Makerbot Method 1A and 2A extruder in Cura

[CJA98]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

I have a MakerBot Method printer and cannot use Cura 5.6.0 as a slicer due to lacking material and/or extruder settings.

Describe the solution you'd like

It would be nice to be able to add the 1A and 2A extruders for PLA and PVA to either a new profile for the Method or to the Method X profile so that it's possible to use them. When I try slice and load the file there is a tool and or material mismatch and it is not possible to print. I would like to be able to slice with Cura becasue of all the possibilities for setting compared to the cloud print slicer.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I've used the cloud printing software but it lacks the settings to further better my prints. I have tried slicing in Cura 5.6.0 with the wrong extruder and filament configured but these give me an error message both with USB on the printer and in the cloud print software.

Affected users and/or printers

Only Makerbot Method

Additional information & file uploads

[GregValiant]

@nallath is this something that the Cura team is aware of?

[CJA98]

I'm not sure. I also wasn't sure where I should post and or feedback this...

[CJA98]

Thanks for the reply as well!

[hawrylte]

@CJA98

Cura 5.6 is missing the variants for the 1A and 2A extruders. You can make copies of the 1C and 2XA variants from the program files and edit them to be 1A and 2A extruders. They will need to be saved in the AppData variants folder so they aren't overridden by Cura updates.

There won't be any materials readily available. You'll need to make copies of what are there and edit those Materials in the AppData folder too. The name of the material needs to be lower case i.e. pla, pva, etc.

You won't have any printing profiles, so you're on your own to come up with those.

Your next problem you'll see is Cura 5.6 doesn't handle fan speeds correctly in the MakerBot print file. The Method likes to see a fan duty of 0-1 and Cura 5.6 puts in 0-255. They've addressed this as they're working towards Cura 5.7, so you can use the current Nightly Build to get fans working more correctly than before of not at all.

Moving to Cura 5.7 Nightly Build they break the MakerbotWriter.py script. It's missing big chunks for writing the meta.json file in the MakerBot print file. There are two big chunks that are missing that can be copied over from the MakerbotWriter.py script of your Cura 5.6 install.

Getting Materials to work requires editing more files. After you've created your printer, close Cura and navigate to its definition file in AppData folder. There's a section that has "excluded_materials". If you delete everything between the [ ] of that portion it will allow for all the materials built in Cura to be visible.

To get the MakerBot materials for the method to show up correctly, you need to duplicate a material in Cura, close Cura, and edit the material file in the AppData folder. The MakerbotWriter.py script needs the material type to be lowercase i.e.pla for the meta.json file to be written correctly. If it's capitalized like the default materials the Method will not recognize it properly.

Double check your start gcode for each extruder has you M106 fan speed set to {cool_fan_speed/100} otherwise the Method will ignore it. Fan speed needs to be a 0-1 value otherwise the Method doesn't do anything with it. For PLA and PVA I've also commented out the M106 line for each extruder in the End gcode. I've had some issues where the fan doesn't come back on during extruder changes.

One thing to keep in mind too. Cura doesn't handle the extruders going into a standby state or swapping for the prime tower for the Method printers well. At least for extruder 1, you'll want to keep standby temperature the same as your print temperature. Extruder 2 doesn't matter, it'll start at the standby temp, but ignore it once it's been brought up to print temperature.

[GregValiant]

"Fan speed needs to be a 0-1 value otherwise the Method doesn't do anything with it"

If the "Printer Settings" plugin is loaded (it's in the Marketplace) the bottom setting is "Scale Fan Speed To 0 - 1". That will translate the 0 to 255 scale to the 0 to 1 scale. "M106 S0.8"