More intelligent options for the prime pillar

[krosnyak]

I believe that the tool path should be forced to ENTER the print area through the PRIME PILLAR.
I have noticed that in some prints the tool runs over parts of the actual print before it reaches the PRIME PILLAR leaving bits of oozed material on the print affecting print quality!

(This behavior seems to be affected by the "avoid crossing open spaces" feature, a higher number on this feature may be forcing the tool to go to the nearest point on the print BEFORE it heads towards the PRIME PILLAR).

[hes_delft]

At the moment the prime pillar settings are equal for all tools. My problem is that I get over extrusion (a blob) on the prime pillar of my right head (PLA) and under extrusion on the pillar of my left head (PVA). Often this results in the print head knocking over the prime pillar resulting in a failed print.

Giving control over the settings of the individual heads would solve my problems.

As stated in a different post, giving the prime pillars a separate fill percentage could increase the print speeds a lot, while maintaining its function and stability.

[chief_hacker]

@hes_delft You can reduce the extrusion amount during the prime pillar by entering this command into the post processing on the "Scripts" tab:

{REPLACE "; prime pillar" "M221 S90 ; prime pillar"}
{REPLACE "; inner perimeter" "M221 S100 ; inner perimeter"}
{REPLACE "; support" "M221 S100 ; support"}

The first command reduces the material flow to 90% during the prime pillar and the next two lines set it back to 100% when going to print the part.

[jschroeder]

+vote

I would like to see this feature as well.

Another note, I would suggest making the prime pillar scalable with the size of the print. Taller prints need a larger (wider) tower for stability.

[garyrasmussen1]

Granted this is old but I still dont see an update in product. Is there a way to stop the tower at a certain level OR cause the brim to print for each color(they by purging for color changes ) as brim does have a final height setting?

I have tried a couple ways to eliminate color bleed but it seems the tower is the only way that works but, when I am printing a logo with a depth of only .6mm(three or 4 layers) and then 25mm of single color I hate to waste the whole towers worth of material. A 20x20 tower seems to be required to completely clear the darker colors from the extruder before the white.
Also, for the purger line at the beginning. it seems to mix when I only select extruder 0(white) then the first lines of the white area of the print are tinted the other color (dk blue). with a big purge block20x20 I get rid of the blue but waste a lot of white. I have also tried printing the blue first then back to white but inevitably i get a line or two of blue on the plate before the white prints(fail).

what i'd like to do to solve it and not waste a bunch:
print white brim, white first two layers, then dk blue and white mix brim outside of white brim, then first two layers of that process, then dk blue brim out side of other brims then first two lates of dk blue...then repeat at white......etc. then I could stop the brim at layer 6(or what ever) and not keep printing waste for the rest of the height.

Thoughts?

[Smoky312]

Also, it would be nice to have an option to print the prime pillar with very low infill (10% for example) if there is no tool change command at that layer (or maybe at that layer and the next one, so that there is enough surface area for the priming layer to stick). This could help save some material.

I'm now using v5.0 and love it so far. Now you can set the preferred infill percentage for the prime pillar but that's for every layer. Would be nice to add one more option to this feature to use 100% infill when a tool change is required for that layer. So when no tool change, continue with the preferred infill percentage.