Very disappointed in the latest firmware. As many have said it might just not be a possibility for some of us to run any cloud connections. At best I managed to create a connection to the printer via printer network but it has no connection to the internet. Via VPN I cannot see the video feed either.
With the latest firmware we are kind of crippled. Manageable but annoyed compared what is was on the last stable 7.x.x firmware. Biggest drawbacks for our company so far has been the inability to duplicate prints, reprint, see easily the video feed, overall connection speed from computers to management console. Although we did use DF for maintenance scheduling but that's about it as we are unable to send anything via cloud (DF).
Our company policies & customer agreements state very clearly that no IP can leave our servers rendering cloud systems as a big no-no. And our company ain't willing to take any agreement risks for a very miniscule part of the company actions. 3D printing isn't our primary field but it supports it but at the end its a very minor topic in the grand scheme of things. With the management console + printer IP-address operating S5 was doable.
At this point I'm reconsidering getting further expansions of UM-printers as the management of the printer is nerfed. On top of it I can't create statistically sound business case to expand our printing capabilities as history is now gone. I had relatively good data for the past 12 months with usage time over 70%.
Edit: I have to add something positive though. I've noticed more functionalities on the printer itself which a very welcome change. Such as showing how many prints are in queue and what has to be done to print next in a more clear fashion. Also the possibility to override the possible changes. 🙂
Edited by ESokkoEVBL
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tomnagel 126
Reprinting will come back in firmware version 8.1.2. I expect it will be released within a week.
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Ottoclav 3
First off, whats with the limited reactions to posts? Ridiculous. Second, The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Telling me that I have to operate on a network that I have no physical access to is essentially extortion, even if the Digital Factory has a free option, I'm operating on a clean sterile local network at a worksite that has sketchy internet access anyway. My supervisor is the guy that cancels prints and checks on them after hours, since I don't have that kind of clearance. I've lost my reprint commands in the Management Console, which means I essentially have to recompile all my gcode for many of my products, almost each and every time I want to print. If we wanted the Digital Factory, we would have signed up for it. This reeks of the Hasbro and WoTC scandal earlier this year, when they attempted to pull an OGL update that attempted to funnel TTRPG players into their ONED&D architecture.
Why would ANYBODY think it was a good idea to remove a reprint option or a video monitoring system that functioned pretty well on the hardware that these printers have, to save the hardware? It doesn't make any sense, UNLESS you added some crazy features that need additional computational power AT ALL moments of the printing process. Is that what happened? Are there new and totally useful features in the update that we haven't been notified of?
I stand with rachael7 and MaxD and the many others that we used these features regularly and at least for me, this update crippled at least a day of my workload, just from the losing the reprint option in Management Console, and the feastures that came with Local Network Functionalilty. These are pretty great printers, and I've had a lot less problems with them than my supervisor who really hates them and wants to just smash them and buy competitor products. Now I have to spend my time reverting back to the previous firmware so that my supervisor doesn't flip a lid when he finds out that we lost our main functions.
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gr5 2,225
Or wait a bit for 8.1.1? Sometimes going back a version on the s-line printers is easy but not this time. You have to remove covers and do a firmware recovery and it also will reset the database and everything (everything? Maybe?) stored (old gcode files, possibly network settings, possibly calibration data such as XY calibration values for known print cores).
To clarify - it's rare that you have to do a firmware recovery to revert but occasionally the changes can't be undone using firmware installer that was written before the latest firmware version (I hope that makes sense).
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