Simplify3D Creator profiles for PLA

[Enginwiz]

Wingcommanders GPX converter makes using other slicing engines

than RepG and Makerware much easier for Makerbot operators.

One promising alternative is Simplify3D Creator. The benefits are

integrated mesh repair, very fast slicing and preview of the generated G-code.

Instantly after slicing the g-code wingcommanders GPX converter 

automatically saves an additional Replicator compatible .X3G file.

Slicing the G-code and producing the .X3G file takes considerably

less time than in Makerware. Simplify3D Creator seems to run

2 to 5 times faster than Makerware on large prints. 

However some of the default print settings for PLA produced

the well known signs of overextrusion on the prints. Early Makerware

settings had the same toothing problems last year. After a bunch of

calibration cubes I turned off Auto Extrusion Width and searched for

working settings through the good old trial-and-error method.

After two days of printing calibration cubes and deprime tests

on a Replicator 2 with Sailfish firmware 7.4 the print quality got

comparable to Makerware and ReplicatorG.

To make it easier for other users to try out Simplify3D Creator

the calibrated print settings have been published on Thingiverse.

as Thing http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:147628

Search for "Simplify3D Creator profiles for PLA" and download the .factory files.

Happy printing!

[Clinton Hoines]

Just curious what makes this slicer worth the $125 over say the $42 for KISSlicer pro and just using RepG to save the file off as .X3G?

[Enginwiz]

Integrated STL checking and automatic repair.

Getting some of the goodies in Netfab, Makerware and Repetier Host in one package.

Time is money for a professional user. I want to streamline my workflow.

[Enginwiz]

Just for the curious:

Error checking of STLs in Simplify3D Creator and visualization of the surface triangles and normals.

There is also a mesh repair capability to some extent. I still have to find out its limits. 

I don't have the time to check every STL in Netfabb before slicing in Makerware or RepG. 

Unfortunately Netfabb abandoned the announced slicing engine for Makerbots. Maybe the

GPX converter will someday also work with Netfabb. 

There is no preview window in Makerware and ReplicatorG/PyPy. Viewing the Gcode

externally in Repetier Host and going back to Makerware or RepG in case of problems

for reslicing is a waste of time. I want to get rid of that loop. Integrated preview saves time.

Retraction in Creator works well for printing PLA on a Rep 2. Firmware deprime in the sailfish fimware is OFF. 

The retraction values in my published profiles may still be a bit too high.

You can see some tiny holes in the outer shell. 

This Astrobot is a 2 hour print at a layer height of 0,10 mm. 

No blobs or zipper, but some tiny holes at the random start points

of the outer shell. I have to try out smaller values for retraction.

[Eighty]

Looks pretty darn good if you ask me. I don't see the holes you're talking about. Just some random zits, possibly due to the planner falling behind? How fast was this printed? And what temp (looks like 230+).
And I have to ask...what filament is this? It's not a color I'm familiar with.

[Enginwiz]

All the white spots on the Astrobot are actually tiny holes. I use an IKEA clamp-on LED lamp

on my Rep2 to illuminate the nozzle area under the X-carriage during printing. The lamp creates a 

sparkling effect on PLA that highlights imperfections on the surface.

The white balance of my digicam seems to be a bit off when all the different LEDs around the build plate are on.

In daylight the color of the Astrobot is a shiny dark black. The PLA blend is called Natureworks 4032.

I bought some rolls at www.fabber-parts.de in January and made a lot of prints with it. Good stuff.

My Rep2 printed the Astrobot at 215 degrees Celsius with a layer height of 0,10 mm, two shells, 15% infill

at 80 mm/s (or 4800 mm/min in the settings of Simplify3D Creator). Print time was about 2 hours.

[Clinton Hoines]

You may have a little moisture in your filament. I had a few pieces pint like your example and turned out to be small pockets of moisture being burnt off as it printed. It's worth a check if your filament has been in the open air for more than a few weeks or in high humidity. Once dried out the roll printed perfect again.

