UltiMaker Cura 5.4 stable released

[ArunC 19]

The full stable release of UltiMaker Cura 5.4 is here and it makes it easier than ever to remove brims and supports from your finished prints. UltiMaker S series users can also look forward to print profiles for our newest UltiMaker PET CF composite material! All of that is on top of the many many tweaks and changes that you’ve come to expect from every Cura release!

 

New and improved tree supports make printing complex parts easier than ever!

 

When we first released tree supports, the aim was to help users to use less material, reduce print times, and end up with cleaner prints. For many many people, tree supports were successful in doing that. However, for one user, they did not go far enough. Rather than complain, Thomas Rahm began figuring out how to make them better and in June of 2020, he created a fork of Cura to do just that. Now, multiple years and many lines of code later, his idea has finally made it into an official Cura release for everyone to use. 

 

These new supports use more and smaller branches rather than fewer larger ones that previously tended to merge together. As a result, tree supports will now use even less filament and therefore take even less time to print. They should also be significantly easier to remove and are also less likely to leave behind scarring on the surface of your completed print. And better yet, you won’t just experience faster print times, but also faster slicing times. Slicing is now done on multiple cores meaning you won't have to wait very long for your tree supports to grow!

 

In order to help get the most out of these new tree supports, you will be able to modify several new settings,they are:

 

• Maximum Branch Angle

• Trunk Diameter

• Branch Diameter

• Branch Diameter Angle

• Preferred Branch Angle

• Diameter Increase to Model

• Minimum Height to Model

• Initial Layer Diameter

• Branch Density

• Tip Diameter

• Limit Branch Reach

• Optimal Branch Range

• Rest Preference

 

 

 

We also released the dragon pencil cup model shown in the image above alongside the 5.4 beta release. If you go to the Thingiverse page for that model, you can find pictures and comments of people who have printed it using these new tree supports. Why not download the model yourself and share your results? 

 

Effortless brim removal

 

 

The order in which brims are printed has been tweaked so that they are now easier to remove. Brims have been a long-standing solution to adhesion issues. They increase the surface area of your part on the print bed so that it is less likely to come loose during printing. They can be an invaluable tool when printing small or thin parts, or parts that are top-heavy. However, despite their utility, many people have spent countless hours tweaking and tuning their printers so that brims are unnecessary. All sorts of fancy glues, build surfaces, and more have been employed to avoid using them. Why? Because they can be a pain to remove. Often leaving behind excess material that needs to be cut or sanded away to get a clean final print. 

 

In this release, we came up with a new solution. The new Smart Brim setting will change how brims are printed so that they are significantly easier to remove. If you enable it in your Cura print settings, you should find your brims peel off easily as shown in the GIF above, and that they leave behind less (or no) excess material. 

 

 

As with the dragon model, the printed Cura logo shown above is also available to download on Thingiverse. And better yet, it’s part of a Cura Cookie Cutter designed by Johan Gude from the UltiMaker team! If you do print it, please send us pictures of your delicious Cura cookies before you eat them!

 

 

UltiMaker PET CF intent profiles now available

 

Following the release of the new UltiMaker PET CF high-performance composite material, you can now use intent profiles when printing on UltiMaker S series printers. As with all of our professionally tuned material profiles, you can select from visual, engineering, and draft profiles depending on your needs. However, PET CF can also be annealed to increase the strength, stiffness, and thermal resistance of your part. To make this as easy as possible, PET CF has an annealing profile that will automatically scale your part to compensate for changes that occur during the annealing process!

 

To find out more about PET CF and its many potential applications, check out the product page for more details. 

 

Additional improvements

 

The following improvements have also been implemented in the Cura 5.4 stable release:

• PyQT Library has been updated resulting in speed and pop-up improvements

• Added Skirt Height setting to make a skirt easier to remove

• Improved printing order of the prime tower to include a dual brim, primed every layer, and primed before and after the extruder switch

• Introduced Hole Horizontal Expansion Max Diameter setting so you can tune the expansion of only the smaller holes while leaving larger holes untouched

• Added or updated profiles for 20+ 3rd party printers

• Numerous bug fixes

Give us your feedback

 

Download this latest release to start discovering new 3D printing possibilities right now. And please, comment below to give us your feedback.

[alfonsvh 9]

Hi, 

When opening Cura Enterprise v5.3.1, I get the notification that Cura Enterprise 5.4.0 is available.

