Retraction

I pointed the benchy toward the part cooling fan for best results. Currently I'm using the following retraction settings, but I haven't run a benchy on these settings.

M207 S5.5 R0.4 F5500 T5500 Z1

For this to work, your slicer needs to be outputting G10 and G11 for retraction and un-retraction (https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Gcode#Section_G10_Retract). The great thing with this though is that you can change it on the fly to experiment with all the possibilities, or create scripts to vary the settings during a print.

 

So Should I set this in the config.g once I am set on a good setup for retraction or is it better to put it in the start gcode?

 

Or better yet put this in the filament loading script in duet or the filament gcode in Slic3r

 

I have a macro called retraction.g which I load in my start script with

M98 P/macros/retraction.g

In this way, I won't in the future have to go back and alter old sliced model just for my current thinking on retraction.

 

But isn't retraction filament specific? if you put it in a macro in startup script then it is not so flexible to change it when you change the filament or is it not an I am misinformed.

 

Well, there are multiple answers.

Retraction is definitely material specific. e.g. with flexible filament you want close to none or none. It makes sense that there's a scale after that and perhaps a value to match each manufacturer's material and colourant mix after that. If you want to go that far.

If you save a profile/factory per material, you can simply change what goes out in the start script. i.e. M98 P/macros/pla-retraction.g etc.

DWC also has some filament specific setup, so perhaps that also could contain startup temps and retraction specifics.

 

I currently have my default retraction settings in config.g and have no reference to it in my slicer setup. Eventually I plan on working with filament setup in the duet interface but I am not there yet. As a general rule I like agnostic gcode. I don't keep temps in my gcode, and single tool gcode I specifically leave out picking up the tool so I can print with any tool. I still call T-1 at the end though. I also prefer volumetric extrusion but I haven't gotten it to work right on this machine yet.

 

How are you doing that dose the duet ask if you don't specify a tool, and how are you slicing for that. I know Prusa Slicer dose that but I dont know how to do it on S3D

 

So with no temps and no tool specified in the sliced gcode all I do is set my temps, and select a tool from either the web interface or my PanelDue. Then once all is ready I run the gcode. It's a couple more steps but it gives me more flexibility. It also makes it easier to share gcode.

I mostly use PrusaSlicer so I I don't designate one it doesn't put one, however when I do use S3D I will just go and remove the line specifying the tool from the generated gcode.

Also if you accidentally start with no tool selected it moves the dock around trying to print without one and gives you error messages that you are trying to extrude with no tool selected. Which is comical and harmless.

 

You can get S3D to do that for you with post processing code. e.g.

{STRIP "T0"}
{STRIP "T1"}
{STRIP "T2"}
{STRIP "T4"}

This will strip any line starting with these characters.

 

Yeah but it's only one line to remove on a single tool print. Since I only have one setup I use in S3D at the moment adding and removing that in post processing per slice is more work than removing the one line from the gcode myself.

 

Not sure what you mean. You add this once (well admittedly the post processing script must exist in all profiles but will only apply in the active profile on the final layer).

 

I don't want to remove those in multi tool slices. So I would need to remove it or add it depending on if I am doing a single tool or multi tool slice. Unless there is something I am missing here.

 

I could also be missing something. But I think it's as simple as adding this post processing script in, and then for every file that is generated, all lines which start TN will be removed in the resulting GCODE. I thought that's what you were after.

 

No. That is not what I am after.
What I want is if I am slicing something to be printed using only one tool then I want to remove all lines that start with TN which happens to only be one line sine only one tool is used.
However if I am slicing something to be printed using multiple tools then I don't want to remove any lines.

The point is if it's a single tool print I want to easily print it on any tool, so I make it tool agnostic.

However on multi-tool prints this can't really be done as tool changes are needed for the file to be valid. I do wish I could somehow do tool mapping easily but there is no simple solution for it that I know of.

 

Got it.