To every 3D printer, ditch your slicer

1st happy new year.
2nd. Ditch your current slicer and go download Craftware. This is a slicer which allows you to place support manually. You can determen how much support you want how you angle it like you want. And the slicer is extremely fast too. What Slic3r takes an hour, craftware takes less than 5 seconds.

For weeks I have been trying to print a space marine, but with that dumbass support system (which manages to make support where there is nothing to support) of the epic slow Slic3r (record time is 57 minutes to slice), it just could not be done. Though Slic3r gives you proper Gcode, it could not slice anything when support was required. That curaEngine… I coudln’t even get it to work properly… And I wouldn’t be suprised if that support system would be as bad…

The first thing I tried were several of those calibrating objects, and one of the objects is a cube and a part where the cube should fit in. And it actually fits! The quality of Craftware is incredibly high. No more dumbass Slic3r support material on places you don’t want it for me. Now I finally printed my space marine and I can start on my thunderbird 1

The software is new and still in beta but it works and works well. It is also very user friendly. The only thing it can’t do is communicate well with the K8200. So you have to safe the .Gcode and open it in whatever version of repetier you use.

And on top of everything it is free!

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I did this and it worked like a charm. Slic3r is a joke. I could not save any settings, import or export bundles, and no matter what i did the extruder and bed temp would always revert back to the KPL_Standard.
when I use Craftware to slice. then save the g-code, then load it to Repetier, the g-code always shows line 11. G21 ; mm and Line 12. G90 ; abs. I then go in and edit G21 to read .35mm and G90 to read pla. is this what I should be doing or does something need to be adjusted?

Im using PLA and Ive told CraftWare that I am using 1.75mm PLA with the K8203 .35mm nozzle. Do I need to log in with Repetier Host and change anything?

The KPL_Standard settings just printed out garbage globs and after about 5 layers, the parts would slide right off the bed because Slic3r would drop the temperatures in the middle of a job.

If I hadn’t seen your post, I was going to smash this printer, so thank you very much for your post.

Slic3r is an amazing piece of software. 20 years ago, I was blessed to have the opportunity at using MasterCAM in high school. I believe that MasterCAM cost $15,000 per seat; I used it to compile G-code for a little “Mighty Mill” CNC, with a build volume smaller than the K8200. Now I can generate G-code for free. Amazing! Oh, and how’s this for irony? Our machine shop class project for the year was a plastic injection molding machine.

There are more efficient slicers available. I’ve been considering Simplify3D. Can you beat the price of Slic3r? Maybe it just irks me how much flak software companies get, even when they give it away.

[quote=“Lynk”]

There are more efficient slicers available. [/quote]

Yes, Cura standalone for example. Where it takes Slic3r about 20 minutes to slice an object, it takes Cura about 5 seconds…

[quote=“Farny3d”]I did this and it worked like a charm. Slic3r is a joke. I could not save any settings, import or export bundles, and no matter what i did the extruder and bed temp would always revert back to the KPL_Standard.
when I use Craftware to slice. then save the g-code, then load it to Repetier, the g-code always shows line 11. G21 ; mm and Line 12. G90 ; abs. I then go in and edit G21 to read .35mm and G90 to read pla. is this what I should be doing or does something need to be adjusted?

Im using PLA and Ive told CraftWare that I am using 1.75mm PLA with the K8203 .35mm nozzle. Do I need to log in with Repetier Host and change anything?

The KPL_Standard settings just printed out garbage globs and after about 5 layers, the parts would slide right off the bed because Slic3r would drop the temperatures in the middle of a job.

If I hadn’t seen your post, I was going to smash this printer, so thank you very much for your post.[/quote]

Configuring the slicer is not a small thing to do. There are several things on thingiverse which you can print in order to calibrate your slicer’ settings. Today I replaced some parts of the Y-axis and I am still tweaking my settings here n there. But I can tell you that I have a beautiful printed thunderbird 2 with craftware produced Gcode. You can use this link for calibration thingiverse.com/thing:5573/ Craftware only would not slice the 0.5mm wall, I dont know why yet. There are more calibrations things to download on thingiverse

I can send you my config for craftware but not via this forum’s attachment system (or the lack of) you would only have to change the filament and nozle thichnesses.

[quote=“Lynk”]Slic3r is an amazing piece of software. 20 years ago, I was blessed to have the opportunity at using MasterCAM in high school. I believe that MasterCAM cost $15,000 per seat; I used it to compile G-code for a little “Mighty Mill” CNC, with a build volume smaller than the K8200. Now I can generate G-code for free. Amazing! Oh, and how’s this for irony? Our machine shop class project for the year was a plastic injection molding machine.

There are more efficient slicers available. I’ve been considering Simplify3D. Can you beat the price of Slic3r? Maybe it just irks me how much flak software companies get, even when they give it away.[/quote]
Slic3r might be free, but it’s support material system is complete worthless, the time it takes to slice something is rediculously long. So free or not free, Slic3r is just woefully outclassed by free cura engine and free craftware.

And the most of us only used Slic3r because the “get started” tutorial said so.