New or duplicated material not well supported

[RolandDM 0]

The built-in Materials all have access to all print setting profiles, but this doesn't seem to be true for the materials that you create.

 

I have a PETG filament that slightly differs from the Generic PETG. So I want my own version.

Duplicating it and changing values is not a problem, but it is not synced with the printer (S5) , so I get some error messages when I want to get something printed.
Even worse: I want to print ASA. This material is not available in Cura (why?). I can create a new material and it is synced with the printer, but i have only access to the custom profiles and one Balanced (Fast). I don't want to create a profile for every possible quality.

 

So, I must do something wrong or I am missing something, or this is a basic omission in Cura. Can somebody comment?

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

Cura shows a generic ASA for me (running 5.8.1) although I'm not using an UltiMaker printer so it's not syncing materials with the printer or anything.

Quality profiles are tied to printer definition, material type and nozzle diameter (at the very least). For example, my Ender-3 V3 SE definition is based on the creality_base definition which only comes with quality profiles for PLA, PETG, TPU and ABS:

So if I select something which isn't one of those it doesn't like me or give me any default profiles to work with:

So I'd need to make my own.

 

But if you're using an UltiMaker printer (and not my cheap Chinese crap) and you're having troubles syncing profiles with the printer you should probably contact UltiMaker support as official support is not offered through the forums.

[RolandDM 0]

Yes, as I said, you can create a custom material, and it IS synced with the printer (at least the S5).

But you lose access to the default profiles.

There is no reason for doing so: it should be possible to take an existing generic materialtype (like generic ABS), duplicate it and tweak it as generic ASA. However, Cura is not syncing it with my S5. It's not that the S5 is not accepting it, it is Cura not exporting it: I cheated by asking a sync through USB and dumped the file: no trace of my "generic ASA" based on "generic ABS".

Maybe I oversimplify, but those default profiles, when used by a certain materialtype, are just overwritten by some materialtype parameters. When you create your custom profile, you just do the same, but manually.

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

If the problem is you have a profile in Cura fine but it's not getting synced to the printer, that's something you should probably contact UltiMaker support about.

 

All I can do is play around in theory with profiles in Cura. And I have too much free time, so I will.

For example:

1. I created a completely custom new material:
   
2. As you'd expect, once I switch to Slashee Milk, there's no quality profiles:
   
3. Just make a few changes to the default and save it as a new custom profile:
   
4. And now the only choice of quality profile I have is my custom profile:
   
5. I duplicate the material, although in this case I only change Display Name and Color, but note where it says it's linked to Milk:
   
6. I switch to Chocolate Milk, and while initially the quality profiles show nothing:
   
7. But if open the dropdown then it's inherited the profile from regular Milk (and it loads it fine):
   
8. I created another material, but this time as well as the name and colour, I changed Material Type:
   
   (You can see it's still linked to Milk and Chocolate Milk)
9. I switch to Strawberry Milk and like Chocolate Milk, the quality profile initially says not supported but the dropdown contains the profile shared amongst Milk and the materials based on it:
   

Okay, so now what if I want to duplicate a generic material?

Important note: If I select a material which doesn't have quality profiles for my printer, it'll show up as not supported and not have any profiles:

So I'll try printing something my printer does have profiles for:

1. Good old PLA. Of course you ❤️ me. PLA ❤️s everyone. Let's see what happens if I duplicate it:
   
2. So I changed the Display Name, Brand, Material Type and Color. It does still say it's linked to PLA. But do I get PLA profiles?:
   
3. Apparently not. But I do get the same profile as other Slashee brand materials?
   
4. So is it a brand thing or a material thing? Let's try Material Type. Now Slashee Hard Milk is actually a type of PLA:
   
   Looks like I have all the PLA profiles, both the built in ones and the custom ones:
   
   And if I scroll down, I also have the Slashee brand profile apparently:
   
   (n.b. Names blurred because an alarming number of my profile names contain swearing.)
5. So does the brand have anything to do with it? I changed the Brand back to "Generic" but switched the Material Type" back to "Hard Milk" (it still says it's linked to PLA):
   
6. So what profiles do we get now?
   
   Still has the Slashee brand profile? 😕

Key takeaway: Change the Brand and Display Name all you want. If you change Material Type it won't copy profiles from the material it's based on.

