Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Guess I was lucky...my payment went through first time no problem. I had my license and everything installed in a couple of hours.

CURA saved me the money....

So far I'm really liking S3D. It's having some trouble with a very complicated file, but the animated preview is letting me try things quickly and see what's going to work. It's REALLY nice that when you increment a layer, that actually means a Z increment instead of one line or group of lines.

I'd like it to have some more infill options, but still, this looks like it's going to be a good investment. If nothing else in saved plastic that I'm not wasting.

I've heard about blobs with S3d as it relates to the retraction/wipe setting. Is there any work around to this? I'm considering switching from Cura to s3d and would like to know how easily I could switch over from Cura using a rostock max v2.

Someone created a script that I have no idea how to use to combine the wipe and retract. I'm still dealing with it by using coasting. Not the best option.

Hopefully they fix it, I've e-mailed the support team multiple times on this problem.

I remember seeing that notepad++ macro, right. I was hoping the folks at s3d had patched that option in. Tell them I will buy a license as soon as they do!

bot wrote:I've heard about blobs with S3d as it relates to the retraction/wipe setting. Is there any work around to this? I'm considering switching from Cura to s3d and would like to know how easily I could switch over from Cura using a rostock max v2.

Yes, it's called KISSlicer. I haven't seen a blob on a print in months with the 1.5 betas. The final should be shipping soon.

Cool. I've downloaded the free version of kisslicer but have yet to try it. I'm not having trouble with blobs or anything right now, it's just on my mind when I'm considering going to s3d.

mhackney wrote:

bot wrote:I've heard about blobs with S3d as it relates to the retraction/wipe setting. Is there any work around to this? I'm considering switching from Cura to s3d and would like to know how easily I could switch over from Cura using a rostock max v2.

Yes, it's called KISSlicer. I haven't seen a blob on a print in months with the 1.5 betas. The final should be shipping soon.

Aaaaand the award goes to Michael Hackney!
[img]http://cpcstrategy.com/blog/wp-content/ ... -horse.jpg[/img]

The "guy" at S3D beat a dead horse with me so turnaround is fair play in my opinion. I've never had such despise for a company ever than I have for them. I make no apologies for it.

JFettig wrote:

mhackney wrote:

bot wrote:I've heard about blobs with S3d as it relates to the retraction/wipe setting. Is there any work around to this? I'm considering switching from Cura to s3d and would like to know how easily I could switch over from Cura using a rostock max v2.

Yes, it's called KISSlicer. I haven't seen a blob on a print in months with the 1.5 betas. The final should be shipping soon.

Aaaaand the award goes to Michael Hackney!
[img]http://cpcstrategy.com/blog/wp-content/ ... -horse.jpg[/img]

Good one, hilarious!

Just bought a licence myself. I'm done with MatterControl, and the random EEPROM resets.

Any tips, tricks, or advise before I get home and start messing around with it?

Always print from SD card

You'll want to figure out your wipe, coast, and retract settings first in my opinion, slicing is pretty easy and straight forward but the #1 issue with S3D is blobbing.

My ABS settings are to coast for .1-.2mm, wipe for 2-5mm(depending on what you want) and retract 6mm at 60mm/s I print single wall cylinders with retraction to calibrate this and extrusion width - I measure then smash the cylinder and roll it, if it breaks, you need to tweak settings, if it is blobby, you need to tweak, set it up to what you're after.

Print 2 cylinders side by side to help figure out your retraction.

Once you get to printing real parts, you'll probably want to collect your retractions to one point - start points under the layer settings.
I always print my islands sequentially without optimization - if you have a tiny boss somewhere, it can get goopy by printing two layers simultaneously at high speeds.

Infill tab - I use 30% infill with 200% extrusion width and 2mm min infill length - 45/-45 angles

ABS cooling - adjust printing speeds for layers below 20sec, reduction down to 30% when I print at 60mm/s

My only underspeed is for solid infill at 80% and first layer at 80% - you'll want to teak all these settings to best fit you but this should get you started - probably best to not start printing at 60mm/s though!

Gap fill is nice - I have mine set to 50% - its maximum.

Ooze control behavior - force retraction between layers, min travel for retraction at 3mm(short rapids it won't retract), and only wipe extruder for outer-most perimeters. I use the min travel retract instead of the only retract over open spaces, seems to work better.

KAS, why don't you use Repetier Host? It is freely available and used to be the standard. The developer pulled the open source (or tried to) and that got some folks knickers in a knot but it is a pretty solid controller and works well with the Repetier firmware and EEPROM. The other alternative is Pronterface. A new version was just released earlier this month and it is very solid. Has some nice UI customization capability too.

