how to switch filaments painlessly

[mbunjes]

A question for the guru's : when switching filament you also have to change quite a lot of settings in your printer configuration.

Do people just keep a separate printer.cfg for different filaments ? In your slicer it's relatively easy to have different profiles but the printer configs are a lot harder. There must be a smart way of doing this but I'm too dumb to figure it out.

[claudermilk]

What slicer are you using?

I have all the parameters set up in the slicer. I mainly use SuperSlicer, but used Prusa in the past and am playing with Orca. Most of the settings affect the generated gcode, there are a few settings like temperatures that can be passed as parameters to print_start. You can also set up custom gcode in the filament definitions (for example, I se pressure advance there). From there, you set up your print_start macro to adjust to the parameters it receives. I never touch my config files when changing filament types.

[mvdveer]

12 hours ago, mbunjes said:

Do people just keep a separate printer.cfg for different filaments

No  as @claudermilk said - only one printer.cfg file but multiple filament profiles set up in the slicer with custom gcode for each filament. (Temperature, cooling, pressure advance, etc.

In Orcaslicer this is setup here:

      

 

[mbunjes]

Ok. but what about for example : I don't want or need the Exhaust and nevermore fans. How so I keep them from activating without touching the printer.cfg ? Or when doing a Z_TILT_ADJUST with PLA I want my nozzle temp to be way lower then the 150 it is with ABS. I now adjusted this and other things in the printer.cfg but if there's a smarter way of doing this I would love to know.

BTW I didn't know about the filament gcode setting in Orcaslicer. 
Can this be used for the examples I gave ?

[Rik]

1 hour ago, mbunjes said:

Ok. but what about for example : I don't want or need the Exhaust and nevermore fans. How so I keep them from activating without touching the printer.cfg ? Or when doing a Z_TILT_ADJUST with PLA I want my nozzle temp to be way lower then the 150 it is with ABS. I now adjusted this and other things in the printer.cfg but if there's a smarter way of doing this I would love to know.

BTW I didn't know about the filament gcode setting in Orcaslicer. 
Can this be used for the examples I gave ?

Maybe you could use custom code to include a CFG file per filament? Would be really neat if it works, but could be rather difficult to manage (like inherit things etc).
 

@mvdveer why don’t you use the pressure advance option in the filament tab?

 

[mvdveer]

15 hours ago, mbunjes said:

I don't want or need the Exhaust and nevermore fans

You can control them through macros. I have attached my configuration as an example. I only have variables for slow and fast, but you can have variables for example PLA, ABS, PETG, etc

[gcode_macro _BEDFANVARS]
variable_threshold: 61		# If bed temp target is above this threshold, fans will be enabled. If temp is set to below this threshold, fans will be disabled.
variable_fast: 0.6		# Fan speed once bed temp is reached  
variable_slow: 0.2		# Fan speed while bed is heating
gcode:

Thus the fans can be turned off completely if in my example the bed temp is below 60 degrees (PLA) or on if above 61 degrees (ABS)

 

15 hours ago, mbunjes said:

I want my nozzle temp to be way lower then the 150 it is with ABS

Nozzle temp should not effect Z_TILT_ADJUST as much as bed temp does. But you can again use a macro embedded in you PRINT_START macro to do this, as @atrushing pointed out in another post.

 

gcode:
    {% set MATERIAL = params.MATERIAL|default('ABS')|string %}
    {% if MATERIAL == "ABS" %}
        HEAT_SOAK
    {% endif %}

 Where HEAT_SOAK will have the parameters for nozzle and bed temp.

I am not proficient in macros at all, sure there are more knowledgeable people that can explain better than me.

 

bedfans.cfg

[mvdveer]

14 hours ago, Rik said:

vdveer why don’t you use the pressure advance option in the filament tab?

I do have it in my filament settings (see above post - I am in the advanced tab of the filament settings to enter the code). I do a pressure advance and temperature tower for each new roll of filament I open, before starting to print parts. 

[mbunjes]

Thanks, that's what I was looking for.

1 hour ago, mvdveer said:

Nozzle temp should not effect Z_TILT_ADJUST as much as bed temp does.

Well, if the temp is 150 with PLA loaded it will ooze so I would like to bring it down to 100 max.

I don't really understand the second macro, where would it get the ABS or PLA material information from ?

[mvdveer]

1 minute ago, mbunjes said:

where would it get the ABS or PLA material information from ?

That would be from your slicer - depending on the material you select to print

[mbunjes]

Ah, that easy. Ok, I'll give it a try.

 

[YaaJ]

With Cura, the substitution pattern is {material_type} that can be passed to Klipper as a start gcode parameter.

 

For the record, because these parameters are not that easy to find. Source : http://files.fieldofview.com/cura/Replacement_Patterns.html