gcode converter to make Cura dual extrusion work with Sailfish by LarNil

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

I use Cura 15.02.1 as a slicer... But I have a dual extrusion printer running Sailfish (7.5) firmware too. They work fine together as long as you only do single extrusion. If you move to dual extrusion you will quickly realise that it will not work... and perhaps you will even look for alternatives to Cura.
The problem is that:
Cura handles dual extrusion E-values as a combined total.
Sailfish handles dual extrusion E-values a total per extruder.
This results in big blobs of plastic and extruder skipping steps at each tool change.
I have notified the Cura developers of this problem (it does not have high prio to be fixed), but in the meanwhile I have made a converter to fix this issue. Perhaps I'll make it into a Cura plugin, we'll see...
Ok, so what should you do?
Save your Cura merged dual extrusion as gcode (Cura set to GCode flavour = MakerBot)
Run the converter and load the gcode
The converter will produce a gcode file ending with "fixed" in the filename
Convert the fixed gcode to g3x using gpx (I use r1d as gpx setting)
Print your Cura generated dual extrusion model
The converter may work with gcode produced by other slicers as well. The converter looks for tool change (only 2 tools supported though) and keeps track of the extruded amount per extruder. I have tested the converter with the 2 stl files in the thingfiles - merged them in cura - saved gcode - used my converter - used gpx - and printed successfully.
Do not run the fixed gcode through the converter again, you will just mess up the gcode - one time through the converter will do just fine.
Oh..! and do not come running back with complaints or ruined printers or whatever. I made this program for myself - if you use it, you do it totally at your own risk.