Compatibilty

[Portside 0]

Hi I'm new here, and I few problems have popped up recently.

First a bit of history. I bought my first printer (Morgan 3d pro) 8 years ago and its ran well with very few problems. Then 3 months ago the 'Z' drive stopped working. Unfortunately the manufacturer has closed down and I struggled to find someone to repair it. I did find someone to look at it eventually but its been back their 3 times and its still not right. The repairer did tell me that my software (Simplify 3D)was out of date and he advised me to move to Cura.

Does anyone have experience with the Simplify 3D to Cura interface ?

Thanks Les

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 442]

Unfortunately I've never used Simplify3D so I can't help you with where to find equivalent features in Cura but if you didn't update Simplify3D (which is still being updated, so hardly outdated) or anything when your Z motor failed then the odds that switching to Cura will help your fix your problem are slim IMO.

 

Also... I don't think Cura has a profile for that printer and being that old I'm not sure if it would use a standard flavour of gcode for you to set up a generic printer. If you can post a gcode file for it that much I can look at.

 

Also, to be blunt 🪨 if you've gotten eight years out of a printer which would have been made when 3D printers were still very much a nascent industry that's pretty impressive, but it might be time for it to go to the filament farm in the sky and be replaced.

 

 

[Portside 0]

CuraTestBlock.gcode               I tinkered a bit with the Cura settings as my early attempts showed the top and bottom to be too thin. I'm figuring out modify line thicknesses etc.

 

Simplifi3d20x20x10Block.gcode          The Simplify 3D worked well

 

Thanks for your prompt assistance.

 

Regards Les

.

CuraTestBlock.gcode CuraTestBlock.gcode

[Slashee_the_Cow 442]

The output from Simplify3D looks like the printer just uses Marlin... which is good 🙂 Means Cura should be able to output valid gcode for it just fine.

 

It might be worth copying the start and end gcode from Simplify3D if that's been working for you, since Cura's default gcode in this case doesn't do the slight "pissing itself in the corner" that Simplify3D does. If it works fine for you without that, then go for it, but if you think you need to use the same start and end gcode sequence, here they are Cura-fied.

 

Startup gcode:

G90 ; Use absolute co-ordinates
M106 S{cool_fan_speed_0} ; Set initial fan speed
M104 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ; Start heating hot end
G28 ; Home print head
G0 X0 Y0 Z2.5 F3000 ; Move to the corner in case it dribbles while it's heating
M109 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ; Wait for hot end to reach temperature
G1 E20 F200 ; Extrude 20mm of filament
G92 E0 ; Reset extruder value to 0
G0 Y10 Z10 F5000 ; Move up and away from puddle
M117 Printing...

 

End gcode:

G28 ; Home all axes (Z should go to maximum)
M104 S0 ; Turn off hot end
M107 ; Turn off fan
M84 ; Disable stepper motors

[Portside 0]

I used the Gcodes that you supplied & I've got Simplify 3D working with good quality. 

I'm so happy that I found your site, you have good knowledge and are very helpful.

So more questions, a few years ago I made hundreds of these:- 

 

 

 

I used to model them with Fusion 360 but my license was canceled without any explanation. I'm trying to find a way round this. I need to break up the text so I can vary the height of individual letters.
I'm currently using Inkscape to make all the letters singular, as I want to extrude letters to different heights but Simplify 3D pulls all the letters together.

I've been lookin thru Youtube for some advice & I looked at 'Blender' but I've never seen such a complex start up page, but I'll keep trying.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks Les

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 442]

Cura can import PNGs! (I don't know if Simplify3D can, never used it)

Ignore the blue background, it doesn't appear in the slice:

Just make each bit black on preferably a transparent background (although white works). Click & drag a PNG into Cura and you'll get this dialog:

Make sure to set base to 0.0 especially if you have a white background (or it will put a plate the size of the whole image behind it). Set your height and width/depth (change either and it'll automatically scale the other). You can change these (including the height) later using the normal scale tool in Cura if you want.

 

Inkscape should be able to handle this fine.

Just use the text tool, type in your letter and set the colour to black if necessary.

Go back to the select tool and it should automatically have your letter selected (it'll have the dashed border and arrows around it, if it doesn't, just click on it to select it):

Now go to File > Export and it should open the export panel on the right hand side of the screen:

1: Make it's in Single Image mode.

