General advice on slicing bundled with Repetier

[FarmerintheWoods]

Friends,

I have the impression that I am missing out on a lot of the features of Cura and Slic3r because of the way they comes bundled with Repetier. If I choose, for instance, Slic3r as a stand-alone and try to run prints from there, am I asking for trouble? Like conflicts with the Marlin firmware or other nasty results? How do I get more control over prints without making myself crazy?

[Ron]

FWIW, I am running Cura 3.2.1 at the moment and it works very well for me.
I really like all the tweaks that can be done, if I want them (configurable).
It takes a bit of getting used to but is well worth the learning curve IMHO.
It ran well with Marlin and runs well now with Smoothieware.

Also FWIW, I have historically had basically zero success printing from the slicer directly and so I always print from an SD card.
That's just me though, others on the forum positively swear by printing through the slicer.
I could have had some underlying issue with Repetier, I don't know, and I may try it again with Smoothieware someday.
But that said I prefer being able to start a file on a card as a stand-alone process and then walk away without having to have a live computer tethered to it.
However, to each their own.

[FarmerintheWoods]

OK, here's the ultimate noob question, from one who's always run the FT-5 tethered to a laptop.

How do you run a print off of an SD card?

[Wyvern]

Save G code file to SD, done!

I only print via SD, I don't have time for data stream hiccups.

[FarmerintheWoods]

I have an SD card, and I know where the slot is, but how do I tell the machine to warm up, by how much, and then go home and start a print? This is not covered in the Folger manual.

[carefudundae]

All of that will be included in your slicer's startup g-code. There will be some commands before the print starts that gets everything up to temperature (as defined in your slicer for the material you are using) and home the printer before starting. That all should be already setup in your slicer, but may need some modification to suit your needs (you can probably find some startup gcode on this site to get you going). If I had to guess, the default slicer profile you use will have a good enough startup gcode set for you that you can export the gcode file to your sd card, plug it in, and should work.

I personally really enjoyed learning about a lot of the gcode commands and what they do, but its not for everybody. It may be worth looking into if you want to understand it more, but isn't necessary by any means. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[Ron]

I have an SD card, and I know where the slot is, but how do I tell the machine to warm up, by how much, and then go home and start a print? This is not covered in the Folger manual.

As @carefudundae said, the trick is in the start and end gcode scripts.
I think I posted mine somewhere and they include warmup, homing and other things.
If not I can try to remember to post them this evening for you.
But there is another option- the Marlin menus should have preheat and homing commands.
Just do them first and then when up to temperature print the file.

As @Wyvern mentioned, the biggest problem with computer-linked printing IMHO is the fact that a communications link must be maintained without any hiccups or errors throughout the entire print.
And the computer (or tablet or whatever) must not go to sleep or offline either.
So it is more robust, at least in principle, to print from an SD card file locally.

[FarmerintheWoods]

I got Cura up and running, and was impressed with the variety of settings available. Perhaps most impressive was the ease of positioning the workpiece on the print bed.

I finished setting up a print, and went to save it to the card. The only available option was to save it as a .3mf file, so that's what I did. The Folger properly noticed when the card was inserted, and I did the knob-and-screen thing and selected 'print from card'.

The machine then ignored the card. I plugged in the laptop and selected Repetier's 'card' tab, which indicated that the card was empty. I ran back up to the office and plugged the card back into the desktop 'puter, and lo and behold, the card was not empty. The .3mf file was sitting right there like it should.

If Folger does not like .3mf files, I need to save a print job in another format, but .3mf appears to be Cura's sole option.

What am I missing?

[carefudundae]

you need to slice the file (instead of just exporting the model) first. In cura I think you click "Prepare" in the bottom right... then save that "prepared" file to the sd card. it'll be a .gcode file extension

[Ron]

Mine has a pull down menu in the "save as" box.

If you don't have this option there might be something wrong with your installation of Cura.
Marlin/FT will indeed not work with .3mf file formats (or pretty much anything but .gco or .gcode).

I hope that helps.

[FarmerintheWoods]

Thanks, folks! It's up and running, like it should. I'm liking my FT-5 better than I ever did before. That box behind the little screen is pretty dang smart.

It's good to start out with Repetier and the bundled version of Cura, but even better to move on.

BTW, I'm running Cura 3.6.0 and one of the experimental options is 'furry skin'. I tried it and I highly recommend it for an oddity in your spare time. It hides the layer striations and replaces them with a uniform matte finish that's adjustable.

Again, thanks. You're the best.