S3D (and other slicers)
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I use s3d firmware retraction by using post processing scripts. Works fine, with one caveat. If you're using firmware retraction you have to hardcode the z-hop in the slicer, and have it set to 0 in the FW retract configuration. Otherwise if it does a retract on layer change the next layer prints too low. This is due to an "order of operations" issue with how s3d (and most slicers other than slic3r) operate when a retraction coincides with a layer change.
(I have further info and documentation on this, if needed)
Thankfully hardcoding z-hop isn't a big deal, as that's not something that requires a lot of tuning mid-print.
Edit to say that I think this z-hop issue and the order on layer change is likely why they aren't supporting modern firmware retracts with z-hop, going by a conversation I had with support.
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Here's the further detail - I went through a bunch of slicers and generated gcode of the same model, and found any instances of retraction on layer change. Here's the "order of operations" for each when this happens:
You can see that slic3r's the odd ball out, and it's no coincidence that slic3r is the only one that supports modern FW retracts. If you substitute (through post processing) the FW retracts into a slicer like s3d, and include Z-Hop, the "unhop" will come after you're already at the new layer z-height, making your next print move start at (new layer height) - (FW z-hop height). Probably not what you want.
As I said, works fine in s3d if you use the slicer settings for z-hop height, and do the rest of your FW retracts with post-processing scripts.
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If you include Z hop in your firmware retraction parameters, retract on layer change should work ok in all slicers now. This is one of the things I fixed in firmware 1.17.
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Ah, I didn't catch that in 1.17. I'll test it out!
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S3D and firmware retraction.
I thought I read somewhere in this forum that 1.17c now supports the S3D required M codes without conversion to corresponding G codes.
Firmware retraction does indeed work but how do I suppress the "unsupported M102 messages".
Also, as a relative newbie to dual extrusion, how do I eliminate the deadly pause over the print when once colour finishes and before it moves to the prime/wipe tower? I have the Tpostn.g files set with M116 Pn. -
S3D and firmware retraction.
I thought I read somewhere in this forum that 1.17c now supports the S3D required M codes without conversion to corresponding G codes.
Firmware retraction does indeed work but how do I suppress the "unsupported M102 messages".
Also, as a relative newbie to dual extrusion, how do I eliminate the deadly pause over the print when once colour finishes and before it moves to the prime/wipe tower? I have the Tpostn.g files set with M116 Pn.Add the following line in yoour post processing areaa atthe bottom of the Scripts tab in Process settings
{STRIP "M102"}
That will remove them at source
HTH
Doug
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S3D and firmware retraction.
I thought I read somewhere in this forum that 1.17c now supports the S3D required M codes without conversion to corresponding G codes.
Firmware retraction does indeed work but how do I suppress the "unsupported M102 messages".I don't know why S3D generates M102 or what it expects the printer to do. I guess I could make the firmware ignore it.
Also, as a relative newbie to dual extrusion, how do I eliminate the deadly pause over the print when once colour finishes and before it moves to the prime/wipe tower? I have the Tpostn.g files set with M116 Pn.
Set up the tpre#.g files to move the head away from the print.
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Before David made these recent changes to the firmware, I did a bit of a write up on how to get S3D to do firmware retraction. It's here https://www.duet3d.com/forum/thread.php?id=396.
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I'm messing with Cura 2.4 beta 2 at the moment, wow I must say it has sooo many options. I notice it also has adjustable acceleration. I think I'm going to dump S3D for a while, kind of getting sick of the bugs.
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I could easily be wrong but I don't think the acceleration options in Cura are compatible with the current Duet firmware.
Also, I don't think it supports firmware retraction for all printers.
However, I am using the Cura master branch at the moment and getting pretty good results.
I have S3D also, I hate it!
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@(In)Sanity:
I'm messing with Cura 2.4 beta 2 at the moment, wow I must say it has sooo many options. I notice it also has adjustable acceleration. I think I'm going to dump S3D for a while, kind of getting sick of the bugs.
Have you figured out where to enable Firmware retraction and change between Absolute and relative extrusion?
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I could easily be wrong but I don't think the acceleration options in Cura are compatible with the current Duet firmware.
Also, I don't think it supports firmware retraction for all printers.
However, I am using the Cura master branch at the moment and getting pretty good results.
I have S3D also, I hate it!
Does firmware retraction really add that much in terms of quality ? Doesn't it basically just retract if not printing ? Seams like the delay the slicer would add for the retracts shouldn't be noticed with the Duet WiFi speed.
Trying to solve this issue at the moment with Any slicer at all, as you can see it's trying to print a top layer over top of a hole with nothing to connect to. This just makes a complete mess.
Know any tricks in Cura to not have this happen ? So far it appears to have the same flaw S3D does in this area.
Thanks,
Jeff
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Well, quite some time back, I wrote an email to the S3D technical support people complaining about how it failed miserably because it didn't extend skin far enough under perimeters that are placed above. It's essentially the same problem as you have. At that time, the only slicer that seemed to get this right was slic3r. I haven't used that for quite a while but it's probably worth a try.
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At least Cura is open source and so we have the possibility of fixing stuff we don't like. I have been making some trivial contributions to it. It has occurred to me that a fix to this problem would be really good so I shall go back to thinking about a solution.
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Yes for mixing type hotends firmware retraction is an absolute must
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A Search on there Web page gives no results for firmware retraction therefore it is a no go for me with Cura
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Well, quite some time back, I wrote an email to the S3D technical support people complaining about how it failed miserably because it didn't extend skin far enough under perimeters that are placed above. It's essentially the same problem as you have. At that time, the only slicer that seemed to get this right was slic3r. I haven't used that for quite a while but it's probably worth a try.
I actually tried the same scenario/part with slic3r and it failed in the same way. I've wasted more filament then I care to mention or ended up with terrible looking parts because of this exact issue. I do lots of ABS work and I'm not about to print too dense and have stuff try to curl or delaminate. I'm going to mess with the beta version of Cura for a bit and see what I can do. The S3D folks just don't seem to care anymore, if they do they are failing to relay that to the customers very well.
Jeff
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A Search on there Web page gives no results for firmware retraction therefore it is a no go for me with Cura
I see an option to disable retraction, isn't it possible to just disable the software retraction and enable firmware retraction on the start script or is it another G code that needs to be sent in place of normal retracts ?
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Yep needs other G-Codes to be sent
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Hi Jeff, I have just spent some time working on Cura to come up with a solution for the skin above sparse infill problem and (amazingly) appear to have something that looks like it's doing the right thing. I have submitted it to the Cura devs. Even if they like it (or some later version) it won't make it into Cura for a good while yet but if you are up to building Cura yourself then you could give it a try. I only use Linux and building Cura on that is reasonably straightforward and I can provide some hints as to what to do.
