Simplify3D software

[Bill Dempsey]

Has anyone here tried Creator from Simplify3D with their CubeX printer? I'd be interested to hear how well it works. It sounds great and a post in their forums says that some folks are using it with CubeX printers. It's supposed to be blazing fast at slicing and the support manipulation is the best I've seen in 3D printer software.

-Bill

[Bill Dempsey]

Just an update. I went ahead and purchased Creator. It does not work with the CubeX out of the box. There is no profile for it. I found one on the forums there, but it doesn't work at all. I'm still working on figuring it out, but not much progress, yet. If anyone else has worked out a good starting profile, I'd appreciate it if you could share it. Thanks!

[bsmith...@gmail.com]

I am kind of surprised that it did not work out of the box because they specifically advertised that they support the Cubex.

When you get time, would you feel like posting a small program from Simplify3D? I would like to see what their output for Cubex looks like.

[CubeX 3D Printman]

Hello Bill,

I have also Creator. The output file from creator needs a little tweaking. I have not had much time to work on it but will after the holidays. I am looking forward to have another alternate slicer software option. Looks like it has great features.

As you know, the CubeX 1.07 software (not current 1.08 version) creates by accident an unencrypted .bfb file (readable in notepad) in the same folder it puts the CubeX build file. So you can look at the CubeX code file and compare.

Here is a link to download the CubeX 1.07 software. (anybody can install it since it does not have software key)

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1EQlD5FnX2zSGxlbEFqb2dmVWs/edit

Note: If you get a message "you do not have privileges to install etc....." during the install, try the install again by right clicking on the setup.exe file and select "Run as administrator".

Attached is a test cube file created by cubeX software (.bfb) and the same file created by creator software (.gcode)

On Thursday, December 12, 2013 7:43:46 AM UTC-8, Bill Dempsey wrote:

[bsmith...@gmail.com]

I looked at the Creator output. That's not even close! It's a 5D program!
Does Creator have a bfb firmware option? I know Cura and Slic3r do not. That's why it surprised me to see them advertising Cubex support.

I'm trying to figure out the formula to convert from the E distance to rpm. So far no luck. Any ideas? After that it would not be difficult to write a post processor to concert 5D to bfb.

[aspu...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 7:43:46 AM UTC-8, Bill Dempsey wrote:
> Has anyone here tried Creator from Simplify3D with their CubeX printer? I'd be interested to hear how well it works. It sounds great and a post in their forums says that some folks are using it with CubeX printers. It's supposed to be blazing fast at slicing and the support manipulation is the best I've seen in 3D printer software.
>
> -Bill

I'm too am curious about this. I have Simplify 3D and would like to use with with CubeX. Has there been any developments on this?

Thanks,

[Michael Hauser]

Hi Bill,

I've printed some things with S3D on my CubeX (single). I'm getting pretty good results, but S3D doesn't directly support BFB-style gcode with inline M108 commands to control flow rate and M227/M228 commands to control retraction. This means that for some parts where you want the feed rate and flow rate to change (e.g., ones with layers that have small surface area or for thinner support), to get good results you have to manually insert these commands inline in the gcode.

See this thread:  https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2177&start=50#p12351

 I was thinking of writing a post-processing script to try to automate this, but right now I'm playing with the new version of Cura since, like Kisslicer, it has built-in support for BFB-style gcode and it seems like a nice extensible platform (e.g., modular architecture with python plugins and json settings files). I created a CubeX printer profile for it and a very simple Python post-processing script and I'm trying to dial in the settings to get better prints.

I'm no 3D printing expert, but I will say that I'm having much better slicing results with S3D than with Kisslicer or Cura. Maybe I'll go ahead and write a simple post-processing script for S3D that inserts M108 commands as the feed rate changes. I don't yet understand how to optimize retraction settings (M227/M228), so I will have to study Kisslicer and Cubitmod to get a better idea of what's going on there if I'm going to try to adapt these to S3D.

Another thought is to swap out the controller with open hardware/firmware, as others have done. It seems like the result would be a better and more extensible printer.

Michael