Station Primes after Print

[galaxy_xxxx 2]

Hello All,

 

after doing some testing with the new UM Materil Station I found that after a print has been completed the Material Station Primes / Extrudes some Material before unloading. From my view this makes no sense to me except waste of material. I understand the MS does this before printing to prime / extrude the material, but why after the print before unloading?

 

Cheers

 

DPX

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi @galaxy_xxxx, thank you for your message. I'm happy to hear you finally have your material station! 

It primes after your print to ensure the correct amount of pressure in the print core. It then cools down and does a cold pull to get a proper tip on the end of the filament while it travels back through the bowden tube. The goal is to prevent a small thread of filament being pulled in the bowden tube, as this can obstruct new filament for your future print job. 

An additional goal is to clean the print core as much as possible, so there is minimal filament residue that could mix with your next print job. 

 

We are actively working on optimizing this procedure so it will cost less material and less time, but the goal remains the same. 

Hope this helps! 

[galaxy_xxxx 2]

Hello SandervG,

 

I appreciate your comments here. The S5 itself (without the Material Station) does not have this behavior. Even by unloading the material, it does not prime / extrude the material. Still, it makes sense for me when you load the material and prime / extrude this, but when you finished the printjob, so a lot of material already went through and you are at a point to unload the material and extrude / prime again. I an analog scenario, if you have a small single engine plane, you need to prime it before starting the engine in order that there is enough fuel in the system, which is OK. But than you fly around and land the plane at the end and go to your parking position. Short before you shutdoen the engine you want to prime it again, no one is doing this. I assume that a whole team discussed the system design of the MS and a lot of descisions have been made. I just want to point out my point of view frome the user side.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

PS: Thanks a lot for your help, it is really true that the item arrived finally !

[SandervG 1,521]

Hi Dennis, thank you for your fast response. It's correct that the S5 alone does not run through the same cycle. This is because when you switch material on the S5 this requires some manual work and personal attendance, and it is not geared towards an automatic process from one print job to the next. 

Now if you add the Material Station to the mix (and potentially the Air Manager), you now have a station that should by itself unload material at the end of a print job and load new material that matches your new print job. To make sure this goes smoothly this prime + cold pull is inserted in the process. 

 

I think your analog example would make more sense if the engine plan would fly with fuel A first, but it can also run on fuel B and C and you don't know yet which fuel will be used for its next flight. So when your flight ends, you clean and rinse the engine and leave it empty for the next flight and you fill it up with the whatever fuel you need for that flight. 

(hopefully this makes sense and I didn't make it more confusing!) 

[galaxy_xxxx 2]

Hello SandervG,

 

OK, I gues we need to sit together with a good beer and find a solution !?

 

🙂

 

Cheers

Dennis

[uncle_bob 21]

4 hours ago, SandervG said:

Hi Dennis, thank you for your fast response. It's correct that the S5 alone does not run through the same cycle. This is because when you switch material on the S5 this requires some manual work and personal attendance, and it is not geared towards an automatic process from one print job to the next. 

Now if you add the Material Station to the mix (and potentially the Air Manager), you now have a station that should by itself unload material at the end of a print job and load new material that matches your new print job. To make sure this goes smoothly this prime + cold pull is inserted in the process. 

 

I think your analog example would make more sense if the engine plan would fly with fuel A first, but it can also run on fuel B and C and you don't know yet which fuel will be used for its next flight. So when your flight ends, you clean and rinse the engine and leave it empty for the next flight and you fill it up with the whatever fuel you need for that flight. 

(hopefully this makes sense and I didn't make it more confusing!) 

 

Hi

 

..... as the manager of the airline, I *do* know what fuel is next up. 🙂

 

How about a flag somewhere to let me provide this information to the material station (from Cura or via the touch screen) ?

 

If all I'm doing is endlessly printing the same material again and again (yes it's boring ... welcome to the real world) that would save a lot of wear and tear on the system. 

 

If I change my mind and now want to use something else .... then do the whole super duper deprime reprime process. ( = I would need a button to make that happen as well ).

 

Yes there is a bit of firmware to code to make this happen. That's why you have firmware guys. Indeed they do eventually retire and go off and buy things like S5's to play with ... 🙂

 

=======

 

I believe I heard that somebody was buying the next round of beer ??? 🙂

 

Bob

[SandervG 1,521]

What if instead of someone tediously rinsing the engine with too much resources that would also take too much time, could be optimised by only a fragment of the time and material necessary to perform? The procedure would be less intrusive and you wouldn't need to make any sacrifices to the reliability. That (reducing the time and material necessary to perform this task) is something we are actively working on as we speak. 

 

Reducing the amount of times that material is being pushed through the feeders is always a good idea. You can request it on Github as a feature, I read that you were familiar with it. 

 

🍻

[uncle_bob 21]

40 minutes ago, SandervG said:

What if instead of someone tediously rinsing the engine with too much resources that would also take too much time, could be optimised by only a fragment of the time and material necessary to perform? The procedure would be less intrusive and you wouldn't need to make any sacrifices to the reliability. That (reducing the time and material necessary to perform this task) is something we are actively working on as we speak. 

 

Reducing the amount of times that material is being pushed through the feeders is always a good idea. You can request it on Github as a feature, I read that you were familiar with it. 

 

🍻

 

Hi

 

The risk of simply putting suggestions straight into the "add this" pile is that there is some blindingly obvious reason *not* to do this or that. Indeed what is very obvious to the world may or may not be obvious to one individual. That's been proven a lot of times in the past ....

 

Discussion *is* a good thing. 

 

Bob