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

[mmcginnis9272]

PDZ:
If you are still using the material cartridges...

Iphone6Case.zip

You say this like there is an alternative. Can I use any materialI want and not have to deal with the cartridge thinking it is empty?


Thanks..

[MichaelHerron]

PDZ:
If you are still using the material cartridges...

Iphone6Case.zip

You say this like there is an alternative. Can I use any materialI want and not have to deal with the cartridge thinking it is empty?


Thanks..

yes..

You must have a cartridge loaded--AND the cubepro file you are printing must have the correct material type identified FOR THE LOADED CARTRIDGE. (not necessarily what you're printing with)
For instance--if you have a loaded PLA cartridge, the cubepro file must have a material number that corresponds to PLA (natural pla is 214) These number are in the start script.
NEXT--the firmware of the cubepro checks to see if the amount of material that the printed file is going to use is still left in the cartridge. This number is also in the start script. It should be a very small, non-zero number. (.001 works).
The cartridge loaded can be empty!
This may not work forever, but to date, we have not had an issue printing on an empty cartridge.

This is nice because your start script doesn't ever have to change. Just load the machine with empty cartridges and make sure your start script matches them.

Now... you may have to get clever here, but you can load the material you wish to print with from the top. We built a little tent to replace the top cover and feed the material thru a small hole in the center of the tent. If you're printing with PLA, you can just leave the top cover off--just make sure you're not trying to heat the chamber, as all the heat will escape and the machine will just sit there trying to reach the specified temperature. We also designed a custom spool hanger and we we hang 5 or 6 spools above the printer. we can choose any of the materials, load them into the extruder using the "Control Jets" option on the touch panel and print away! Eventually, we will design a custom spool holder that also holds one of the chips from the cartridge. This way we can use the original top cover and feed the filament thru the feeding tubes, keeping everything internal. for now, we just feed from the top and it works great.

we even do this for some of our remaining 3d systems cartridges!

Now--we didn't do this until our warrantee expired. you'll want to wait if you still have warrantee left. (About the only thing that wasn't replaced in our printer was the structure and the motors.) All the boards, a few nozzles, build plates, etc--all replaced under warrantee prior to our straying from the ecosystem. If we would have had to pay for these replacements, we would have dumped the cubepro immediately.. it really hasn't been a good printer for us.
Being able to use other materials--and cheaper materials--helps a bunch though! I'm quick to recommend using PETG. It prints great, sticks to the bed quite well without that horrible glue, is stronger AND more flexible than ABS, but is easy to print like PLA.

Hope this helps...

[jschneider89]

PDZ:
If you are still using the material cartridges...

Iphone6Case.zip

You say this like there is an alternative. Can I use any materialI want and not have to deal with the cartridge thinking it is empty?


Thanks..

yes..

You must have a cartridge loaded--AND the cubepro file you are printing must have the correct material type identified FOR THE LOADED CARTRIDGE. (not necessarily what you're printing with)
For instance--if you have a loaded PLA cartridge, the cubepro file must have a material number that corresponds to PLA (natural pla is 214) These number are in the start script.
NEXT--the firmware of the cubepro checks to see if the amount of material that the printed file is going to use is still left in the cartridge. This number is also in the start script. It should be a very small, non-zero number. (.001 works).
The cartridge loaded can be empty!
This may not work forever, but to date, we have not had an issue printing on an empty cartridge.

Is there any way to determine what the code is for other cartridges? For example, white PLA?

[mmcginnis9272]

Hope this helps...

Thanks for the info. So to feed the material in through the top, I assume required you to take the filament tubeand re-route it to the top, or did you enter the feed motor directly and leave the tube in place?

One last thing. I decoded a .cubepro file with CubeX.exe and the file is still completely unreadable garbage. I thought .bfb files were human readable g-code. Is this normal or do i have a bad copy of CubeX? My CubePro software is version 1.52 released June 3rd.

Thanks again..

[MichaelHerron]

Hope this helps...

Thanks for the info. So to feed the material in through the top, I assume required you to take the filament tubeand re-route it to the top, or did you enter the feed motor directly and leave the tube in place?

One last thing. I decoded a .cubepro file with CubeX.exe and the file is still completely unreadable garbage. I thought .bfb files were human readable g-code. Is this normal or do i have a bad copy of CubeX? My CubePro software is version 1.52 released June 3rd.

Thanks again..

don't re-route the tube, just move it out of the way of the motor. I will probably go back to using the tubes and put the spools inside the box, but i'll need to print a spool holder and a chip holder.. too lazy or too busy to design such stuff now.

as for decoding with CubeX... when you create a .cubepro file with Cubify's software, it creates 2 cubepro files. the decode-able file is destroyed once you hit the OK button when it says its done. It is located in <your user folder>/AppData/Local/CubePro. This folder may be hidden--be sure you have made hidden files visible...

Cubify now embeds a thumbnail image into the cubepro file after you hit OK when the build is done. This thumbnail is displayed on the little screen. CubeX doesn't yet know how to decode the file with the embedded image.
Make sure you copy the cubepro file out of the above-mentioned folder before you hit OK in the CubePro software...

