Interface with remote 3D printers (e.g., through OctoPrint)

[mhelvens]

It would be great if next to USB connections, Simplify3D could also support remote connections to 3D printers.

It's often inconvenient to have a 3D printer connected to your PC or laptop. For one, 3D printers tend to be noisy. And if your computer crashes, your print is ruined. (It's happened to me more often than I'd have liked.) You can put a print-job on an SD card, but then you'd lose remote monitoring and control over your print.

A common solution nowadays is to set up your own 3D printing server with an old laptop or Raspberry Pi, and to start, monitor and control your prints over the local network. That's what I'm doing now. A Raspberry Pi is cheap, and with existing open source software like OctoPrint, it almost works out of the box. My printer is set up in the boiler-room, a small, slightly warm space with no air currents. And the Pi has a camera so I can monitor progress.

OctoPrint has a web-interface, but it's nowhere near as fully featured as Simplify3D. It would be fantastic if Simplify3D could still be used to start, monitor and control prints. I'm sure the OctoPrint REST API could be used to connect the two. And OctoPrint also supports plug-ins, which will allow even greater control.

[LVNeptune]

+1

[cyberchucktx]

+1 ( or +10 if that is allowed )

CyberchuckTX in Houston

[citrik]

There is a post processing script line you can use to do this. Great directions on how to do so here. I'm using it and it works great. Set the ["select=false" to "select=true"] and it will automagically select that .gcode file as the next to print.

http://community.robo3d.com/index.php?t ... etup.8217/


PS; Reading you post a second time it seems you want to still control the printer from Simplify3D and not from Octoprint. This script won't do that, it just hands off the .gcode file.

Some more details here... viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1924

[mhelvens]

PS; Reading you post a second time it seems you want to still control the printer from Simplify3D and not from Octoprint. This script won't do that, it just hands off the .gcode file.

Indeed. There are many tricks to automatically transfer the .gcode file. The point of this request is to get the full benefit of Simplify3D before, during and after the printing process, and reducing the number of applications in your 3D printing tool-chain.

[ayourk]

An alternative that would work for me in lieu of being able to print via OctoPrint would be to have Simplify3D recompiled for the armhf architecture for 32-bit Linux. Then I'd be able to run Simplify3D natively on my Raspberry Pi 3.

[mhelvens]

An alternative that would work for me in lieu of being able to print via OctoPrint would be to have Simplify3D recompiled for the armhf architecture for 32-bit Linux. Then I'd be able to run Simplify3D natively on my Raspberry Pi 3.

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the Pi here, that purpose being a remote printing server?

Also, I suspect the performance wouldn't be stellar.

[mr_cg]

+1

S3D Plugin for Octoprint would be great !!!

[jlwilliams03]

+1

[ayourk]

An alternative that would work for me in lieu of being able to print via OctoPrint would be to have Simplify3D recompiled for the armhf architecture for 32-bit Linux. Then I'd be able to run Simplify3D natively on my Raspberry Pi 3.

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the Pi here, that purpose being a remote printing server?

Also, I suspect the performance wouldn't be stellar.

The thing is, OctoPrint can use Cura-engine to slice STL files. If I could do something like that via Simplify3D, that'd be great. I really don't care if I can do graphical stuff on the Pi. Command line would be fine. My main desktop is a linux, so if I can Remote Xwin from the Pi to my main box, that would be great.

I did recently find a good script for post processing to send the gcode files to the Pi. That is my current work-a-round.