Continuous printing

[bleak heron]

Dear folks, I have a question or request. I’m new here and I’m not sure if this thread is the right place to post. Sorry if not. I would like to ask if there is a possibility adding a continuous printing feature to Orca slicer. I’m a co-developer of automation system called JobOx (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_94lo33rUQM) and such feature would help our users running continuous printing more comfortable. It would also give an ability for the 3D printing community implementing their own automation approaches, Dear folks, I have a question or request. I’m new here and I’m not sure if this thread is the right place to post. Sorry if not. I would like to ask if there is a possibility adding a continuous printing feature to Orca slicer. I’m a co-developer of automation system called JobOx (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_94lo33rUQM) and such feature would help our users running continuous printing more comfortable. It would also give an ability for the 3D printing community implementing their own automation approaches, like cooling down the plate and clearing it by bending (https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/urbuds/automatic_bed_clearing_with_a_shoelace_and_some) or pushing the parts with extruder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZgjl8W5yrE). Unfortunately, we have no devs in our team who could code this in C, but we could contribute to the project in other way or pay for a development if someone here could implement it. I can imagine that this feature is not that complicated to implement, because the main functionality with multiple build plates is already there. Even the button called “Print all” is already in the UI, but without any obvious function behind it right now(?). Would be great if “Print all” could generate a single GCODE (or 3MF) file out of all plates with a bed clearing sequence after each plate.

It would be reasonable adding a “continuous printing” checkbox to the printer profile settings. This checkbox will explain in a tooltip what this setting does and user needs explicitly activate this checkbox in the printer profile in order to get an option “print all” available in the upper right export menu. The GCODE for plate clearing/swapping could be just added to a “End-GCODE” of the profile or there could be an extra field called “Plate clearing GCODE sequence” to keep it more clean. Also Repeats per plate and plate order could be specified.

What are your thoughts about it? Reasonable, doable, interesting?

I added some screenshots of how I could imagine the integration within the UI.

Andre

[pallid cape]

@bleak heron that is awesome!
I strongly recommend you to open a feature request on OrcaSlicer GitHub issues. It is the best way to track feature requests and easier for more users to interact with it, tag it into another requests, etc.
Things might get lost here.

Solid stuff.

[bleak heron]

Thank you for your answer. I'm not that familiar with GitHub, but I will try. I thought I would find here someone who is already involved and could do it on a payed basis. Seemed like most reliable and straight forward way to me. Also since we are not making an open source hardware it would be unfair requesting such goodies for free (even if these are beneficial for others). 😇

[pallid cape]

From the OrcaSlicer pov, that would be awesome to have such feature that others can use.
If a company is using OrcaSlicer as slicer, that is a positive thing. There is a 3D printer brand that didn't bother at all to have their own slicer, instead, they recommend OrcaSlicer.
Why reinvent the wheel right?

I posted on #1138480666657443880 early today a ticket I opened, you should be able to open it to see how things are done. GitHub is just easier and the main place open source projects will use to post release notes, users post issues or feature requests and easier to track.

[quasi loom]

Interesting. I think this could be a lot easier to achieve than supporting things like belt printer. All we need to do is combine each gcode into a single one, with maybe some extra gcode variables (such as plate number), if not already available.

[bleak heron]

Thank you, such template is a great help!

[bleak heron]

Yes, exactly.

[crystal steppe]

Hi there! @bleak heron , I’m new to the community, but we’re about 1 month away from launching Printago: print farm automation software centered around seller and seller experience.

We’ve forked Orca and will likely have a fork of BBS as well that connects to our service and automates your 3D prints.

No raspberry pi, just an account with us, and our build of Orca/BBS.

We’re also including a cloud background slicer and OpenSCAD rendering pipeline. Create bespoke prints based on your customers sku/personalization input.

[bleak heron]

Hi @crystal steppe . Sounds promissing. Excited to try when you launch! What is BBS?

[crystal steppe]

Thank you! BBS = BamBu Studio

if you or anyone else is interested, we have a Discord started where we'll be posting news, updates, roadmap, launch dates, etc. And happy to take into account any concerns, or requests while we're still in development as well
https://discord.gg/NwFKdzpS

[cunning grotto]

@crystal steppeHas it been released yet?

[crystal steppe]

Not yet. I'll post an updated invite to our discord in this thread since the other once seems to have expired. We're working hard for a Feb 1 open alpha launch.

Right now, we're working on getting the Bambu network library (NetworkAgent/DeviceManger) to maintain connection and stream information from all your printers at once. And we're working on wrapping up full alpha workflow for the rest of our solution.

https://discord.gg/RUPgzmgU

I'll be updating more stuff there in the next few weeks; I've been strictly in C++ mode for the last month and hoping we'll get these last few issues worked or worked-around soon.

also - thank you for asking.