Various suggestions of small improvements

[Ploupi]

Hello everyone,

I'm a long time user of KS and always enjoyed using it. Tried every other slicers, always went back to it.
Never took the time to come to the forums until today, so here are a few ideas/suggestions coming from my modest user experience over the years:
(the order is random)

1-During the fist layer, make the Brim/skirt path the first ones to be printed. The reason behind this is that sometimes when starting a print the nozzle is empty for a little while. This is a problem when printing things with supports, because KS seems to always start with support paths. In which case it starts without filament and this messes up the print. I know this could be avoided with some custom gcode (priming a bit of material before the print), but it would be easier for us simple users to change the path printing order. This way priming occurs during the printing of the brim/skirt, which doesn't cause any problem.

2-First layer, still: being able to select different speeds for the first layers for each kind of path. During the first layer, what usually causes problem are the loops. Once the loops are done, basically 99% of the time the infill will be ok. The problem is that right now we only have the opttion to limit the maximum speed for the first layer for all kind of paths. So basically we have to choose between an unreliable first layer (but with a fast infill) or a painfully slow first layer. Allowing to set slow speeds for the loops but relatively high speeds for the infill would be great, expecially for large prints where there's a lot of infill. Toady I have to do this by hand (slowing down the printers when it does the loops, then increase the speed when it starts the infill.

3-First layer again: Being able to set some custom accelerations. I don't know if this is technically feasible, but it would be great as well to be able to set some lower acceleration settings just for the first layer (and if possible depending on the type of path as well). I've noticed that high accelerations tend to detach parts of the loops and infills sometimes because of the filament elasticity. Being able to lower the acceleration on these paths would probably solve most of the first print layer failures

4-First layer always: I think we'll all agree that this layer is the most troublesome. One of the main failure modes I have is that some little hole or some tiny island feature gets printed, then the head moves somewhere else, prints another circle or feature, then moves somewhere else, etc. What happens sometimes is that this tiny feature doesn't stick very well and then gets dragged away, because it is not secured to anything. Which usually ruins the print
So what I propose to avoid that would be that during the first layer the printhead prints a continuous path linking all these little islands/holes/spots together, before it does their loops and then the infill. This way they cannot easily peel off because they are priorly secured to the rest of the print.
The drawback might be that the firsl layer will look a little bit weird because of the strange paths, but it could be a selectable option for those of us who don't care and just need maximum reliability

5-Multi color printing: I'm new to multi color printing, so maybe what I'll say is stupid, but when selecting extruders in the extruder mapping window, each extruder button has a color. But unfortunately this color is fixed and doesn't correspond to what color is actually in this physical extruder. So it would be great if the button color could be associated to whatever material is actually charged in the extruder. Not sure if this is technically feasible but it would be very convenient, as current buttons can be very confusing sometimes.

6-Multi color printing: The octagon tower works very well for me most of the time...except when there is no color changes for a while. In which case what happens is that it tends to collapse because the extrusion on my machine isn't perfect and so sometimes there isn't enough plastic to print 100% of the layer. then next layer gets worse, and so on until it collapses. So I was wondering if it would be possible to add a small parameter, which would define the minimum quantity of material to be printed for a layer when there is no color change? This would help making the tower a whole lot stronger and guarantee print success. So far all the multicolor prints I failed were due to the octagon purge tower collapsing.

7-Also, but this is very subjective, I was liking the old versions of kisslicer's UI a lot more than the new. Sure it was intimadating at first, but we were having a view on many parameters at once instead of having to click to expand many (many) dropdown lists. It was requiring a lot less clicks by the user, in my opinion it was a lot more convenient to use. I would love if we could have a way to choose between the previous layout and the new ones (but I think this is probably very difficult to change now).

Anyway, I had a lot of other ideas and suggestions but can't think of them right now, so let's start with these ones and see what you guys think
In my opinion, issues 1,2 and 6 are the most important and would definitely help print reliability. 3 and 4 would really be nice to have, 5 and 7 are UI so that's always a bit controversial. No idea about the technical feasibility for any of these, maybe what I propose is entirely impossible, idk.

Anyway, thank you for this great tool, I've recently purchased a pro license and I'm very happy and proud to support your work.
Also thanks for the very much appreciated upgrade, that was very, very cool and really appreciated.
Hope this helps,
Cheers

[pjr]

Hi

Quick reply to some of your issues:

1. Many slicers will print a purge line at the front of the bed. I am not too keen on this, so I always print the purge tower. In the latest version (23.10, soon to be released, the purge tower is much more customised. On a single-filament print, it will only print on the first layer. It is auto-positioned and is guaranteed to print first. The purge volume can also be set.

2. I don't think that will be included but I will forward the suggestion.

3. As for 2. But I wonder if a slightly lower first layer (set via Printer/Hardware/Z Offset) would help with both cases? Or properly clean the bed before each print. Or bed selection according to material (smooth/satin/texture)

4. As for 3.

5. That was exactly what I thought a few years back when I started multi-colour printing. But it would quickly become a real PITA. You would have to create a material setting for each colour and for each material setup and for each printer. For me, that would be somewhat in excess of 200 different material profiles which is pretty much unworkable.

6. Wait for the more-definable tower in 23.10. It is pretty good See the dice photo in this post: viewtopic.php?p=11093#p11093

7. The new layout was generated so that there could be more flexibility with the settings - more options (such as the purge tower) - the old layout was pretty full up and was limiting the new features.

I will also pass on your kind comments, thank you.

Peter

[Ploupi]

1. Many slicers will print a purge line at the front of the bed. I am not too keen on this, so I always print the purge tower. In the latest version (23.10, soon to be released, the purge tower is much more customised. On a single-filament print, it will only print on the first layer. It is auto-positioned and is guaranteed to print first. The purge volume can also be set.

