Material Station Will Not Accept Certain Materials

[rachael7 74]

So after watching the Cura masterclass webinar, I followed the instructions and defined some new materials for use with my S5/Material Station. Some of the materials showed up on the material station and some didn't. After some experimentation I was able to determine that the ones that showed up have material types (PLA/ABS/etc) that were different from any of the generic material types and the ones that don't show up use one of the material types that also appear in the generics. So if I want to make a new PLA brand, I have to use a material type such as PLA1 in order to make it usable with the material station. Is this intended behavior or a bug?

Edited September 23, 2020 by rachael7

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

Generic materials as defined in Cura should be all compatible with the Material Station. If your Pro Bundle does not let you choose one of those something might be broken with the material table in your printer. In such a case, I would recommend to reset all printer settings.

Defining Material Station compatible materials in Cura is not that straigth forward. You can copy a generic material and unlink it from the original material to get it sent to the printer. But you cannot define the Material Station specific properties like depriming temperature etc. in Cura but only in the json file of the material itself.

If you just have a different PLA then you will probably be fine leaving those settings as they are as differences between different PLA filaments tend to be rather small. If you have a completely new material you would definitively have to adjust those settings in order to ensure proper unloading etc. of the material.

[rachael7 74]

I guess I didn't do a good enough job of explaining the problem.  Let me try to outline it more clearly.

 

- There is no issue with the generic materials. I can select them fine, but using the generic option doesn't allow one to use the full capabilities of the machine or Cura. There are many handicaps to using the generic material, including that you can only effectively use one at a time and you can't save their material parameters, so a custom material really is necessary to fully utilize the machine.

 

- Creating new profiles is not difficult. I know how to do it, in exactly the way you said, by duplicating an existing profile, unlinking, and changing what is necessary. I know about the risk with handler-specific parameters, but in my experience it isn't a big problem if you start with a material that is close to the one you want to add.

 

The issue is that, as but one example, you cannot add a new brand of PLA.  If you wanted to use say Colorfabb Build Series PLA, you could duplicate the Generic PLA material, unlink it, change the necessary fields in the material definition, and save it.  Next time you start Cura, it will download that new profile to the printer. The problem is that the new material will not appear as an option to select on the material handler when you load the material in the printer. However, if the material type field in the material settings, is set to 'PLA1' or 'PLA-A', instead of just 'PLA', the material WILL show up as an option to select on the material handler. Further experimentation will show that any new material you make, if it shares a material type with one of the generic materials, will not be available for selection on the material handler. Any new profiles with material types different from those available in the generics will be available for selection on the material handler. What I want to know is if this behavior was intentional or if this is a bug that needs to be addressed.

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

I see your point. Yes, afaik the brand is not included in the text displayed on the printer. But you can use e.g. "colorFabb XT" instead of just "XT" in the type field and then it should be displayed correctly.

The routines for displaying that name on the printer probably come from a time where no strategic material partnership existed (Ultimaker 3 Launch). So it could have been intensional. But with the partner materials and the tendency that people want to have more and more their own profiles it could be that it will be adjusted in future.