2: Click Selection to make that the area you want to export.

3: Enter an image size. It defaulted to 4x4 for me. A few hundred pixels each dimension should be enough, unless you're going to be printing this letter huge, in which case 1000 should work.

4: Select PNG from the list of formats at the bottom right.

5: Either click the folder icon to navigate to somewhere to save it or enter a path and filename (the first one is easier).

6: Click Export and your file should magically appear at the path you picked.

 

Now just change the letter to the next one you need and export it. Repeat for all.

And if you really want to test with MOO! then here's the files I used as examples:

 

 

Quote

I used to model them with Fusion 360 but my license was canceled without any explanation.

I know there's a free personal version. I won't touch it since I'm pretty sure it expects you to store your files in Autodesk's cloud storage.

 

FreeCAD is free (duh) but the learning curve goes something like this: _|̅  - short version is you'd need to export each letter as an SVG, import those into FreeCAD (making sure to import it as geometry and not a reference image), switch to the Draft workbench, upgrade your imported files until they're faces, move them around by manually entering the position in the bottom left (you may have to open up the properties tree until you get there), then switch to the Part workbench, extrude each letter to the correct height, then select all the letters and perform a boolean union to combine them into a single object, switch to the Mesh workbench, generate a mesh based on your union and then export that mesh.

 

...I can explain it at length (with pictures) if you want.

[Portside 0]

Thanks for your reply, I'm afraid I'm struggling with the Cura basics can you recommend a beginners tutortal?

 

What 2D package is popular amongst the group, I currently use Oneshape.  

 

Thanks Les

[Portside 0]

I forgot to ask this.

How do I navigate thru the Q&A section, once I close this window I can't find my way back again. Dummy question I know.

[Slashee_the_Cow 442]

On 10/11/2024 at 9:20 PM, Portside said:

Thanks for your reply, I'm afraid I'm struggling with the Cura basics can you recommend a beginners tutortal?

There's several getting started articles in the UltiMaker support knowledge base. Never actually had that question 🙂 it's refreshing when people just starting don't think they already know everything. There's a more comprehensive walkthrough here, but try the UltiMaker ones first since they don't quickly descend into the "stuff you don't need to know to begin with that will just overwhelm you" department.

 

On 10/11/2024 at 9:20 PM, Portside said:

What 2D package is popular amongst the group, I currently use Oneshape.  

*searches web* You mean Onshape, the CAD software I hadn't heard of before now?

If you're looking for CAD software: Then what's popular doesn't matter so much as you what you know how to use. Though the popular options?

Tinkercad for beginners.

For more advanced stuff the free personal version of Fusion 360 is popular but I won't touch it with a ten foot pole because you need to keep your work in Autodesk's cloud storage.

FreeCAD is free both in that it doesn't cost anything and it's open source, but its learning curve is something like this:
 (you'd want to consult the tutorials on its wiki)

(Personally I try to use OpenSCAD when I can but defining models in what's basically a programming language isn't most peoples' cup of tea. Also anything complicated gets hard. For the large amount of stuff for which I find OpenSCAD impractical, I use FreeCAD.)

 

If you're looking for 2D graphics software, like I used earlier to make my text?

Again, it's a case of "stick with what you know", but if what you know isn't "any", then your best bet is Inkscape. Also free and open source but pretty damn powerful. And to import vector files into a whole lot of other free design software half the time it has to be run through Inkscape anyway after you export it from the program you used to make it.

(Personally I use Affinity Designer which is much closer to Adobe Illustrator, except you only have to pay for it once, but I also do graphic design stuff as well as 3D printing - Inkscape would more than suffice for the stuff I do for 3D printing... and I have to run the files exported from Affinity through Inkscape to get them to work properly if I want to use them in FreeCAD or OpenSCAD anyway.)

 

On 10/11/2024 at 9:25 PM, Portside said:

How do I navigate thru the Q&A section, once I close this window I can't find my way back again. Dummy question I know.

You mean the forum here? (If you don't please let me know what you do mean.) Go back in your web browser. If you're here somehow that isn't a web browser, go to https://community.ultimaker.com/forum/108-ultimaker-cura/ somehow that is a web browser.