Thanks for your reply mate
Problem with this solution is that I don't print purge towers when I'm printing with a single color (which is most of the time). Purge tower tends to introduce a few little defects on the print surface when the printer extrusion isn't 100% dialed in (which, let's be honest, is the case for maybe 99% of us ). Also printing a purge tower implies more filament waste.
The other reason why I prefer the skirt to be printed first is because the skirt is the actual spot where the print happens. If there is any problem with adhesion (slippery build plate or wrong offset) I can know it right away without having to wait for the purge tower to be printed.

2. I don't think that will be included but I will forward the suggestion.

Too bad, IMO that was probably the most useful suggestion in the list.
I saw some other person mentionned it in an other thread as well, I assume we are a few who would be happy to get this feature

3. As for 2. But I wonder if a slightly lower first layer (set via Printer/Hardware/Z Offset) would help with both cases? Or properly clean the bed before each print. Or bed selection according to material (smooth/satin/texture)

Unfortunately not.
I tried using the babystepping function (I have a duet board with reprap firmware), which allows to manually adjust the first layer height on the fly while its being printed. I still had issues with the first layer no matter what height I tried. Too low and it's getting squished, which tends to lift the plastic off the plate, too high and obviously it doesn't stick. When the height is right almost everything sticks except for sharp corners and tiny circles. Those stick most of the time, but sometimes they lift and it ruins the print so I have to start it again. The bed adhesion itself is not the cause because it sticks very well for the rest of the print and even very large parts won't warp.
Dont' get me wrrong, current system works 99% of the time, but I noticed that every print that failed during the first layer was because of either sharp turns or small loops/islands. Basically always stuff with high accelerations. The filament is a little bit elastic so during the high accelerations it tends to drag what has just been printed. That doesn't seem to happen that much if the path is long enough, probably because it gets enough surface to stick before being dragged.

I tried lowering the accelerations on my machine and it solved the problem, but the issue is that the accelerations will remain the same for all the other layers... but other layers can tolerate way higher accelerations so it basically slows the whole print down a lot.

Thing is I have a huge 3D printer (bed is 1 square meter) and right now on big prints the first layer takes forever unless I stay there and babysit. The hard part is really the loops, once the loops are done then the infill usually poses no problem. So what I always have to do is to stay there, manually adjust the speed way down during the loops, then once the loops are done I crank the speed back up. It's really a big waste of time for me, simply having a way to control the speeds and accelerations of each path during the first layer would make the whole machine pretty much entirely automatic instead of human assisted. The main issue seems to actually be the accelerations rather than the speed itself so it would be great if we were allowed to tweak the accelerations, but lowering the speeds also works to some extent (although it's a little bit less effective than lowering the accel).
My smaller printers are a lot less susceptible to these issues, but they also do, sometimes.

It's possible that this isn't necessary when a printer is perfectly dialed in, but this would make the first layer so much more forgiving.

5. That was exactly what I thought a few years back when I started multi-colour printing. But it would quickly become a real PITA. You would have to create a material setting for each colour and for each material setup and for each printer. For me, that would be somewhat in excess of 200 different material profiles which is pretty much unworkable.

Yeah, that's how I do it.
Indeed it is not very easy to manage. Maybe having some kind of folder system so we could better store and manage filaments could be a solution? Like having a folder for nozzle size, then inside it one folder per material (PLA, TPU, whatever) and then each filament profile file inside it with its particular parameters (color, temps, etc). Most of the work is actually just duplicating profiles and changing 3 or 4 parameters (color, purge volume, stuff like that)
As no filament is created equal I believe having one parameter file per actual material is probably the best way to proceed, although not the most convenient to manage currently, that's true.
For multi filament printing you pretty much have to have one material for each filament, for example the quantity of filament to be purged will depend on its color (black needs very little purge, whiite will need a lot, etc). Not changing the purge volume for example will result in either a waste of material (purging way more than what is actually needed) or color bleeding. Having one profile per material and per color takes some work initially, but then it will keep working reliably for all the prints to come.

6. Wait for the more-definable tower in 23.10. It is pretty good See the dice photo in this post: viewtopic.php?p=11093#p11093

Sounds cool, I'll check this once it'll be released, thanks
Very nice prints btw, great job!!

7. The new layout was generated so that there could be more flexibility with the settings - more options (such as the purge tower) - the old layout was pretty full up and was limiting the new features.

Yeah that's kind of what I was assuming. Not a big problem, I guess I'll get used to.

[pjr]

Hi. I have passed on your suggestions, so it is now out of my hands.

Regarding point 1. Forget the skirt and just use the purge tower, even for single filament prints. Looks like you missed my point:

On a single-filament print, it will only print on the first layer.

Again, I will pass on your further thoughts.

Thanks for your input.

Peter

[Ploupi]

Regarding point 1. Forget the skirt and just use the purge tower, even for single filament prints. Looks like you missed my point:

On a single-filament print, it will only print on the first layer.

Ah yes indeed, it didn't work with the single pillar option but it seems to work now using the short pillar.
Thanks for saying it again, I should have checked the other ones as well.
This works for me, thanks Peter！

I hope some of the suggestions will make it through, send my regards to the genius who's able to make this software, I've got no idea how he's making any of that.

[pjr]

You are much better off using the purge octagon rather than the pillar - especially in the latest build (23.10) - please download it from the beta release section if you are running Windows.. This is very customisable in terms of amount purged/wasted.

Likewise, I have no idea how this stuff works, although Jonathan has attempted to explain some of it to me. Just way over my head.

I will certainly pass on your regards.

Thanks

Peter