This is a resource from Raise3DAcademy which shares the transcript of Joe from 3DMN’s video showing the step by step instructions of how to set up ideaMaker, a 3D slicing software from Raise3D, with a third-party printer.
-Beginning of transcript-
Hello Makers, I’m Joe. And today I’m going to be talking about ideaMaker, and how to set up this slicer with a 3rd-party printer.
We’re going to start off very easy – just going to create printer profiles, and to help you guys get started.
In today’s tutorial, I’ll take these two printers as an example. On the right is the new Ender-3 V2, which I just assembled during a live stream.
And the left one is the Hictop D3 Hero, which is an IDEX printer. It has an independent dual extruder. I know many of you have asked me to show you how to set up a printer of this type. So, we’re going to jump right to it.
General Settings
We’re going to head to ideaMaker and start creating a profile for the Ender-3.
The first thing you need to do is to download the latest version of ideaMaker and that can be found on the raise3d website.
Next we are going to click “Printer” and we’re going to select “Configuration Wizard”.
Here you have a preset list of all the ideaMaker printers. And there are some of the profiles that I have already created, but we’re going to create a new one. So swipe down here and select “Others (Third-party Printer)”.
And this pop-up box comes up, so we’re going to name the printer. In this case, it will be the “Ender 3 V2”. You can also set the printer type abbreviation.
And for the nozzle diameter, this is very important. I know that my Ender-3 has a 0.4 mm nozzle. And it is also very important to set the build volume. In the case of the Ender-3, it’s 220mm * 220mm on the X and the Y, and the belt height is 250mm.
Next, you need to make sure that you check this “Use heat bed” option here. Obviously, if you don’t have a heat bed, that should be unchecked.
We’re going to make sure that the enable fan speed control is active as well. PWM is a pulse width modulator and basically, this allows the GCode to actually set the speed of the fan during the print times.
You have an option here which says “Distance from border of build plate”, this is sort of like a safety feature to ensure that you don’t print right on the edge. It will leave 2.5mm of tolerance of the build plate that the printer cannot print on just to make sure you don’t go over.
Next is the build plate shape. You can choose whether it’s a rectangle or an ellipse.
And the firmware which is marlin base. You can choose rubric firmware, Raise3D, and marlin.
Next, we’re going to set the extrude count now. This is the Ender-3 V2, it only has one extruder, so we are going to choose 1 in the drop-down box.
And for the filament of the primary extruder is PLA 1.75mm. You have other options here but we’ll stick to just generic PLA 1.75mm
Now for sequential printing, I’ve done a video before on how to set up sequential printing. So I suggest you have a look at that, to understand more in depth, how this sequential printing option here works, and also how these primary extruder measurements here work.
Last but not least, the GCode Export is a default action when you slice something. It gives you an option, either to export to local disk or to save it on the SD card. You can upload it to the printer if that is possible. Or you can upload it to RaiseCloud.
RaiseCloud is also a feature that I did an episode on. In this case, I always set to export to the local disk.
Next we’re going to setup advanced settings.
Advanced Settings
In the “Advanced” tab, there are a lot of things which you don’t really need to worry about. I tend to leave the first one, which the “steps per millimeter” because that is usually the default setting on the firmer of the printer.
I don’t touch the X and Y compensation and the baud rate. I don’t tend to change those settings because I don’t tend to connect printer through USB.
But if you do, you need to set the right baud rate for your printer.
This option here is a bit complex. So in order to change the flow rate of filament you usually send a GCode command to the printer.
However, in this case, if you check it, what it does is adjust the GCode when it’s slicing to apply the filament flow rate that you want in the slicing. So just set it up like that and you should be fine.
Here we have a few more options you can confirm if you want to use a raft if the size is more than the set amount. It will ask you if you would like to do so, for example, if the model is larger than a 150 mm, when you slice, it’ll tell you “This model is bigger than X amount, would you like Raft?”. This is the same thing as well, but it asks you to confirm after you’re printing under duplication or mirror mode. That is for dual extruders which we will get to very shortly.
This option is also for dual extruders, which is asking you to wait for the heating at extruder switch so when you are switching from one extruder to next, it makes sure that the hotend is at the right temperature before actually switching.
And this option is “Relative Exclusion”. In terms of extrusion, there is “absolute length” and “relative length”. It’s a whole other complicated matter to actually describe this. But just for the sake of this video, we’re going to set “relative extrusion”.
This option is a way of how the other printer sets how much travel has been done, whether it resets or whether it asks to do that. It’s a bit complicated to explain, but I would suggest using marlin, and choose “relative extrusion”.
This is finally the temperature limit. You usually have to set a temperature max for the heatbed, just to make sure that the printer doesn’t go overboard. I tend to set it at 100℃.
And these are custom GCodes. If it’s not a Raise 3D printer, make sure that the checkbox is checked, which is all met RaiseTouch specific GCode.
And finally, here we have data files.
When you slice something in ideaMaker, you can export the GCode and also a data file to go along with it.
A lot of people don’t want that data file, but I tend to leave it there for a couple of reasons.
The data file has a lot of information on the model and based on that data file, you can actually create a profile, a full print profile. And slicing profile is based on that data file, so you can adjust. ideaMaker has this option to be able to extract that data and set it up as a profile. And you can also add that content of the data file within the GCode itself, you can remove the output data file, or you can add the data file into the GCode itself. This obviously will create a larger file. So, you can just remove both of those if you’re not interested and just export the GCode file.
