New MK4 is out!

[Michael_Melancon (Mike M)]

Not directly related to the MK4, but…

PrusaSlicer 2.7.0 alpha1 is out and in the release notes…

"G2 and G3 G-code support #4352

Starting with this release, PrusaSlicer is able to emit G2 and G3 G-codes (arc and circle moves). This results in smaller G-code files when compared to the classic stream of plain G1 commands. The feature can be enabled in Print Settings->Advanced->Slicing->Arc fitting. The G-code size reduction heavily depends on the contents of the G-code, but we are talking tens of percent in general.

Note that emission of G2 and G3 is not compatible with Pressure Equalizer feature and with Spiral Vase mode. When either of the two is active, the G2 and G3 G-codes will not be emitted regardless of how arc_fitting is set.

This feature is based on ArcWelderLib by @FormerLurker, who is also the author of the famous ArcWelder OctoPrint plugin. Big thanks to @FormerLurker for all the effort invested into the project and for making it open-source."

@Jonathjon I couldn’t remember who the last person that talked about ArcWelder was, but I think it was you in a MP3DP thread somewhere

[Jonathjon (Jonathan Jones)]

@Michael_Melancon

@Jonathjon I couldn’t remember who the last person that talked about ArcWelder was, but I think it was you in a MP3DP thread somewhere

Yes sir that was me. @MakerJim is the one that suggested it and provided info…

MP3DP V4 Build

SD prints don’t have the latencies that USB prints do. But even aside that, as I added above, getting rid of lots of tiny line/arc segments to have a single move still improves things noticeably. I had some G code files that reduced by as much as 80% after they were processed. That’s a lot of lines not to need to send. Here’s the one I have installed: [image]

[Michael_Melancon (Mike M)]

I wasn’t ever willing to go through all the trouble to set up ArcWelder, but can’t wait to test the difference with the Arc commands. I have lots of already printed sphere shapes where you can see the rectangles on the surface from the line commands

[Jonathjon (Jonathan Jones)]

I was already using Octoprint so it was as easy as installing the plugin. It runs automatically now

[MakerJim]

@Michael_Melancon

I wasn’t ever willing to go through all the trouble to set up ArcWelder, but can’t wait to test the difference with the Arc commands. I have lots of already printed sphere shapes where you can see the rectangles on the surface from the line commands

It will be interesting to see if/how the new Prusaslicer improves things for you.
ArcWelder made a significant difference for me both in part appearance and print behavior in octoprint.

Thanks for the heads up, I’m going to grab the new build to look at myself.

[Michael_Melancon (Mike M)]

I have bad relationship with Octoprint. For some reason, it doesn’t run reliably.

It will work fine for a while, then for some reason I won’t be able to connect to the interface. It’s like it loses connection to wifi and won’t reconnect. It only happens when it stays running for a while, but I have tried every fix that anyone has for low power and sleep modes, etc, and nothing has worked.

So I don’t put much into OctoPrint. I’ve had very long prints running through OctoPrint and like 6 hours in, it just stops. And I can’t access the interface to see why.

I only use it now when my print is like 2 hours or less, assuming I can get it connected. Sometimes it will connect first time, others times I have to cycle power 3-4 times before I can get it.

For now I just have settled on being stuck with SD card transfer mostly, until I decide on what my next printer is going to be, then I’m very interested in trying Klipper and Mainsail.

@MakerJim

It will be interesting to see if/how the new Prusaslicer improves things for you.

I’m playing with it a little now. first test made one of my files ~30% smaller, but I’m a little surprised it doesn’t do a bit better job on creating some of the arcs.

This is a perfect circle and has turned into ~20 G3s with some G1s sprinkled

This is from an STL and not a STEP or anything, but there’s a lot “arc” shapes in that model, so I expected more reduction.

There is a tolerance you can play with, but I have it at default for now

Edit: Upping tolerance to 0.1 allowed it to become 2 G3s, so just something to play with I guess.

[MakerJim]

@Michael_Melancon

I’m playing with it a little now. first test made one of my files ~30% smaller, but I’m a little surprised it doesn’t do a bit better job on creating some of the arcs.

I’ll bet there’s still tuning to do and maybe some parameters to expose.

One thing I noticed about ArcWelder but never dug very deeply into is that it seemed that part size mattered and I got different levels of arc reduction depending on scaling of some parts.
(maybe arc size/length has minimum or maximums for reduction, maybe it’s some sort of fit quality math). There were also some short segments that seemed to me to be part of the shape which ArcWelder missed turning into single arcs.

Even with those, I was impressed how well it did do in general, as I’ve yet to have a part completely mangled by it. I was worried when I first started using it that it would silently introduce defects- but that hasn’t seemed to be the case for me.

[Michael_Melancon (Mike M)]

Upping resolution to 0.1mm, which would be fine for a model this size (>100mm), has my file down to 7MB from 15.5MB in 2.6.1

[bitingmidge (Peter H)]

There are quite a number of new features in the new version, it’s got the ability to cancel printing on a single object for instance, and “streaming” of gcode, so that the print can start as soon as the upload commences. More info at the bottom of this blog article.

