Tip of the Day 22 - BFB 3D Touch, CubeX, RapMan & CubePro

[descobar3d]

im having trouble downloading the Code X from the thread. i get the message "failed-server problem".

any suggestions?

[MichaelHerron]

Hello everyone,

As many CubePro owners, we're eager to have a more efficient tool to generate printing files than the one provided by Cubify.
Hand-made supports is a good way to learn the principles, but you can't have it in your day to day work!

I'd like to make a quick compatibility check with our CubePro Duo (firmware 1.1 v2) to justify the licence buying.
Would anyone be willing to share a file generated by simplify + CodeX64 (in white ABS ideally)?

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

Sorry to barge in again, but has anyone a *.cubepro file to share?
Qwya seems to, but his post disappeared!

Thanks in advance!

Try this:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... MuIrtn5Mfo

As for the comparison between cubify and simplify, just receiving a cubepro file won't necessarily convince you of the benefit without printing the same file on cubify. Creating a file in simplify is easy, but has many more options than cubify. you CAN--if you really work at it--get a file that is JUST as horrible in simplify as it is in cubify. It is also possible to get a file out of cubify that is pretty good (although i've yet to see one).

To truly get a good print from your printer using simplify, you will have to dial it in. Alot of the heavy lifting portion of this--and it IS heavy lifting--has been done already by those in this forum. BUT you will still need to tweak it. Once dialed in, your prints will be lightyears ahead of anything you can do with cubify. manually generated supports aside, it IS worth the license fee--even today, when support for BFB printers such as the cubepro are minimal--these will only get better with future releases.

If you have an STL file that you have printed using cubify software, post the cubepro file and the STL file and maybe a photo of the file. I'll convert the STL file to a cubepro file using simplify so you can compare. it will certainly work with your firmware--that isn't an issue. Postings by myself, loffler and by lephino have yielded pretty good results, but nothing works right the very first time.. if i do convert a file, i'm not likely to test it on my printer because 1--the material loadout wont be the same, and 2--my cubepro is ridiculously fragile and unreliable and now out of warrantee. Still, i'll be happy to attempt to convert it--and supply you with the BFB file and a cubepro file so you can tweak it with a text editor if it doesn't work. Understanding these files is very helpful if you want to truly unleash the printer. It is not MANDATORY, but very helpful.

[PDZ]

Try this:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... MuIrtn5Mfo

As for the comparison between cubify and simplify, just receiving a cubepro file won't necessarily convince you of the benefit without printing the same file on cubify. Creating a file in simplify is easy, but has many more options than cubify. you CAN--if you really work at it--get a file that is JUST as horrible in simplify as it is in cubify. It is also possible to get a file out of cubify that is pretty good (although i've yet to see one).

To truly get a good print from your printer using simplify, you will have to dial it in. Alot of the heavy lifting portion of this--and it IS heavy lifting--has been done already by those in this forum. BUT you will still need to tweak it. Once dialed in, your prints will be lightyears ahead of anything you can do with cubify. manually generated supports aside, it IS worth the license fee--even today, when support for BFB printers such as the cubepro are minimal--these will only get better with future releases.

If you have an STL file that you have printed using cubify software, post the cubepro file and the STL file and maybe a photo of the file. I'll convert the STL file to a cubepro file using simplify so you can compare. it will certainly work with your firmware--that isn't an issue. Postings by myself, loffler and by lephino have yielded pretty good results, but nothing works right the very first time.. if i do convert a file, i'm not likely to test it on my printer because 1--the material loadout wont be the same, and 2--my cubepro is ridiculously fragile and unreliable and now out of warrantee. Still, i'll be happy to attempt to convert it--and supply you with the BFB file and a cubepro file so you can tweak it with a text editor if it doesn't work. Understanding these files is very helpful if you want to truly unleash the printer. It is not MANDATORY, but very helpful.

Well, I'm intimately convinced of the usefulness of the tool, and that it will need more than a conversion to benefit of its advantages!
The idea of the conversion is to have a formal proof of the compatibility, to justify the fee.

If you can give a try with the attachments (without *.cubepro: too big),
Thanks very much for your time!

[JoeJ]

There's at least 5 people on this thread who have chimed in saying they're already using the software with their cube pro so that's pretty good proof

[MichaelHerron]

Try this:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... MuIrtn5Mfo

As for the comparison between cubify and simplify, just receiving a cubepro file won't necessarily convince you of the benefit without printing the same file on cubify. Creating a file in simplify is easy, but has many more options than cubify. you CAN--if you really work at it--get a file that is JUST as horrible in simplify as it is in cubify. It is also possible to get a file out of cubify that is pretty good (although i've yet to see one).

To truly get a good print from your printer using simplify, you will have to dial it in. Alot of the heavy lifting portion of this--and it IS heavy lifting--has been done already by those in this forum. BUT you will still need to tweak it. Once dialed in, your prints will be lightyears ahead of anything you can do with cubify. manually generated supports aside, it IS worth the license fee--even today, when support for BFB printers such as the cubepro are minimal--these will only get better with future releases.

