UltiTuner, a tool to tweak your printer

[leonhart88 2]

2 hours ago, robinmdh said:

@leonhart88 I think you'll have to write some code to do this, the xy calibration in the ultimaker is set as for the combination of serial numbers, making this a bit more complex, the calibration is only applied when a print starts and removed after, there is also a large offset that Cura knows about, which differs per printer model a bit. this is set as the hotend_offset_1_x(18mm for the UM3) and hotend_offset_1_y (0 AFAIK) properties.

The offset is set in steps of ~ 0.07 mm since a research paper suggested that as a the smallest difference the average human can see with the naked eye.

 

Yup, we already have our own software to do all the offset calculation stuff so that's no big deal (see product info here if you're curious: https://www.emberprototypes.com/products/cxc).

 

The biggest barrier for ease of use and adoption that I can see on Ultimakers and for making user calibration easier is lack of manual jogging/control of the gantry.

 

I may try and make an app to do what was described above in previous posts, but still unsure about the adoption likelihood given that users will have to put their machines into a specific mode and potentially use another app and/or do other things just to get started.

Edited February 13, 2023 by leonhart88

[3dprntz 4]

For firmware 8.1.2 its saying that the commands aren't compatible. Wondering if I'm missing something. thanks.

[Smithy 1,144]

I will check it....

Which commands have you tried and which printer do you have?

[3dprntz 4]

Thanks for the quick response! I tried the cooldown, sshserver, and one other command.

 

[Smithy 1,144]

Cooldown is not working and not needed anymore since FW v7, see here:

 

I have to check the other commands, haven't used Ultituner since v8, so I will check all commands and come back to you.

 

[3dprntz 4]

7 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Cooldown is not working and not needed anymore since FW v7, see here:

 

I have to check the other commands, haven't used Ultituner since v8, so I will check all commands and come back to you.

 

I guess that I have the cool down and havent disabled it or not sure how it works. I realized though that you have to turn off the firewall to do anything. Ill try and see if im missing anything too.

[Smithy 1,144]

The tool connects via SSH to your printer, so you have to enable the developer mode before you can use the tool. If the firewall blocks SSH too is a good question, I have never enabled my firewall.

 

But I have tried now some commands with FW 8.1.1 and it is working. I tried cleanbed, sshserver, leveling.

[rachael7 73]

2 hours ago, Smithy said:

The tool connects via SSH to your printer, so you have to enable the developer mode before you can use the tool. If the firewall blocks SSH too is a good question, I have never enabled my firewall.

 

But I have tried now some commands with FW 8.1.1 and it is working. I tried cleanbed, sshserver, leveling.

Yeah, the firewall blocks all local access. With the firewall on, the printer will only talk to Digital Factory and nothing else.

[Metusalem 4]

Excellent work Smithy!

 

The clearbed function alone is worth it. I wish this (and other) functions were part of the web GUI! Your command line UI is a useful substitute.

 

Some other features I would like to have:

- A setting to hide firmware update prompts. I.e. no "printer tasks pending" symbol unless there are other tasks pending than a firmware upgrade.

 

- A way to (permanently) remove the ad for the cloud service in the web GUI. This sometimes appear on the Management console page and takes up valuable screen space. Also, it does risk someone accidentally clicking the button.

 

- A way to download the gcode/ufp file for a job in the queue or history. The file is obviously stored on the printer as you can resubmit it. In some cases when we have had problems, Ultimaker has asked us for the exact gcode file used when the problem occurred. The best place to fetch it would be from the history.  Until now we have saved jobs to file as we have sent them, but that is of course a method prone to human errors. 

 

- A way to set the title of the Management Console web GUI page. This is useful when managing multiple printers with each printer in separate tabs in the browser. That worked nice when the printer name was the first part of the title. Then you can easily click the tab for the printer you want to check/manage. I have recently seen that the first part is the word "Ultimaker", which is not helpful at all. If we could set our own text, that would be nice. Perhaps even allowing %printername% to be replaced with the actual name of the printer.

 

If any of these are trivial to implement in UltiTuner, feel free to add them to your idea list!

 

Good luck!

[gr5 2,176]

FYI UltiMaker has been moving the firmware to use DF (digital factory) more and more.  It's free by the way.  It's not to make more money - it's just easier for the programs to do everything through DF instead of the direct network interface.  So newer firmware has removed some networking features and added them to DF plus more.

 

So if that's not your thing you should avoid upgrading the firmware.

 

Personally I'm happy with just using USB sticks.

 

yes the gcode files (ufp files) are on the "hard drive" on the printer.  If you know linux you can connect in (set printer to dev mode then ssh to the shown ip address with username/password root/ultimaker) and one of the partitions has all the old gcode files.

[Metusalem 4]

Thank you gr5!

 

We have no interest in the cloud services.

 

We did "upgrade" one printer to the latest 8.x version and ran into serious troubles, including the need to use USB for large jobs (due to the network errors). We do a lot of remote management, so USB is not really a practical option for us, though we still use SD-cards on the old but reliable UM2+. It does not get as much use as the networked printers though.