[Enginwiz]

Could be moisture. We had a water pipe leak in the basement last week.

I store each roll of filament in a zip-lock bag together with some packs of desiccant.

Maybe by just sitting behind the printer in my office the black filament collected enough

moisture to produce these tiny holes. I will dry out this roll of filament in the oven.

Thank you for this tip.

[Steve Johnstone]

Wow, nice print. I'll defiantly have a look at the software.

Also how would you dry out your PLA if you had issues with moisture?

[Enginwiz]

We have a Miele hot air oven in the kitchen. The lowest setting of the thermostat is 50 degrees Celsius.
I put the roll of PLA on a wire tray and dry it for 2 hours at 50 degrees Celsius.

Simplify3D Creator might run 14 days without authorisation code. I will install it on
my second CAD workstation temporarily without authorisation key and report back.
This could be a way to get some kind of trial version for interested Makerbot operators.

[Obfuscated]

I've tried  Creator3d , KISSlicer and RepG. The UI in Creator is really slick in comparison KISS and RepG are clunky and unstable. The settings for extrusions in Creator are pretty indepth and fairly intuitive. Also most options have popup help. The other nice thing about it is that it has a built gcode tool viewer visualizer. The speed of the exporter is also fairly impressive.

I was almost sold on getting a license but found a couple of options in the slicer lacking. Namely there are only two options for fill patterns, grid and concentric (not useful imo) and solid fill and sparse fill are not independent which I found be a big problem. 

Otherwise it's a pretty great package but they need to round out the options in the slicer.

[Enginwiz]

Kisslicer will be next in my try-out-list of slicers. Wingcommander already published his working settings in the GPX group.

I just installed Simplify3D Creator on my second workstation without authorization key. It will run for 14 days.

The trial version seems to have the full functionality of a registered licence.

However - to download the installation files from http://www.simplify3d.com/download/

you have to enter a product key - aka a licence number. This is would be showblocker.

Obfuscated: Where did you download your trial version?

[Obfuscated Records]

Trial version of Creator? From their website. Same is true of KISS.. and yes you have to get the config files from a thread on their forum which was sort of weird.

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[Enginwiz]

Obfuscated: Maybe I am a bit stupid today. When I try to download Creator without a licence key I get an error message.

Please be so kind and post a link to the website you can download a trial version of Creator without a licence number

[Dan Newman]

On 9 Sep 2013 , at 5:09 AM, Enginwiz wrote:

> We have a Miele hot air oven in the kitchen. The lowest setting of the thermostat is 50 degrees Celsius.
> I put the roll of PLA on a wire tray and dry it for 2 hours at 50 degrees Celsius.

Don't go above 50C. PLA's glass transition temp, Tg, depending upon the formulation, is
between 56 - 62C. The stuff we print with tends to be below 60C. If it sits for too
long at or above it's Tg it's going to soften and deform on the spool. May even slump
a bit going from a circular cross section to some other cross section.

What you're doing is fine (although I wonder if less than an hour would work just as well).
I just want to warn people to not above 50C.

Dan

[Obfuscated]

Ah.. yes.. I requested the serial and they sent me a download link.. the download will have your email in the boot screen.. y'know to keep people from sharing it I guess.

[Guidozelf]

That's really odd. I specifically requested a trial download for evaluation and was told last week by Clayton, no such thing existed for S3d.
I've asked a few other questions on configuration, after which I bought the software, same reason: optimised workflow -at least that's the goal.
Only to find out after purchased and paid download, the software allows for a 14 day Evalution period......
And, what's worse: I can.t get it to work with my Rep2 with HBP and apparently Clayton is unable to help me out on my questions, yes the very same questions I asked him to confirm before I bought the sw.
Hopefully I will mange with the help of some forum members, info in threads like this ans so on.
Not amused.
I'm really dumbstruck how you all got hold of an evaluation copy......it's even referenced in a thread on the S3d forum......
Anyway, thanks for the details on config of S3d with Makerbots.
Guido

[Obfuscated]

What exactly do you mean by this? I didn't have any luck getting it to talk directly to my X2 but I don't care about that too much since I mostly rely on the SD. I found Clayton helpful to a point. MY main interest at the time was printing at 100 microns and it took me awhile to dial that in but his first response .. why do you want to print at a 100 micron.. it takes too long.. pffftt whatever.