You might also read through some of the forums at kisslicertalk.com. There is some valuable info there pertaining to this hardware. It is where all the work began for making this printer useful.

[michaelhauser]

I am using S3D with a Cubex (single). I'm still trying to get it dialed in with my filament (ABS) and hot end (e3D lite6 with an adapter I printed). One problem I'm having is the lack of control over flow rate. The Cubex firmware apparently doesn't support 5D-style flow control (E codes), instead using M108 Sxx codes. But using a fixed flow rate (e.g., putting an M108 Sxx code in the gcode header) seems like a poor solution for complex parts. Also, having prime/suck codes only in the header is also problematic for similar reasons. The combination of Kisslicer and Cubitmod seems to solve this by inserting these codes inline as needed. It would seem that without direct support for BFB/Cube firmware or else some fairly sophisticated post-processing, Simplify3D won't be suitable for printing complex parts on these printers. But I'm a 3d printing novice, so this analysis could be completely off-base. Feedback?
Thanks.
Michael Hauser

[MichaelHerron]

I am using S3D with a Cubex (single). I'm still trying to get it dialed in with my filament (ABS) and hot end (e3D lite6 with an adapter I printed). One problem I'm having is the lack of control over flow rate. The Cubex firmware apparently doesn't support 5D-style flow control (E codes), instead using M108 Sxx codes. But using a fixed flow rate (e.g., putting an M108 Sxx code in the gcode header) seems like a poor solution for complex parts. Also, having prime/suck codes only in the header is also problematic for similar reasons. The combination of Kisslicer and Cubitmod seems to solve this by inserting these codes inline as needed. It would seem that without direct support for BFB/Cube firmware or else some fairly sophisticated post-processing, Simplify3D won't be suitable for printing complex parts on these printers. But I'm a 3d printing novice, so this analysis could be completely off-base. Feedback?
Thanks.
Michael Hauser

You're kinda right. Its not great. We've still managed to get decent results with some complex parts. The only trouble we've had is when there are very small extrudes--these tend to overextrude when using the same flowrate as larger moves.
I've found that they don't overextrude NEARLY as much as the CUBIFY software, which does exert more precise control.

Kisslicer and Cubitmod do a great job of regulating and modulating the flow rate relative to speed. As long as you maintain your speed (don't use the layer or outline modifications available in simplify) you can get very good results. If you have a section of your part that has a small surface area--and its the only thing on the layer, you CAN set up a separate process for it to control flowrate (manually).

It has taken a huge amount of time and effort to dial in our cube-pro, but we've done it and we do get pretty good results now. We still have yet to optimize the firmware retraction settings for some materials, but ABS and PLA are pretty well dialed in. The "prime and suck" settings are very interesting--i think they are better documented for the cubex than they are for the newer cube-pros. There is literally ZERO documentation that seems to accurately portray what the 4 parameters mean for the M227 and the 2 for M228 really mean. Most of the documentation i've seen only describes 2 params for each M-command, and there is little agreement between documents.

I will say, when using PLA and ABS, the firmware retraction yields a cleaner finished part than using simplify to control the retraction.

[michaelhauser]

Thanks for the reply @MichaelHerron. Yes, I've manually inserted M108 codes inline to control flow rate on some parts. It's too bad S3D doesn't really support these printers. It seems like it shouldn't be very difficult for them to do.

I think I'll write a post-processing script to automate inserting the flow control codes. It seems like the relationship between feed rate and flow rate is roughly linear, at least within the typical feed rate range that produces good prints. I don't know how to optimize retraction settings (M227/M228). Maybe studying the output from Kisslicer and Cubitmod will help.

I've also created a simple post-processing script for using the new Cura with the CubeX. Cura DOES support BFB-style gcode (with inline M108 codes), but I'm getting better slicing overall from S3D.

Michael

[michaelhauser]

...I think I'll write a post-processing script to automate inserting the flow control codes. It seems like the relationship between feed rate and flow rate is roughly linear, at least within the typical feed rate range that produces good prints.

My simple Python post-processing script is working well. It just inserts a new M108 code whenever it sees an M101 followed by a G1 with a changed feed rate. An extruder speed of Feedrate x .009 seems to work pretty well, although I haven't done much tuning yet. I can post the script if anyone is interested.

Michael

[mmcginnis9272]

NEXT--the firmware of the cubepro checks to see if the amount of material that the printed file is going to use is still left in the cartridge. This number is also in the start script. It should be a very small, non-zero number. (.001 works).
The cartridge loaded can be empty!
This may not work forever, but to date, we have not had an issue printing on an empty cartridge.

So, if you don't mind clarifying... the %full on my cartridges will continue to decrease untill they hit 0%, but I'll still be able to print as long as there is filament in the cartridge or externally running into the head? I ask this because currently I'm printing on a cartridge that says it is around 90% full and when I print, the number keeps decreasing.