Yes, that looks confusing if you have to go into an "ABS" tree to find your "ASA" profile or whatever. Beats coming up with all new profiles though.

[RolandDM 0]

Thank you for your extensive explanation!

 

I agree with you, but there are some side effects with the Ultimaker printers:

 

If you "create" a new material by duplicating a base material from Cura and you keep the same material type, you'll run into problems if you change the display name too.

Since the copy has the same identifier as the original, the S5 printer doesn't take it while syncing.

If you use it in Cura and send it to the printer, the S5 will give you an error (unknown material).

 

You know what: Cura actually contains a generic ASA but it is only for 1.75 filament...

 

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

On 9/23/2024 at 2:34 AM, RolandDM said:

You know what: Cura actually contains a generic ASA but it is only for 1.75 filament...

Could explain why you couldn't find then I guess 🙂

 

Now I can't make any promises but: here's a 2.85mm version of Generic ASA with the required quality profiles for an S5 (which I just copied from ABS). If ASA needs different settings to ABS, you'll need to set them manually.

(I've never used ASA, so...)

The fact that this doesn't exist in the first place might mean that the S5 isn't supposed to able to use ASA. So try this at your own risk.

(Just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should).

To install: In Cura, go to Help > Show Configuration Folder. Then drag the contents of the zip file in there (making sure everything goes in the right folders).

 

Have you tried updating to 5.8.1? It lists this under "Bug Fixes" (which should be "Bug Fix" because it's the only one there:

Quote

Fixed an issue where materials could not be synced to UltiMaker Printers.
If you still run into trouble, please consult this troubleshooting page.

 

 

UPDATE: FILE REMOVED

The UltiMaker folks have posted their own version further down (presumably better than my hack).

Edited September 25 by Slashee_the_Cow
removed file because UM showed up below

[RolandDM 0]

Thank you.

I installed it and it show up in the configuration. I will certainly try it out after syncing with the S5.

I am still on 5.8.0. Normally I wait for the next stable release and although the cura site mentions 5.8.1 as stable, my update search in Cura tells me that there is no update available...

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

3 hours ago, RolandDM said:

I am still on 5.8.0. Normally I wait for the next stable release and although the cura site mentions 5.8.1 as stable, my update search in Cura tells me that there is no update available...

Not sure I can explain that one, but you can grab a copy of 5.8.1 from here.

[PaulKuiper 11]

Hi Roland,

 

Brand names “Generic” and “Ultimaker” are protected and will not sync to the printer. This is done to ensure the original profiles will stay intact for a certain Cura version so we can provide meaningful support. Therefore you will have to come up with a fake brand name for it to sync with Ultimaker printers. 

You need to sync it in order to load or select the new material on the printer. 

[PaulKuiper 11]

Attached you will find a ASA profile based on our ABS profile from the brand "Custom".
You can change the files inside the zip file to tune your profile.
Rename the .zip into .curapackage and drop it on your Cura version and reboot. The material should now be available for S3, S5, S7 and Factor 4.
 

custom-asa.zip

Edited September 25 by PaulKuiper

[FredericM 1]

In addition to what Paul said, you can sync your new material to the printer using a .umm file. Check the USB workflow on our support page. Before inserting the USB drive into the printer, open up the .umm file in 7zip to check that your new material does not have "ultimaker" or "generic" in the filename.

 

As to the Cura 5.8 / 5.8.1 version, there's a material sync bug in Cura 5.8. As this does not affect non-ultimaker printers, we decided not to push the update notification to all our Cura users. That's why Cura does not show an update available, even though there is a newer version available on our website. For the syncing to work, you do need Cura 5.8.1.

[RolandDM 0]

Sorry for my late answer, but I wanted to install de custom-asa and sync with the printer first.

 

I installed 5.8.1 and put the files in the configuration folders. De new material appears in Cura under Custom and has access to all default profiles. Why does it take so long to select it? You have to wait half a minute before the family "ASA" turns up and then another minute before finally the material itself shows up?

I synced with the printer via the Digital Factory. The syncing process kept going on and on, after some 15 minutes I stopped it but I saw that the new material was indeed available on the printer.

It shows up in 2 places in the list: once as "ASA Generic" (just behind ABS) and another time under custom "ASA"  at the end of the list.

Thank you for the ASA package.