I'm sorry you couldn't get a trial out of him first.

[Wingcommander whpthomas]

Enginwiz, thanks so much for posting these. I have had S3DCreator for a while - and as you point out, the user interface is excellent, slicer setting customisation is first class, but the default settings for Replicator 2 printing were lacking, and I simply haven't had the time to methodically go though and figure it out as you have done. So I am looking forward to trying out your profiles. What I am really pleased to see is how GPX seems to have opened up a bunch of new slicing options for all of us, making them as convenient to use as Makerware and ReplicatorG.

Cheers,

-h

[Enginwiz]

Hello Wingcommander,

you opened the door to other slicers with the GPX converter. 

Thank you very much for programming this very useful tool.

Today I did some deprime test prints with Simplyfy3D Creator 

to find a balance between destringing and creating tiny holes in 

the outer surfaces of the parts. 

Your deprime test part was ideal for that task. 

I updated my Simplyfy3D Creator profiles on Thingiverse this evening

and would appreciate to get some feedback from you and other users.

Kisslicer is the next slicing engine I will add to my variety of slicers.

I am looking forward to using your Kisslicer profiles.

[Wingcommander whpthomas]

Kisslicer is the next slicing engine I will add to my variety of slicers.

I am looking forward to using your Kisslicer profiles.

One of the tricks I have learned with the pro (paid) version of KISSlicer is to use the infill extrusion width in combination with the stacked infill to achieve fast high quality prints. For instance, you can set the layer height to 0.09 and the stacked infill to 3 (i.e. 0.27) and the infill nozzle width to 0.8 and the infill style to straight, and you get a high quality outer shell with the infill printing at the optimum 270 micron layer height, so its also remarkably speedy print  - and the slicer is also pretty snappy too.

I have attached a copy of my current KISSlicer profiles to give you a starting point to work from - the 90 micron FAST SUPER FINE setting is my current favourite. This would be my primary slicer is it had better control over tool path optimisation - sometimes I just have to use Skeinforge, to avoid having the nozzle jump around some much, particularly crossing voids.

Nevertheless, in combination with GPX KISSlicer is really cool. Remember also that the gpx.ini file contains an sd_card_path option, which I have set to the SD card volume label on my Mac. So all I need to do is insert the SD card, save the gcode file to my local hard disk from KISSlicer, and GPX copies the x3g file it generates to my SD card, which after the led stops flashing, I eject and insert into the printer. Makes the whole workflow very quick and convenient.

sd_card_path=/Volumes/THINGS

[Wingcommander whpthomas]

Here is a sample of the printed output from KISSlicer using the 0.09 perimeter and 0.27 stacked infill - it printed in a little over 4 hours - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:126614

[Steve Johnstone]

Wow... that's one impressive print!

[Joseph Chiu]

That's gorgeous!

I know that SkeinForge does "skin" where the perimeters are sliced thinner than the infill, but IIRC, it does not calculate the individual perimeter layer - causing artifacts with non-vertical surfaces.

On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 1:38 AM, Wingcommander whpthomas <he...@run4.com> wrote:

Here is a sample of the printed output from KISSlicer using the 0.09 perimeter and 0.27 stacked infill - it printed in a little over 4 hours - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:126614

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[Dan Newman]

On 11 Sep 2013 , at 7:36 AM, Joseph Chiu wrote:

> That's gorgeous!
>
> I know that SkeinForge does "skin" where the perimeters are sliced thinner
> than the infill, but IIRC, it does not calculate the individual perimeter
> layer

Correct: it just does a linear interpolation between the two actual sliced
layers. So, depending upon just how tiny the facets are on the surface
where the interpolation occurs, RepG's "skin" effect may look great or it
may look bad or somewhere in between. Comes out much better in general
with slicers that actually sample/slice the surface perimeter at those
intermediate layer heights.

