My custom Cartesian

Phaedrux

I suppose that's one advantage Cura has, since you can specify all speed settings and the path planner takes everything into account for very accurate time estimates.

wilriker

@phaedrux Yeah, in Cura my estimates are usually within single digits of what Duet gives as simulation.

Funnily I found a comment in Slic3r's time estimator that it is partially inspired by Cura's time estimator.

I am not in the mood of doing yet another patch-your-slicer approach (as I currently do with Cura until the next release when the Bugfix I require will finally be included) just to get those estimates right (just wait a few days and see me change my mind about that - or implement a UI part to set these values ).

Phaedrux

@wilriker Well if print time estimates are your biggest printing issue, you're definitely ahead of the game.

Prusa has been putting a lot of work into Slic3r, and it sounds like the near future will incorporate the modern interface of the Prusa Control basic slicer with the back end slicing engine of Slic3r. So it won't look like it's from the 90's anymore.

It's too bad they are so heavily focusing on Marlin to the exclusion of others. I understand that they are highly integrated with their own version of Marlin firmware, but it would be nice if the gcode flavour switch actually allowed their features to work with other flavours.

At any rate, Slic3r does produce good gcode and the interface is definitely a lot faster than Cura for me at least. It lacks some features and has some others. But generally if I just want to quickly slice something and print it, Slic3r is my go to.

dc42

If you want an accurate estimate of print time before printing, try right clicking on the file in the DWC GCode Files list and click Simulate.

wilriker

All joking and sarcasm aside:

Me wanting to have accurate print time estimates already in the slicer (no matter which one) is just me being pedantic and not important. It happens quite often that I tune slicer settings to get a print being faster without compromising the requirements for the printed part. But once I get a feeling of how much Slic3r is off it will be just a relative offset I will get used to.

What I meant about the patch-your-slicer approach and not being in the mood for it was maybe poorly worded. It was not supposed to mean that I will not try out Slic3r just because it cannot give me the same level of print time estimation accuracy that I am used to from Cura. It just meant that I could fix this by patching Slic3r but at least for now I won't.

I really do like the speed of Slic3r. It is vastly faster than Cura both in terms of UI and slicing speed. Especially the latter.

Also I don't really care for the look of the UI as long as it gets the job done. I am a minimalist using a tiling window manager on Linux - no fancy animations anywhere, everything full screen all the time.
I can say that I like the look of the UIs of Cura or ideaMaker but it is just not important to me in the first place.

There are two things I miss in Slic3r so far (but still no reason to not try it for some time):

I like to see the coordinates of an object on the build plate. It helps me to arrange for a new print if the previous object is still on the build plate (printing from remote) but I can guess my way around that at least
I would prefer to see the print time estimates without having to save the Gcode first

EDIT: Probably later today I will print my Slic3r sliced Benchy.

wilriker

Also I just now ordered 4x Wantai 42BYGHW811 steppers.

1.8°, 47Ncm, 2.5A, 1.25 Ohm, 1.8mH

I had a very hard time to decide between this model and the 0.9° version because I primarily wanted to have the more silent version but could not get any information on how these two compare in this respect.
In the end it was that I could get the 0.9° steppers only as a set of 5 whereas I only need 4 motors (X, Y, 2xZ) and the 1.8° I could get in arbitrary amounts.

OBELIKS

May I ask, why not on extruder?

wilriker

@obeliks These motors are awfully heavy (370g) and I am using a direct extruder.
Also as soon as I switch to my Titan (also in direct extruder setup) they also would be totally overpowered when considering the 3:1 gearing.

I will keep the Anet stepper on the extruder for now and see how far I get with the (rather weak) 12Ncm pancake stepper that was part of the Titan clone I bought. If this turns out to be insufficient I will order something with around 20Ncm. This will definitely have enough power but weigh a lot less.

wilriker

Slic3r'd Benchy printed. From what I can tell over the webcam it looks quite good but has awful image quality:

A better image and an evaluation of the quality will follow tonight.

OBELIKS

@wilriker Ah,OK. Makes sense.
Check the Titan, especially if the idler bearing, teeth that drive filament and guide holes align. Some clones have this off, and you need to get a new hobbed gear.

wilriker

@obeliks I got mine from Trianglelabs. They supposedly make better quality clones. But I will check this nevertheless. Thanks!

OBELIKS

You are probably safe then

wilriker

@obeliks Will see in a bit. It is now point 3 on my todo list. First will be changing Z axis to be belt-driven lead-screws with 1:2 gearing (one part still in shipping). Then (or maybe at the same time) switch out motors and after that extruder and hotend will get replaced eventually after having it on my desk for about two months now.

whosrdaddy

@wilriker : I use these pancake steppers on my trianglelabs titan clones and they have more than enough power

wilriker

@whosrdaddy I have this exact model also on my list of candidates in case the Trianglelab stepper is insufficient. But they are very close in specs. Mine is

12Ncm
0.8A
3.5Ohm
3.8mH

so I guess they will be OK then as well.

whosrdaddy

Yeah, I have the E3D 0.9° stepper on my P3Steel but it is more sensitive than the omc stepper.

Phaedrux

@wilriker said in My custom Cartesian:

I would prefer to see the print time estimates without having to save the Gcode first

This is coming apparently. Although keeping it seperate has kept the slicing speed up.

I can confirm that the triangle labs titan clone is quite good. The hob bolt is hardened steel. And it had less alignment issues. Though the cover plate didn't fit as nicely and did rattle a bit.

wilriker

@phaedrux said in My custom Cartesian:

This is coming apparently. Although keeping it seperate has kept the slicing speed up.

I would not mind to have to click a button to get this calculated and displayed. But saving a file first is too much of a disturbance in the workflow. It drags your focus to another opening window and away from the slicing.

I can confirm that the triangle labs titan clone is quite good. The hob bolt is hardened steel. And it had less alignment issues. Though the cover plate didn't fit as nicely and did rattle a bit.

At least while just moving parts by hand there is no rattling on mine. Will see once the motor is working.

wilriker

So, today I have printed a Benchy that was sliced with Slic3r. I have to admit that the quality is great. No more visible infill on the hull. Also some other areas around the cabin look better.

Though there are three things that I never saw with Cura sliced Benchies so far. Stringing is a lot more pronounced due to different travel paths. My stringing got worse after enabling Pressure Advance and I have to retune retraction again but the Benchyi printed two days ago was also with PA enabled and stringing was less. But this does not bother me too much.
But there are also two artifacts on the hull that I never had before. A strange blob on the front side and something that looks like some kind of ringing on the back side. Unfortunately I am writing in my phone right now and cannot upload images this way. Instead here is a link to a Google Photos album.

Phaedrux

You may have travel combing enabled in Cura. It tries to stay within the model during travel. Slic3r has that option to avoid crossing perimeters. I don't tend to use it because it creates longer travel paths and has a tendency to increase underruns at restart because the plastic has oozed out during the travel. There are also a few retraction settings you can tweak in slic3r.

Here's my optimized profile. You might have to adjust some speeds, but otherwise it prints quite well.

0_1536348222810_Optimized config.ini.txt