 

However, the download page only leads to the "normal" (non-enterprise) version of Cura 5.4.0.

 

Where can I find the new Enterprise version?

 

Thanks

[fc2kool 2]

For version 5.4.0 and beta i cant select multiple files and needs to be fixed asap otherwise i will be forced to reinstall and use UltiMaker Cura 5.3.1 cause im able to select multiple files with no issues!

 

Forgot to metion im using Windows 10 pro 64 bit.

Edited July 7 by fc2kool
Windows Version

[Dadkitess 17]

Gosh the PET-CF is damn expensive oO

[MBoffin 6]

I also cannot select multiple files in the Open File dialog box, whereas this worked fine before 5.4.0. I'm using Windows 10. (Being able to bring in multiple files at once is hugely useful and I didn't even realize how much I actually use this feature until I found it not working.)

[Alfabeach 0]

I am running 5.4 on my Ender3 S1 Pro using TPU and Ender 3v2 using PETG. The program works great, but the engineer typing iffy. Keep up the good work and updates.

[Henny30 0]

I use Cura 5.4 under Linux and I can`t set the temperature of the printing plate and the temperature of the printing plate for the first layer in my printer settings under material, it is always at 70°

 

Printer is the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro

 

Does anyone have any tips how to set the pressure plate temperature?

Edited July 8 by Henny30

[Sertain 1]

Someone cut my forest down...

 

I been using Cure 5.3.1 for the last month now and the trees have been great. (on my Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro)  I installed the new 5.4 version and now the forest of trees has been clear cut....extremely simple overhangs are not showing any support and the tool is expecting that parts at a 85degree angle can just float....magically...

I'm trying to figure out which setting is the key one that tell the slicer to add a tree support but i can't seem to figure out what is wrong.   Normally the Support Overhang Angle was the KEY one but even items highlighted in red before slice go without a support after slice...

 

Ideas?

Edited July 9 by Sertain

[MariMakes 177]

@fc2kool I recognize the report about selecting multiple files. It's also been reported here https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/15879, the team is aware of the issue, it's probably caused by upgrading the PyQT to solve some other issues, and introduced some speed improvements. Hopefully we can resolve it in the next release.

 

@Henny30 Getting a setting to show up by default is actually quite complicated. You can read more about it here If you don't want to change it manually each time you might need to create a profile where this shows up.

 

@Sertain Wow, that should be supported. Could it have to do something with your Minimum Support Area? If that's not it,  Do you have a project file for us? It contains the printer and settings we need for troubleshooting.  To save a project file go to File -> Save project.

 

[newbiz 0]

Hi 

Not sure what I done wrong, I sliced same dragon pencil cup stl on both 5.3.1 and 5.4.0, the result were not what I expected.

I would like to pointed out the settings on both versions were the same.  The expected completion time given by 5.4.0 was 1 day 2 hors and 18min, see attached pic 5.4.0.gif, and the expect completion time given by 5.3.1 was only  17hrs and 5mins.  Most important, 5.3.1 seems use less support compared with 5.4.0, see attached pin 5.3.1.gif

[MariMakes 177]

Hey @newbiz,

 

Welcome to the UltiMaker Community 🎉

Looking at your screenshots, 5.3.1 does have less support with the settings you selected. But I also believe that your printjob will fail with these supports if you actually try to print it. I expect that for this before and after picture they had to increase the support overhang angle to even get the printjob to print. There are also reports like these that it takes  significant longer to remove the supports with the old tree supports. 

 

 

Does this help? 

[newbiz 0]

HI MariMake

 

Thanks for your reply, you properly right, but I do not understand, why i got that result from 4.3.1.   the same profile was used on both 5.3.1 and 5.4.0,  I did check with preview on 4.3.1, I did not actually print it, as it takes too long to print,  beside those have support, the reset should be ok without support, overhang with good part cooling, I possible wrong on this, but I will try to print it  after scale it down

 

BTW The support parameters I have on the profile

support overhang angle 60

support branch angle 60

support density 6

 

 

[NotABot 0]

Good day to all,
I can report the same thing happening as Sertain, when I use the default option for Minimum Support Area of 3mm² (Profile is for Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro). If turned to 0mm² the supports return. (see images)
Maybe this an error affecting profiles?
However, I did not test the supported print yet.

