Unlock Materials for Modified Ultimaker 2+

[SBruinsEPTAM 0]

Is there a way to "unblock" all materials in Cura?

 

We have several Ultimaker 2+ printers that we have modified with Bondtec extruders, magnetic build plates and aftermarket nozzles specifically to print "non-standard" materials. We still use Cura for slicing but the default Ultimaker 2+ machine profile has a number of materials disabled. We run custom profiles so it's not that big of a deal but materials like Generic PETG and a number of other materials from the marketplace are disabled. I've tried creating a custom machine with the same specs as the UM2+ but by doing that I loose the nozzle size selection.

[gr5 2,172]

I don't think it is that the profiles are blocked - I think they just don't exist.  No one created the profiles.  Each combination of nozzle, printer, filament is a different profile.  There are hundreds of profiles for UM printers alone.  No one created any for carbon fiber materials for UM2 as it's a lot of work to create, maintain, and test these everytime a new version of cura comes out.  Immense.  Amount.  Of work.

 

Anyway I find that the basic set of profiles are typically better than the custom material ones anyway.  So if you are printing say "XSTRAND GF30 PA-6" know that pa6 is just nylon (PA12 is also nylon but less common) and GF30 means 30% glass fibers.  So just choose any Nylon profile.  Change the line width to match your nozzle.  And you are good to go.  If it's a PETG with CF you can just choose a generic PETG profile (or even a CPE profile - these profiles have less customization than you would think).

 

Often you will get better results this way than trying to choose the "official" profile.

[SBruinsEPTAM 0]

I should clarify that I am creating my own profiles regardless, I am not using the standard Ultimaker Profiles. That said others in my organization are also using the profiles that I develop and as such it would be nice if the material selected in Cura could match the profile. For example, we print a lot with PTEG but the Generic PETG profile in Cura is disabled for the UM2+ so we pick CPE instead and use a custom profile named "PETG-0.4mm Nozzle-0.2mm Layers". It's less about using the specific material profiles and more about the user being able to pick the correct material in Cura for the custom profile I have created. Does that make sense?

 

All the materials "unlock" if I create a "Custom FFF printer" but then I loose the ability to pick nozzle size from a dropdown list. 

Edited April 21, 2022 by SBruinsEPTAM

[gr5 2,172]

Ah.  A few years ago I looked at the files that set this up.  And edited them.  It's confusing.  But you can go in there and modify them and then it will allow more materials.  I forget what I did but there are multiple files - like one for each material and then one for each printer maybe and maybe it was in the printer files?  I forget but it's pretty easy to read the files - they are meant to be read by a computer but they are also human readable.

 

It's not too hard to edit these.  Then exit cura and go back in and it will read the files when it launches.

 

However you will have to re-edit this file/files each time you upgrade to a newer version of cura.

 

grep is your friend.  It's very helpful to have a search tool (like grep) that can search through all the files in a directory tree for a string like "Generic PETG" to start to decode how it works.  Unfortunately there is no manual to these configuration files.