Cura lacks (?) material compatibility in profliles

[LeoAerit 1]

TLDR: Is there any way of selecting which materials are compatible with which profiles?

At work we have two Ultimaker 2+ Cs and we use them to print various small parts and jigs. 

 

As somewhat of a 3D printer power user I am often surprised by the limitations of the Ultimaker ecosystem (No possibility to pause prints, bad user interface on the printers, lacking features).

Today I had yet another print failed since it sliced with a TPU profile instead of the Tough PLA that the printer was set to. This leads me to two questions:

1. Is there any way to specify which material works with wich profile? (I know there is some kind of filter since only my TPU profiles show up when I select TPU as the material)
2. Is there any way to have it so cura does not switch profiles when you select between printers. If both printers have the same material, why does it switch to the last used material? I know you can select the printer type but then it does not care for which material is in the printers and you have to set it manually.

[Slashee_the_Cow 319]

To the best of my knowledge - no to both.

As for #2 - Unless there's some special Ultimaker features I don't know about (since I only have an Ender-3) the program can't automatically know if you've changed the filament in a printer. That's why it just assumes you're using the filament you last used in each printer until you manually change it.

[LeoAerit 1]

@Slashee_the_Cow

Okay 😞
Thanks for the quick answer

 

Actually on the Ultimaker you have to set the filament on the printer, so it knows what is in it in cura, not that that makes that much of a difference if the profiles work with (almost) all filaments.

[mrender 26]

Printing from project files helps with this, as you slice and produce a new print file with the material you have in the selected machine, if they don't tally up then you get a warning. Alternatively digital factory keeps track of material selection too. Human error can still conquer all obviously.

[Dustin 144]

Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the 2+ Connect as it does not have an active spool reader.
UltiMaker 3 (extended), UltiMaker S3, S5 and S7 can actively talk to Cura about currently loaded materials and better warn about slicing for wrong material or prompting that wrong material is loaded.

[LeoAerit 1]

@Dustin But the machine knows what material is in it (If no human error has occurred). My question is if there is a way for cura to set which materials are compatible?

[Dustin 144]

Would need to share screenshots of what your issue is.. 
Because from what I am understanding.. it does exactly what your asking for.. so I must be missing something.

[mrender 26]

Generally materials aren't compatible i.e. they all (pla, abs, pets, pa) require different settings.  Or are you meaning material brand compatibility?

[LeoAerit 1]

Yeah sorry i might not have been clear: 
In cura there is no way to specify material compatibility ie: I cant force my custom TPU profile to work only with TPU filament (i cant either force the filament to have min/max temp requirements from the slicer profile):


Here's prusa slicers filament compatibility settings:

[Slashee_the_Cow 319]

Cura allows you to use and create different material profiles which affect the slicer settings in the Materials section of the preferences.

(moos are pretty cool, so they don't need much heat)

It would have built in quality profiles if I'd set it to an existing material type and not "Moochain", but there's nothing stopping you creating your own profiles.

 

Change it back to generic PLA and voila!

[Slashee_the_Cow 319]

Forgot to mention - there's a plugin called Material Settings (you can just get it from the Marketplace button at the top right of Cura) which allows you to change pretty much any setting as part of your material profile.