If you have an STL file that you have printed using cubify software, post the cubepro file and the STL file and maybe a photo of the file. I'll convert the STL file to a cubepro file using simplify so you can compare. it will certainly work with your firmware--that isn't an issue. Postings by myself, loffler and by lephino have yielded pretty good results, but nothing works right the very first time.. if i do convert a file, i'm not likely to test it on my printer because 1--the material loadout wont be the same, and 2--my cubepro is ridiculously fragile and unreliable and now out of warrantee. Still, i'll be happy to attempt to convert it--and supply you with the BFB file and a cubepro file so you can tweak it with a text editor if it doesn't work. Understanding these files is very helpful if you want to truly unleash the printer. It is not MANDATORY, but very helpful.

Well, I'm intimately convinced of the usefulness of the tool, and that it will need more than a conversion to benefit of its advantages!
The idea of the conversion is to have a formal proof of the compatibility, to justify the fee.

If you can give a try with the attachments (without *.cubepro: too big),
Thanks very much for your time!

I've tried loading the STL file, and there are many errors in the file (missing triangles). The print orientation is also not likely to work at all--is there a reason its standing up as it is?
I will likely just upload a simple model from my archive for you to print. I'll include the stl so you can try it in cubify as well.

I'll make sure it is set up for ABS (may not be white though) so it will print without issue. We don't use much ABS these days because of curling issues without a heated bed. The glue makes it too difficult to remove thin-wall parts without damaging them. (PETG is working very well and sticking quite well to the standard print bed without glue or heat)

[MichaelHerron]

PDZ:
I've attached a zip file containing a sample I-phone 6 case model. I've not tried this with cubify, but its dimensional accuracy would likely never yield a working case without huge amounts of wasted (expensive) material.

The logo is printed on the inside of the case, which will appear odd using ABS--it was designed for use with translucent PETG. I have very few models here that aren't customer-proprietary, so I can't just upload anything.

I've included a BFB file too--you may need to tweak this and re-encode using CODEX if there are issues--I haven't tested this in ABS. I'm using an old version of my settings rather than lephino's configuration. I think his configs would be quite good for this, but since I haven't tested them personally using ABS I didn't use them.

One thing to mention here--especially when talking about costs for license:
Once you get simplify dialed in to your likeing, you'll make far fewer bad prints than you would using cubify. If you are still using the material cartridges, rejected prints will cost you far more in the long-run than a single simplify license. We have printed models here that consume an entire cartridge that ended up being unusable (y-axis shifts, overextrution, etc). This wastes $100 of material and about 36hrs of time. (we bill at 125/hr) A simplify license is vastly less expensive than this... and you only pay once!

Iphone6Case.zip

sample model--designed for translucent materials

(1.21 MiB) Downloaded 487 times

[PDZ]

@ MichaelHerron :

I just put the file in our CubePro and... Success!
Thank you very much! I'm totally convinced that the license cost will be rapidly compensated, and so will be my chief when he sees this.

As for your question on the inclination of 45° of the part I posted : It's a solution we're using to avoid warping of large faces (there is no flat face on the horizontal plane), and it gives very good results. The counterpart is the need of support, and as the cubify soft gives very poor results, we were designing them in CAD (that was the costly part).

The next issue will be the price of the cartridges...

[MichaelHerron]

@ MichaelHerron :

I just put the file in our CubePro and... Success!
Thank you very much! I'm totally convinced that the license cost will be rapidly compensated, and so will be my chief when he sees this.

As for your question on the inclination of 45° of the part I posted : It's a solution we're using to avoid warping of large faces (there is no flat face on the horizontal plane), and it gives very good results. The counterpart is the need of support, and as the cubify soft gives very poor results, we were designing them in CAD (that was the costly part).

The next issue will be the price of the cartridges...

That issue has been dealt with (Loffler's post) on another thread. its easy. Now that we are out of warrantee, we feed materials in from the top of the machine (we built a little tent to keep the heat in). We can use cheap PLA in much greater color assortment, PETG, Flexible, or any other specialty materials. Give PETG a try--it is strong, sticks well to the plastic print surface without glue, and doesn't warp nearly as bad as ABS. All of these options are about 1/8 cost to the 3DS materials. You just need to make sure that your starting script in Simplify matches the cartridges (you need cartridges loaded, but they can be empty) that you have in the machine--not what you're printing with. Also you need to make sure that your start script only shows that you're using .01m of material. This will make sense when you get your software.

[vegandiver1]

I just upgraded to Simplify3D v. 3.0 now whenever I try to load the print job to the CubePro it immediately gives me an error that it can't print. Anyone else having this problem? I tried encoding a gcode file I generated with a previous version of the software and it worked just fine, for some reason the Cube is no longer liking the files that V3.0 is posting out. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

~Adam

[BaudR8]

it looks like they fixed Windows' annoying EOL oddities. In the scripts tab > Post processing scripts > before the {EXTENSION "bfb"} put:
{REPLACE "\n" "\r\n"}