Filament observations

[mikeabuilder]

I'm just working on setting up filaments for my printer and have a few comments. I'm adding to the Documentation section because maybe what I need to help me is a better description of how the filaments stuff works.

Observations

• In DWC, I cannot seem to upload a single file into a filament directory. The clickable button says "Upload Filament Configs" and looks for a zip file. I'm making edits to my config.g file in a filament directory and I can't use my normal method (edit on desktop machine connected to github for backup > upload to Duet board). I assume there is a reason for doing it the way it is being done and I'd like to understand that.

• I often power down my printer with filament in the extruder (maybe a bad habit). When I power on and select my tool, the fw knows which filament was in the extruder (per the object model), but it does not load the config.g for that filament. I've written a short macro that I run from the tpostN.g. This macro finds the extruder on the current tool, and the filament name on that extruder, then it runs the gcode.g in that filament's directory. Now when I power on, I get the gcode loaded when I select a tool (only if there is a filament in that tool). Seems like something most people would want to have happen by default on tool selection vs me writing my own macro. Is there a use case I'm missing where I would not want this to happen?

• On my PanelDue (running the 3.4 fw), I can't find any filament load/unload/change buttons on any screen. Is this coming, or should I just write my own macros for these? Maybe this is the place where I should read about menus?

[Phaedrux]

@mikeabuilder said in Filament observations:

On my PanelDue (running the 3.4 fw), I can't find any filament load/unload/change buttons on any screen. Is this coming, or should I just write my own macros for these? Maybe this is the place where I should read about menus?

I'm not sure about the other questions, but I do know that PanelDue has no built in support for the filament functions, so adding macros would be the way to go.

[marvineer]

@mikeabuilder said in Filament observations:

I often power down my printer with filament in the extruder (maybe a bad habit). When I power on and select my tool, the fw knows which filament was in the extruder (per the object model), but it does not load the config.g for that filament. I've written a short macro that I run from the tpostN.g. This macro finds the extruder on the current tool, and the filament name on that extruder, then it runs the gcode.g in that filament's directory. Now when I power on, I get the gcode loaded when I select a tool (only if there is a filament in that tool). Seems like something most people would want to have happen by default on tool selection vs me writing my own macro. Is there a use case I'm missing where I would not want this to happen?

if I understand your needs correctly, I think you want to use M703 as a replacement of your macro (see docs here).
This basically does the same thing you did with your macro.
In my tool changer setup I use this to load specific settings after each tool selection (I put an M703 command in each tpost#.g). In fact, I think the documentation covers all this quite good: Filaments in RRF and DWC

@mikeabuilder said in Filament observations:

On my PanelDue (running the 3.4 fw), I can't find any filament load/unload/change buttons on any screen. Is this coming, or should I just write my own macros for these? Maybe this is the place where I should read about menus?

For the PanelDue "problem" I just created a set of macros that call M701 and M702 at the right time to change the filament of the desired tool. In my opinion it would be nice to have this feature build in directly.

[chrishamm]

@mikeabuilder That is correct, it isn't supported to upload single files to the Filaments directory yet. You can download entire filament directories (aka configs) and upload them using the Upload Filament Config button. We may add support for uploading single files to a future version, though. Ideally, at some point, I'd like to get rid of the different file lists and use only a single file explorer in DWC but that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

The idea behind the filaments facility was to keep things flexible when we didn't have meta G-code or expressions, so a single filament config could be used to configure different tools for different filaments (e.g. on a tool changer). That's why it is advised to put M703 into tpost*.g (see the notes of M703: If the filaments feature is used, it is recommended to put this code into tpost*.g to ensure the right filament parameters are set.).

The alternative is to put

T0
M703

in your config.g so the filament config is executed automatically. Since M703 lets you decide when you actually want to configure the loaded filament, I don't want to change the current behaviour. This would conflict with at least one machine config I'm aware of.

[mikeabuilder]

Ahhh - M703. I did read this in the filaments section, then promptly forgot. I'll delete my macro (good practice, though) and put M703 into my tpost files.

And I'll put my macro practice to good use writing some macros for changing filaments.