Edited July 16 by NotABot
I posted earlier than I wanted.

[MariMakes 177]

Hey @NotABot,

Welcome to the UltiMaker Community 🎉

Your report reminds me of https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/15886

Can you change the Support Distance Priority to Z Overrides X/Y?
Does that resolve your issue?

 

 

[NotABot 0]

Thank you for answering @MariMakes. The Support Distance Priority was already set on Z overrides X/Y, but changing it to X/Y overrides Z seems to fix this behaviour, the supports are then generated again, with the limitations described in the issue.

Edited July 17 by NotABot

[GregValiant 1,110]

One man's opinion.

 

 

I do believe I gave 5.4.0 a much higher rating than it deserves.  There are way too many models that it is not capable of slicing.  Updated Aug 4.

 

Things like this lead to opinions like that.

 

This falls under the heading of "C'mon Man!".

https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/14764

 

Edited August 4 by GregValiant

[glx 21]

Just wanted to thank the folks that made the brim that nicely removable! Exceeded my expectations!

[Travis90x 3]

Hi, on Cura 5.4 how can I restore layer view like Cura 5.3?
How restore "Select face to align to the build plate"?
Why they change stuffs without let the user choose during installation?
Why they don't change the very ugly GUI interface where you have to scroll a lot of setting, where they can separate the dropdown menu on the useless first empty row (View type - Color scheme) and add personalized buttons to fast switch ex: Support ON/OFF, Brim ON/OFF, etc.

[Cuq 172]

Not a issue on the release, but a on the hardware. The graphics card is not compatible in the 5.4 case . Have you change your hardware ? or change the option of graphic compatibility ?

Edited July 24 by Cuq

[ahoeben 1,845]

21 hours ago, Travis90x said:

Hi, on Cura 5.4 how can I restore layer view like Cura 5.3?
How restore "Select face to align to the build plate"?

It looks like Cura 5.4 is having an issue getting proper OpenGL 4.1 support from your GPU. Either that, or you may have (inadvertently) have enabled the option to  "Force layer view compatibility mode" in the General preferences in Cura. This could also have been changed by loading a project file from someone else who has that option enabled.

 

21 hours ago, Travis90x said:

Why they don't change the very ugly GUI interface where you have to scroll a lot of setting,

You might like the Tabbed Settings plugin available in the Marketplace:

 

[cgolchert 0]

With the beta I got a LOT of slicing errors that would usually be fixed by just rotating the model on the buildplate. (around the z-axis for you z-up heathens) That was really annoying BUT I was running into a lot of times where the beta would just stop slicing.  No error, no rude noises, just stop.

 

So far I haven't run into any of that with this release.  I'll give it a provisional Great Job!!!  🙂  

[Geckoas 1]

Different line-width in outmost 2 walls.

I've got different line-width in the outmost 2 walls in the first layer of my model. At these sections of the circle, the nozzle drives faster than in the other sections.  See enclosed screenshot and project.

AK_gardena-end-no-LA_0h46m.3mf

[GregValiant 1,110]

Turn off the Bridge settings.  They aren't needed for that model anyway.

 

But the bridge settings should not be affecting the print like that either.

[Geckoas 1]

On 7/30/2023 at 6:02 PM, GregValiant said:

Turn off the Bridge settings.  They aren't needed for that model anyway.

 

But the bridge settings should not be affecting the print like that either.

Thank you. That's the point. Disabling the Bridge settings provides smooth walls in the 2nd layer. With Bridge settings enabled, it appeared only in the 2nd layer.

[jlspeeddragon 3]

Couple of things (bugs) that is wrong or need to be fixed / re-added with Cura 5.4.

• Unable to select and open more then one file. - This is an extremely useful option that is available in the older versions. I use this daily when the model has multiple parts that I can print all at the same time.
• Lay flat option located in the rotate tab. (bug?)
  • It lays the part flat correctly. However it does not leave the part in same place after laying the object flat. It rotates it slightly and will place it randomly anywhere on the print bed graphic.
• Can sometimes have minor conflicts with the custom cylindrical support extension.
  • After setting a custom support from the above mentioned extension, Cura will give error that it can not slice the model.
• Does not always arrange larger models correctly. Sometimes it will push one outside of the printing area instead of aligning them correctly into the printing area even though they will fit.