Functionality and UI improvements I am working on (UM2). Please comment to avoid duplicate effort

[jayeye 0]

I fully support the designers' decision to have a simple, can't-go-wrong UI, but I find it annoyingly limiting. Fortunately, I'm an overpaid software engineer with an EE degree, plus I've been playing with arduinos for a couple of years now, so fixing things should be easy. What I do not want to do is replicate functionality or features others have already privately developed.

So here what I'll be working on in the upcoming weeks. If people have suggestions, know where in the code (and which branch on github) these or similar feature are already present, and so on, please speak up.

 

1. Manually move all axes: I don't want to have to turn the machine off to position the plate and the printhead with may hands. This was possible on the UM1 (I forget whether it was through the ulticontroller or cura), and I want it back.
   
2. Print at a specific location on the platform: I do not want to wait for the build plate to cool down enough so I can remove what I just printed in order to start a new print. For small parts, there is plenty of room on the build plate. I realize I can bring everything in cura again and reslice, but I may want different models sliced with different parameters, or that take too long to slice, or I may not even have the .stl any more (and working with gcode models in cura is annoying).
   
3. Better control over heat-up/heat-down and filament movement. I want a "heat nozzle and keep at that temperature until I tell you otherwise, regardless of what other operations are happening", so I can control the nozzle and the filament movement during load/unload independently of each other (why? because I want to!)
   
4. More information on front panel: I have already found this, so if anything it will be just minor tweaks.
   

 

 

[tinkergnome 650]

Hi JayEye,

glad to meet a companion in misfortune...

Can you clarify your intention a bit?

Are you planning to make these modifications solely for your private use, or are you open-minded for

a suggestion i made a couple of weeks ago:

 

 

...a (kind of) permanent custom firmware version, maintained by the community is also an option - isn't it?

 

The challenge is still: to keep in sync with the master branch of Ultimaker.

Before you start - try to get the simulator up and running. It's essential for testing and debugging (IMHO).

I found these sources:

Marlin Simulation... on your desktop?!? (For developers)

Missing note about how to compile and run the simulator

 

 

Manually move all axes: I don't want to have to turn the machine off to position the plate and the printhead with may hands. This was possible on the UM1 (I forget whether it was through the ulticontroller or cura), and I want it back.

 

To disable the steppers enqueing a simple "M84" command is sufficient.

There is also a "Move axis" menu in the recent Tinker version of the firmware - branch: geek_mode.

(i'm not sure, if you noticed this already)

 

 

Print at a specific location on the platform

: I do not want to wait for the build plate to cool down enough so I can remove what I just printed in order to start a new print. For small parts, there is plenty of room on the build plate. I realize I can bring everything in cura again and reslice, but I may want different models sliced with different parameters, or that take too long to slice, or I may not even have the .stl any more (and working with gcode models in cura is annoying).

 

The axis positions are "hard-coded" in the gcode file. You have to introduce some kind of shift value.

I mediate on something similar for the z-axis. The intention is a new function to recover a (aborted) print.

But perhaps there are better approaches...?

 

 

Better control over heat-up/heat-down and filament movement.

I want a "heat nozzle and keep at that temperature until I tell you otherwise, regardless of what other operations are happening", so I can control the nozzle and the filament movement during load/unload independently of each other (why? because I want to!)

 

I'm not sure if i got the point...

I made a small improvement (hopefully ) for the "Move material" menu recently. Perhaps you can use it as a starting point:

 

More information on front panel:

I have already found this, so if anything it will be just minor tweaks.

 

There's an open discussion on the other thread. We're curious..

Another source: nerd fork

(there's no activity anymore, but it's a good starting point anyway...)

 

[fabi580 0]

To make a suggestion: make the UM2 with Ulticode compatible with octopint.

the RepRap mode is kind of ok, but not really the thing you want to use. And an good working wifi UM2 would be phenomenal!

I'm quite bad when it comes to coding so I wont be able to help much but I do think that many UM2-users would benefit from that.