Cube 3D printer community

General Category => Cube 3D printer discussion => Topic started by: spegelius on March 30, 2016, 10:26:57 am

Title: Cura and Cube 2
Post by: spegelius on March 30, 2016, 10:26:57 am
I've been using KISSlicer ever since i learned that it's possible to use other slicers than Cube's own SW and i've been quite happy with it. However, i'm also interested in trying other slicers and Cura is one that produces BfB style g-code out of the box.

So here are my settings for ABS, as attachment. You should be able to load it in Cura. I'm using latest version of Cura, 15.04.4. If not, let me know and i can post screenshots from Cura or individual settings.
For PLA, printing temperature needs to be changed of course.

One thing to note is that i'm no longer using the default Cube extruder, instead i have Airtrippers Bowden extruder, which affects two things:

Also i haven't really tweaked the printing speed options to the fastest possible, i've been using relatively slow values to get good quality

Few notes about actually printing the .bfb file:
Title: Re: Cura and Cube 2
Post by: spegelius on December 28, 2016, 07:54:22 am
I got a question about the whole procedure, so here goes. I haven't used real Cube 2 for a while since converting to RAMPS (FrankenCube), but I think I remember how it goes. Note that this mainly meant for Windows due to need to run CodeX64.exe. Linux/OSX works, but you need to manually run the CodeX portion in some Windows environment


Notes:
- the default profile is for ABS (temperature 260C). For PLA, lower this to 220C or so (Cube's actual nozzle temp is somewhat lower that what the settings is. On my Cube2 , 220 was actually 198-208 as the temperature fluctuated ~10C)
- Tune the flow with printing a hollow cube. There are instructions for this, but basically the cube should have ~0.5mm walls after print when the flow % is spot on. Some say that tuning is needed every time changing to different type/brand filament, but personally I did it only when switching from Cube filament to bulk and vice versa.

Title: Re: Cura and Cube 2
Post by: spegelius on December 28, 2016, 08:03:41 am
I had actually forgotten how tedious it is to get a print going with Cube2... nowadays my FrankenCube is controlled with Octoprint so I don't even have to be in same room. Still, I hope this helps people who have original Cube 2 printers, they do quite good job with proper settings.
Title: Re: Cura and Cube 2
Post by: spegelius on December 29, 2016, 05:00:43 am
I added PLA profile for Cura in github. It changes the temperature to 220 and start.gcode Type value to 1. Cura's profile settings are bit weird, apparently you need to load the profile you want to use every time you want to change it. I expected that loading a profile would add new machine... well I think the best option would be to add 2 machines in Cura, Cube ABS and Cube PLA and then load respective profiles to those machines
Title: Re: Cura and Cube 2
Post by: ramsey on January 05, 2017, 06:55:17 pm
Thank you for posting these instructions!  They were really helpful.  I've been reading a lot of your posts and really appreciate that you've shared so many of your experiences.

Was gifted an old Cube 2 recently, and have been pretty frustrated with the results so far.  This is my first 3D printer although I've done plenty of CAD, had parts 3D printed, done CNC work, and know Python.  So I feel well armed to try and make your solution work.  I ended up going with Cura because a friend recommended it.

Anyway, I had a fair amount of issues getting this to work with your procedure but I think I have something figured out now. 

So I had a few issues I think:
- I can't access the version of CodeX you linked to.  Found two versions floating around.  One written in C, which may or may not work, and what I think is the original CodeX64.exe (on Google Code).
- I initially started with Cura 2.3.  Now downgraded to 15.04.  However, I think the main issue is that I didn't ahve the machine setting correctly set up.  Your profile I guess only covers print settings.

Anyway, for Cube 2, Cura Machine Settings (at least for 15.04) are:
max width/height/depth are all 140mm.  (I think this was my main problem!)
Machine center is 0,0.
I had success telling it to use BfB as the "GCode Flavor".

So as sit watching my first Cura print come out, I will start tinkering and see if I can get this all to work in the new version of Cura, and post what I figure out.

I'm so happy with the results so far, and while I still have some clear print optimization to do, at least now I have a chance of doing it!
Title: Re: Cura and Cube 2
Post by: spegelius on January 09, 2017, 12:02:24 pm
Thank you for posting these instructions!  They were really helpful.  I've been reading a lot of your posts and really appreciate that you've shared so many of your experiences.

Was gifted an old Cube 2 recently, and have been pretty frustrated with the results so far.  This is my first 3D printer although I've done plenty of CAD, had parts 3D printed, done CNC work, and know Python.  So I feel well armed to try and make your solution work.  I ended up going with Cura because a friend recommended it.

Anyway, I had a fair amount of issues getting this to work with your procedure but I think I have something figured out now. 

So I had a few issues I think:
- I can't access the version of CodeX you linked to.  Found two versions floating around.  One written in C, which may or may not work, and what I think is the original CodeX64.exe (on Google Code).
- I initially started with Cura 2.3.  Now downgraded to 15.04.  However, I think the main issue is that I didn't ahve the machine setting correctly set up.  Your profile I guess only covers print settings.

Anyway, for Cube 2, Cura Machine Settings (at least for 15.04) are:
max width/height/depth are all 140mm.  (I think this was my main problem!)
Machine center is 0,0.
I had success telling it to use BfB as the "GCode Flavor".

So as sit watching my first Cura print come out, I will start tinkering and see if I can get this all to work in the new version of Cura, and post what I figure out.

I'm so happy with the results so far, and while I still have some clear print optimization to do, at least now I have a chance of doing it!

Good to hear it's working. Yes, machine settings seem to be missing from the profiles, but you already got the main things correct:
- build area is 140x140x140 (actually something like 142x142x140...)
- Machine center 0,0
- BFB  style

Good thing there's still Codex available in internet somewhere. The Google code version should be the one that's the original, I believe here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/kisslicer-refugee-camp/ZMuIrtn5Mfo

If you want to test other slicers, Slic3r and Simplify3D are also supported. There's profiles for those slicers in github, but it's been a while since I made...