Primary Extruder Settings
And finally, we have the primary extruder which we’re talking about. This takes the measurements of the hotend assembly or the extruder itself.
Finally, we come to the temperature limit.
You have to set the temperature limit for your hotend. In my case, I like to set it up to about 280℃ just to be safe. It all depends on the hotend you’re using.
If it’s an all-metal hotend, 280℃ is fine. If it’s not an all-metal hotend, usually 260℃ to 270℃ is the max you should go to. I set 280℃ just in case, but I usually don’t go over 260℃ if it’s not an all-metal hotend (because the PTFE tends to release toxic gases).
And that is it. Click “OK”.
Then once again goes back to the configuration wizard, click “Next”.
Confirming the extruder count and the heatbed.
Next, we check the filament type and click “Finish”.
And that’s it. You have your print profile.
Now, you can feel free to import your model. In this case, I use the 20*20 cube as an example and let’s import this model to ideaMaker.
If you want to start slicing, but as we can see that we don’t have any filament profiles here, and we need to create one. But we will talk about how to create a new filament profile next time, and focus on the printer profile today.
Now remember that 200 or 2.5 mm border that I mentioned that doesn’t overlap. It sets right over here. And you can remove that if you want.
You can actually just remove it in the printer setting, and it goes away.
IDEX Printer Setup
And now, let me show you how to set up the IDEX printer.
Overall it’s very similar to the Ender-3 V2.
First, we are going to select the other third-party printers in the configuration Wizard. I’m going to select “Hictop D3 Hero” in the drop-down list.
Set the same thing for D3 Hero. The nozzle diameter is 0.4mm. The build width is 300*300*400. Choose “Use Heated Bed”. Choose “Enable Fan Speed Control (Use PWM Controlled Fans)”.
We are going to set the distance to 0. It is a rectangle. It does use marlin and set the extruder amount to two.
Then obviously you have preset the left and right extruder filament, which are about 1.75mm.
Once again, set the gantry height and choose export to local disk.
Then we are going to go to advanced settings. Now here, click on that as we did before. We are going to ignore these parts over here. This helps you in a couple of things. One, ideaMaker gives you the ability to slice in Duplication and Mirror mode. It also tells them that it’s an independent dual extruder. So it has to set different parameters for the instructions for the movement of the extruder work or the hotends in this case.
Once again, we can confirm using Raft if size is more than 150mm now.
I would check this box here, confirm using raft if the print mode is in Duplication or Mirror Mode. When you’re printing in Duplication or Mirror Mode, certain nozzles might have a slight offset from one another. So printing with a raft always helps to make sure that your nozzle doesn’t dig into the bed on one side. While the other one is printing perfectly fine.
We are going to choose the “wait for heating at extruder switch” because we want to make sure that when the IDEX switch is from one extruder to the other, the hotend has reached full temperature.
Once again, we will make relative extrusion enabled, and set the heat bed temperature to 100℃
Now we will move to the left extruder tab, once again, we’re going to set the left extruder maximum temperate limit to 280℃
Now we have these offset
Now the slicer wants to know the distance between the left nozzle and the right nozzle. This would work if it’s a dual nozzle printer within one hotend. So like the ones that used to come out, or also the Raise Pro2, for example, there’s a set distance between one nozzle and the next.
Now IDEX are completely independent of each other. So essentially, the extruder offset X should be 0mm, when one nozzle is switched to the other, it can reach as well on the build plate because one switches to the other.
So the extruder offset Y has to be zero only for IDEX printers as if it’s not an IDEX printer. It’s something like the Raise Pro2 you have to measure the distance between the left and right nozzles on the X-axis, and also on the Y, just in case there is an offset.
This is a virtual offset, now if this is set to zero, you have a virtual offset. So this works to give the slicer a better understanding of how far the extruder is when it’s in a parked position and make sure that the other extruder or the other hotend doesn’t hit it when it’s printing on the side of the printer. So, let’s say, for example, the Raise E2 parks it’s extruders off the build plate but the left extruder for example cannot travel all the way to the right of the build plate because there is the extruder park on the side, it might hit it. To give you an idea and we’ll leave that “0” and click on “Save“.
And I am going to import a model.
So this is set for the left extruder. As you can see, there is that 25 mm over there. So the extruder or the slicer would not allow you to print anything past that because you gave it a virtual offset to make sure that doesn’t hit the right extruder. And now for the Hicktop, the extruder is far off to the right to be able to make use of the full build plate.
If I go to printer settings, go back to drive here and set it to zero and click on save.
That is removed completely.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, this is how you set up a printer. It’s relatively easy. It was more of a measure of explaining exactly what there is and what there isn’t.
We are going to start basic, just a standard filament profile. And we’re going to talk about what to look for when setting up a printer which is a direct extruder or it’s about and type extruder. Because there are a few things you want to look at in terms of speed, possibly depending on the type of the printer, retraction lengths, and everything. So, we’ll talk about those.
I’ll show you how to set up a filament profile. And following that, we will start talking about more features that ideaMaker has, how to fine-tune, or dial in a filament profile. I hope this will be useful to many of you.
ideaMaker recently launched a filament profile library or printer profile library called ideaMaker.io. That is where I upload most of my printer profiles for ideaMaker whenever I have a fine-tuned profile. I tend to upload it there.
I have uploaded quite a few already. So make sure you check it out register. So it’s a nice community place where people can upload their filament profiles, share models, share their settings. It is awesome and I hope all of you can enjoy it.