[turbinbjorn]

Seems like they are handling the slow wifi transfer rates with compressing gcode, starting print while uploading (aka streaming gcode) and enabling arcs! I don’t think they’ve done all this to tackle slow upload only - but the features sure are nice. (it must be really annoying for the developers to be limited by the esp32 wifi, or whatever causes the bottleneck)

[Michael_Melancon (Mike M)]

Well, Bambu added arc support into their clone of PrusaSlicer last year, so I think there was probably additional pressure for it

[jeffeb3]

@Michael_Melancon

It will work fine for a while, then for some reason I won’t be able to connect to the interface.

Pis don’t suspend or sleep. It is probably just networking. Maybe the pi is disconnecting and not trying to reconnect. Or maybe it is an ip clash. Or maybe the pi is fine, but DNS won’t convert octopi.local to the ip address after a while.

The best way to debug it is to attach a keyboard and monitor, and run some networking checks in Linux.

But I can totally see why that is a pain. Octopi generally just works for me. But I have a very over supervised network. I am a helicopter parent for my routers

@Michael_Melancon

Bambu added arc support into their clone of PrusaSlicer last year, so I think there was probably additional pressure for it

Prusa should get out ahead of that stuff. Sort of a “pressure advance”.

I’ll see myself out.

[jeffeb3]

@turbinbjorn

Easy for you to say who live in continental Europe!

We rented a room in an AirBnB in Germany. Tit was in a small town and the train stopped once an hour at the neigborhood. I think there were about 6 farms for this one train stop.

Colorado is a car state. There are other cities 45, 60, 75 minutes away in different direction. No trains (but there are some bus lines). Once you get past those, the next real cities are 4+ hours away and you can drive for 14 hours before you get to the next 1M+ city. Pretty much the only time I take a train is to the airport. I have never commuted into the city though.

[Michael_Melancon (Mike M)]

@jeffeb3

Pis don’t suspend or sleep.

They do have a WiFi power saving mode though that has caused people issues

@jeffeb3

It is probably just networking. Maybe the pi is disconnecting and not trying to reconnect. Or maybe it is an ip clash. Or maybe the pi is fine, but DNS won’t convert octopi.local to the ip address after a while.

Mine has a DHCP reservation and I only connect using the IP address.

The disconnect thing was a well known problem. I found multiple people that had the same problem. Half of them fixed it by using a wired connection instead. Some changed a certain setting related wifi power management, but I checked mine and it was already set. I have an ASUS router, and some claimed a certain setting there caused a problem, but I changed mine and it still didn’t change it. Others claim they just have to run a shell script to ping stuff constantly to keep it from going to sleep

In the end I just got frustrated with it and left it alone. My printer is not in a good spot yet to keep a monitor and stuff plugged in. I initially bought it because I was going to do a full setup with OctoDash, but I didn’t trust after all of the issues I had. The final straw was waking up in the morning and to a “failed” print because it just stopped on me 7 hours in, and I couldn’t connect to even see the state of it.

I lost my “office” when my oldest son needed his own room, so my printer is just kinda jammed in the corner of my bedroom next to my desk. When I finish some of these projects I might revisit it…or just revisit it when I build myself a different printer.

[bitingmidge (Peter H)]

@jeffeb3

and you can drive for 14 hours before you get to the next 1M+ city.

Counting charge time??

I live in a country that’s close enough to the same size as the US for this comparison, and a state with a longer coastline than the East Coast of the US, can I just let you know that you have your choice of five if you want to visit cities with a population of over a million.

That’s five in the country, with a maximum of one per state with a few states that miss out!

[jeffeb3]

@bitingmidge

Counting charge time??

Nope. 14 hours might be an exaggeration, but with meal breaks and stuff, it can take a while.

@bitingmidge

I live in a country

It is mind boggling how few people are in Australia. 25.7M according to google and almost all of it is on the coast.

The east coast of the US has way more population than the west, except for California.

You don’t think about Ohio + North Carolina being almost the same population as AUS. I certainly get more media and news about AUS than many US states.

AZ+CO+NM+UT is almost as much as Australia. That messes with my brain.

[turbinbjorn]

And here I am, waving from the arctic, in a country with the population of an Asian suburb. Funny how our lives are somehow quite recognizable and similar, and on the other hand - suuuper different in terms of how our lives are lived. Perhaps there’s time for a new get-to-know-each other thread?

[bitingmidge (Peter H)]

@jeffeb3

It is mind boggling how few people are in Australia.

And then you think about New Zealand!

@turbinbjorn

Perhaps there’s time for a new get-to-know-each other thread?

Go for it! I’m still working on the meet up!

[bitingmidge (Peter H)]

Back slightly closer to the topic for just a second.

Input shaper speeds are nuts! What’s going to stop this thing shaking itself to bits in the coming weeks or months? I don’t think there’s any going back.

[bitingmidge (Peter H)]

And I’ve been mucking around with wifi. Both via web and local.

I don’t think the lack of speed is a problem for me at all - the “streaming” version seems to work well, and I’ve been adding things to the queue while it’s printing away.

My print queue used to comprise a second SD card sitting beside the printer, so there’s an improvement!