 

It was a daunting task to get the printer back to 7.1.3 but now all is well again. They will remain there for the foreseeable future.

 

Kudos to Smithy for further improving the usefulness of these printers!

[mbhsict 6]

On 5/25/2023 at 5:17 PM, Metusalem said:

Thank you gr5!

 

We have no interest in the cloud services.

 

We did "upgrade" one printer to the latest 8.x version and ran into serious troubles, including the need to use USB for large jobs (due to the network errors). We do a lot of remote management, so USB is not really a practical option for us, though we still use SD-cards on the old but reliable UM2+. It does not get as much use as the networked printers though.

 

It was a daunting task to get the printer back to 7.1.3 but now all is well again. They will remain there for the foreseeable future.

 

Kudos to Smithy for further improving the usefulness of these printers!

Hi Metusalem,

Can you expand a bit more on the network errors you had when you went to 8.x firmware?

 

We have 2 machines on 7.x and 2x on 8.x - both the machines started producing CRC errors on our network switches from the day they went to version 8 firmware. I am contemplating rolling them back as I am not getting anywhere with support. As they are in classrooms where students have access to them, the firmware can be updated via the popup that shows up even though I have the settings menu behind a PIN code.

[SanneM 12]

7 hours ago, mbhsict said:

Hi Metusalem,

Can you expand a bit more on the network errors you had when you went to 8.x firmware?

 

We have 2 machines on 7.x and 2x on 8.x - both the machines started producing CRC errors on our network switches from the day they went to version 8 firmware. I am contemplating rolling them back as I am not getting anywhere with support. As they are in classrooms where students have access to them, the firmware can be updated via the popup that shows up even though I have the settings menu behind a PIN code.

 

In firmware 8.2 we have improved the network logging when storing log files on USB
We did this so that we can better debug issues like the one you are experiencing

 

If it is possible for you, then please update to Firmware 8.2 and share logs with your service contact after you see the issue occurring. 

[Smithy 1,144]

On 5/24/2023 at 11:57 PM, Metusalem said:

If any of these are trivial to implement in UltiTuner, feel free to add them to your idea list!

 

sorry for my late reply

Your ideas are great, many useful features, but I fear it will be hard to implement these things. I mean everything is doable, but it would be needed to dive very deep into the UM code to change the behavior. The problem is, when a new firmware version is release you (me) can start from the beginning in worst case. 

 

Personally I don't understand why UM don't listen more to their users and implement functions which are helpful for the operators. i.e. turn off the active leveling from the settings menu, if a user don't want it. 

 

The digital factory cloud is also not for everyone, some don't want to send their files in the cloud and want to keep it internally. Others in bigger companies don't even have interner access from their production department, so there are many cases where a local only installation is needed and would make sense. Sure you can still access your printer from the local network, but as far as I heard some functionality was gone with one of the latest fw updates.

[Metusalem 4]

11 hours ago, mbhsict said:

Hi Metusalem,

Can you expand a bit more on the network errors you had when you went to 8.x firmware?

 

We have 2 machines on 7.x and 2x on 8.x - both the machines started producing CRC errors on our network switches from the day they went to version 8 firmware. I am contemplating rolling them back as I am not getting anywhere with support. As they are in classrooms where students have access to them, the firmware can be updated via the popup that shows up even though I have the settings menu behind a PIN code.

Sure, I am happy to clarify.

 

Yes, after the upgrade to 8.x we saw an avalanche of CRC errors on the switch. We tried different switch ports and different cables etc. until we were sure the Ultimaker was the source of the problems. We also saw the internal video camera became sluggish, sending jobs to the printer took a long time for small jobs and never finished for larger jobs. The web interface was also intermittently unresponsive.

 

Our local Ultimaker rep was not able to explain the reason for the issue, but we agreed to go back to older firmware. First we tried an earlier 8.x without any noticeable difference. Going back to 7.1.3 was a bit more involved but solved our problems. I highly recommend that at this moment. The 8.x actually was a bit crippled in features, so we had double reason to go back.

 

Fortunately, I am a bit careful with new versions, so I tend to upgrade one printer first and let it run for a while. The problem therefore affected only one printer.

 

Hope this is helpful! Do not hesitate to ask for further clarification!

[Metusalem 4]

47 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

sorry for my late reply

...

Thank you for the reply!

 

What you write makes sense. Thanks for all you efforts with this little gadget! Just for fun I used it to connect an extra camera to one printer. It worked (albeit the port numbering made things a tiny bit awkward 🙂 ). We are probably not going to use that anyway as we already have external cameras above each printer looking down. These are all connected to another computer.

 

I agree that all of these features should preferably be part of the firmware.

 

My current workaround is that I have instructed all the usual suspects to never ever hit that "upgrade" button again.

[Smithy 1,144]

7 minutes ago, Metusalem said:

My current workaround is that I have instructed all the usual suspects to never ever hit that "upgrade" button again.

Yes, that's a weak point. You could try, depending on your infrastructure, that you block the outgoing connection to the UM update server/destination on your firewall. Then you can be sure nobody can update the printer by accident.