Hello all,
I'm the disappointed and frustrated owner of a brand-new CubePro Duo, and I'm here to make it better. Simply put, the CubePro is a wonderful machine - beautiful, high build quality, rigid, large build volume, and heated chamber(!!!). For the price/performance I'm even okay being locked into their exorbitantly priced cartridges. I seriously believe that this machine has the potential to rival Stratasys build quality.
Except for one fatal flaw: their super, super crappy software. Specifically, the slicing engine.
All other issues aside (and there are a few, for sure), the slicing engine that they use will not, under any circumstances, fill a thin vertical wall. It will simply print parallel shells and refuses to crosslink. It's absolutely a deal breaker for a "prosumer" machine that is used for engineering parts that tend to be all uniform, thin walls - the resulting parts have very little rigidity.
HOWEVER, this would be possibly the best printing machine under $20K if we can JUST use Simplify3D. I bought a license JUST because I believe it can be done. I'm new to GCode but I'm highly tech-capable, in both software and hardware.
Here is what I know so far:
1. These printers evolved from BitsFromBytes printers. Simplicity3D already supports BFB's 3D Touch printer, so that might be a good place to start.
2. CubePro requires a proprietary binary with extension .cubepro. This has been reverse engineered and a handy utility called CodeX is available to convert to/from .bfb files (same as .gcode). You can get it here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=fr# ... MuIrtn5Mfo
3. A bunch of folks cracked the CubeX printer, which was the predecessor to CubePro. They did it with KISSlicer and a post-processor called Cubeitmod. The latest version and the source is available here: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!top ... -k1hdxZA6I
4. There is a thread on CubePro GCode here: http://www.kisslicertalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=97 but it's not very methodical.You will see they are getting prints to run.
5. I've attached my test part (CubePro software puts out absolute crap with this), a .BFB from the CubePro software, and one I built by adding some init stuff to a Simplicity3D output. Unfortunately, my Simplicity3D file causes a filament error, despite the inits being totally identical. Note that the header information in there IS required... unknown if this may be the problem.
6. If we can track down a copy of firmware V1.03 or earlier, we can make the printer run bulk filament by changing materials in the header! Anything after that seems to calculate filament usage from the stepper or some such nonsense. Also having a copy of ANY stable firmware would help us "exit the loop" of proprietary updates that could break our hack.
I'm running V1.08 and am willing to guinea pig my own printer. Simplify guys? Guessing you have some chops here... want to team up?
3D Systems has said this is a known issue and that there isn't a fix in sight, so in the meantime I'm escalating this up to their VP of Global Engineering to get some help from them. I doubt they'll release the GCode interface but we might get a technical contact out of it. It completely baffles me how they can build such an awesome machine and then lock you into the world's crappiest slicer. Why NOT open it up to Simplicity?
Anyway,I'm crossing my fingers with this post. Looking forward to hearing from you guys.
Best,
Josh Hartung