Dan

[Wingcommander whpthomas]

On Thursday, 12 September 2013 00:36:33 UTC+10, Joseph Chiu wrote:

That's gorgeous!

I might also add that my Bot is running Sailfish firmware - which also has a little something to do with the surface finish =) 

[Enginwiz]

Wow - that is a beautiful print!

Stacked infill is a usefull option for fast high quality prints. I already ordered a licence for KISSlicer pro.

Today I recieved a new roll of white JET-ABS from Octave. The filament was a bit oval - 1,72 mm x 1,78 mm.

Nevertheless it printed very well. I did a calibration roundup with Simplify3D Creator.

The .factory files for ABS are now available on Thingiverse as Thing 147628.

Link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:147628

[Wingcommander whpthomas]

Enginwiz,

That deprime test object in ABS is looking pretty fine =)

Thanks for the S3DC factory files.

[Bryon Miller]

I got a 14 day trial, Clayton offered it to me because I was looking for a slicer that took advantage of the full memory on a 64 bit machine, which his software does do.  Another feature it has that I really liked was the ability to place support material where you wanted with a click and drag motion of the mouse.  Only put support where you want.  I didn't buy it because of the extrusion problems, I didn't know what settings to change.  Both Clayton and the forums took too long to respond to me and the evaluation period ran out.  I wasn't going to buy it unless it would print with good quality like Makerbot and RepG.  Everything looked ugly and made the build plate vibrate so loud when the extruder moved across the raft, it sounded like it could damage the machine.  I know it can print excellent quality as there were pictures in their forums from others that had the Rep 2, but nobody would help me.

On Monday, September 9, 2013 11:34:43 AM UTC-7, Guidozelf wrote:

[Obfuscated Records]

As far as I could tell it extrudes too much plastic during the raft and the nozzle hits it .. I could not figure out how to control this very well

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[Enginwiz]

I experienced the same massive overextrusion as you.

This is the reason why I spent two days on recalibrating the settings for the amount of extruded plastic.

[mkapras]

I know this is an old post, but I just found and installed your profiles today. I'm using Sailfish on my Rep2 and followed WingCommander's Sailfish setup instructions using RepG to configure. I've been printing successfully (somewhat average results)  using MakerWare with those Sailfish settings. I really like S3D and see great potential in it. Your profiles look like a good start to get me up to speed with S3D.

 

But I'm having what I'm sure is a rookie problem. I had a few successful prints with S3D and my own FFF settings trying to duplicate settings in MW profiles. After I installed your S3D profiles, everything I try to print, either directly from S3D or from the SD card, tries to print off the front left corner of my build plate. Not sure which axes settings I have to change, something in my firmware or something in S3D. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks,

Mark

[Scott K]

Steal the Printer plate settings and offsets from a Standard Rep2 profile (one you didn't mess with) and put them in your new profile and check the box labeled: "Update Machine Definition using settings below" from the "G-Code tab" of the profile.

That will overwrite any junk you may have messed up in the Machine configuration portion of the Option menu.

I see the following for REP 2 values:

[Enginwiz]

Hello Mark,

did updating the machine definition solve your problem?

These profiles were published for version 1.1.5 of Simplify3D,
because the calculation of extruded filament output did not work
as expected in this early version.

Today my Replicator 2 has a heated build plate and needs different
Start and End G-codes. Therefore I don't update the profiles published
for a stock Replicator 2.

In Version 2.0.1 of Simplify3D the standard process
configurations for the Replicators generally produce good results.

[mkapras]

Thanks for replying to such an old thread! 

No worries, back to the center of the plate! Reset the firmware settings a few times using RepG, uninstalled S3D and installed the latest version (2.1.0) and everything worked again. I'll spend some time with the speed and retraction settings and see what I can see! Thanks!