Feature Request: Travel Blocker STL, willing to pay

[mattw 2]

What: We would like to load one or more secondary STLs and set them as a "Travel Blocker". Travel moves would have to go around the Travel Blocker region. If the end of a print move finds itself within the Travel Blocker for some reason, it would take the shortest distance out of the travel blocker region and then plan it's travel move. If the start of the next print move is for some reason inside the travel blocker, the travel planner would locate an entry point on the perimeter of the travel blocker that is the shortest path the start of the print move.

 

Why: Combing is very useful, but we still have models where travel moves cross regions we prefer to avoid. 

 

How: We are willing to pay for a developer to implement this as a 3rd party add on IF they a contributor to Cura and can eventually roll it in to regular Cura releases.

 

Fallback: If this is too difficult to implement, an acceptable fallback solution would be to optionally set the slicer to serial rather than parallel and set the XY start point of the subsequent layer to match the XY end point of the previous layer. We have noticed that most of the offending travel moves are interlayer to the new start point (regardless of Z Seam Alignment setting). We are aware and understand the reason the new layer XY start can not match the prior layer XY end is due to the nature of parallel slicing. Having the option to sacrifice slicing time for improved print quality would be desirable in some cases.

Edited December 9, 2021 by mattw

[GregValiant 1,330]

I've had the occasional thought about this.  CAM programs do it to keep travel moves away from places where the material hasn't been removed yet.  BobCAD in particular will accept simple line diagrams that can be imported to provide exclusion zones to prevent crashes.

It was explained to me once that altering the motion of the print head is one of the hardest things to change.  I have a feeling it's because there is a large chance of breakage in others areas.  I would take a guess and say that this change would not be an easy thing to do.  It is a good idea though.

Combing and Monotonic cause a lot of movement that some people find truly annoying.  I have a feeling that anything that makes for even more movement, while not actually doing any work, would catch some flak.

 

If you would go over to Github and make a request for a New Feature there then more of the Cura Team and developers will see it.

[mattw 2]

Thank you for the suggestion, I will try posting on Github.