Can Creator send binary and/or asci?

[davew_tx]

My first post: (I've looked around for this, but can't find an answer)


I'm having problems on my current machine, with stuttering due to buffer underrun I believe.
May be caused by high polygon counts, i.e. short segments in corners and curves.
This happens on my custom machine and also when I send my own files to my M2.
The sample M2 print files (Bigfoot, etc) all seem to move quickly without stuttering.
I get stuttering with USB cable and SD card prints.

In the hunt for a solution, I've seen that Repetier can send a more concise binary stream.
I have yet to confirm an improvement, as this is a sizable time commitment to change firmwares.

But I wonder if Creator has features to help with short line segments?
like G2/G3 creation when arcs are detected (although STL would create many short straight segments during export).

Dave

my machine is a custom, Azteeg X3, 542 box stepper drivers, Nema23 motors, jHead

[Simplify3D]

This is a big problem with the traditional 3D printing methods in general. We are forced to model very complex shapes with triangles alone, and as you know it takes a lot of triangles to model a circle!

Good news for you is that Creator actually has quite a few methods already baked in to combat this. For starters, the software will automatically recognize circular moves and replace them with the corresponding G2 or G3 commands (if your firmware supports it). That can turn 500 very tiny G1 linear moves into a single G2 or G3 command. If you're printing an axisymmetric vase for example, this could literally reduce your .gcode file size by 500x! We also have a method to combine seemingly parallel lines to a tolerance you control. So if two adjacent lines are within 0.5 degrees of each other, for example, they would be combined into one. That's another easy way to reduce the file size and stuttering problems significantly. A third method is the built in mesh reduction algorithm. It can automatically reduce the polygon count of an overly complicated mesh to fix the problem at the source! And finally, the uploader used by Creator is one of the fastest I've seen so once you're happy with the size of your .gcode file, it will send it to your machine as quick as the firmware can process it.

If you can tell, I've spent a lot of time battling this issue so we have quite a few ways to solve it

Hope that helps!

[davew_tx]

Yes, that's encouraging to hear so many improvements specifically aimed at stuttering.

I'd love a "try before you buy" version if you have it.

Dave

[Simplify3D]

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