Honestly I've tried so many different programs in the short 2 months that I've been into printing I really haven't found a program that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I'm tired of calibrating the printer all the time due to loss EEPROM settings. Rather that's MatterControls doing or something else, it's just getting old. Kiss was okay, in not crazy of the interface and of course the ntdll faults with my 8 core system, but I'm sure he'll work that out. You obviously can print high quality parts from it. Cura and a few others are okay as-well, it's just trying to relearn the terminology and setup of each program is a pain in the ass.

So that leaves me with S3D. By paying for the program I feel I have something invested in it and a reason not to jump ship all the time. Like a majority of people who buy the Max v1/v2 kits, upgrading is a way of life and I've already put a decent amount of coin in upgrades myself. I haven't been discouraged at all and even started collecting parts to build the Metal Max (hopefully soon /hint /hint). I don't mind spending a little money on software as long as they continue to provide updates or fix any issues they might find.

0110-m-p wrote:Guess I was lucky...my payment went through first time no problem. I had my license and everything installed in a couple of hours.

same here I just havnt played with mine because of the large t-rex skull mask im working

Using mhackney's reel component as my tests . Is the wipe/coast setting what corrects the little gaps in the middle of the layers?


So far I'm liking it just tweaking the setting and trying to re-learn the different terms from what mattercontrol used.

zoom in to see the little holes towards the center.
[img]http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr189/Onuxis/09d95de0-f54c-4d42-8e1c-c41e1bcbc028.jpg[/img]


Took my time doing a decent calibration and it's finally starting to payoff, just a little more to go to fix the exterior edges. PLA on pure glass.

[img]http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr189/Onuxis/3c4faa96-9854-4616-9000-dd7aef8fcdf1.jpg[/img]

You must have missed the part of the agreement where he said you couldn't use S3d to slice his reel files!

Mac The Knife wrote:You must have missed the part of the agreement where he said you couldn't use S3d to slice his reel files!

LOL

Funny, mac the knife, funny.

I tried to put a hidden self destruct code in the files but it would sometimes erase my hard disk so I thought better of it.

It is funny (at least to me) that I don't get this negative visceral reaction from any other product. He really yanked my chain last year with lies and inferior service and product. I can tolerate the later but not the former.

mhackney wrote:Funny, mac the knife, funny.

I tried to put a hidden self destruct code in the files but it would sometimes erase my hard disk so I thought better of it.

It is funny (at least to me) that I don't get this negative visceral reaction from any other product. He really yanked my chain last year with lies and inferior service and product. I can tolerate the later but not the former.

Sounds exactly like my experience with bobcad.

Yeah, I almost didn't buy BobCAD just based on all the stories I've heard and read. But, I had 4 guys on the CNCZone who I respect private message me to say that the lathe and 3D support in BC is quite nice and once you buy in, the high pressure sales stops. I bought in October and haven't had any call backs and the software has easily saved my several times its cost in time savings. Spent most of the day today doing CAM work for a new reel kit I'm getting ready to launch.

I didn't know this until I went through my eval for CAM last year but almost all of the CAM vendors license the same code from a company in Europe (Germany I think). It is used by every product I evaluated. Only BC has actually extended it to develop some unique machining strategies in the lathe and 3D modules. When I did my eval I knew that 3D support with a rotary 4th was $$$$ but I could not believe how much lathe support is!

One of the primary reasons I returned S3D for a refund early last year was its unacceptable lack of support for infill. This post on the S3D forum this past Sunday exemplifies the issue: http://www.forum.simplify3d.com/viewtop ... f=8&t=2255" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Apparently it is still the case that you can't control infill to produce more structurally rigid parts. It was a showstopper when I evaluated the product but would have expected some improvements a year later.

regards,
Michael

mhackney wrote:One of the primary reasons I returned S3D for a refund early last year was its unacceptable lack of support for infill. This post on the S3D forum this past Sunday exemplifies the issue: http://www.forum.simplify3d.com/viewtop ... f=8&t=2255" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Apparently it is still the case that you can't control infill to produce more structurally rigid parts. It was a showstopper when I evaluated the product but would have expected some improvements a year later.

regards,
Michael

Its not the case 100% of the time, its more like 20% of the time. The 200% infill extrusion width works pretty well with ABS at reasonable speeds(under 50mm/s) with proper nozzle temperature. Definitely doesn't work with PETG but 30% infill with 150% width works quite well, 5% infill and 150% width does not.

I've been hammering on them about this issue. They definitely have their weaknesses and sadly its the most basic things that they have issues with. The overall program and features are quite nice. I tried to switch to KISSlicer a number of times and have not been able to except for very basic parts.

What about with PLA?

As you know, my experience is exactly the opposite. My fly reels and other printed parts sliced with KISS really could not be better. I can get good solid parts from Slic3r and Cura too but the aesthetics are just not the same (especially Cura) but I was never able to get anything useful out of s3d. I'd really like to see more focus on these basic capabilities instead of useless features like point cloud and normals views. Does anyone actually ever use or need those for anything?