[PLUGIN IDEA] Retraction Wizard

Not one I'm interested in programming at the moment...but may be a good fit for some of the other developers...transferring from an issue posted to one of my other plugins tracker.

Apologies for posting this on the BedLevelingWizard project, but it felt like the best place to suggest this as another Wizard that people might appreciate.

So the idea: Ive been thinking personally for a while that an interactive retraction tuning wizard would be good. (sort of like how modern inkjet printers perform nozzle alignment patterns to ensure colours line up correctly). Rather than a manual process of slicing and reslicing with different settings (or at best, trying to do a similar thing via processes in a slicer), and having to keep track of it all, a wizard could automate quite a decent amount of it potentially.

basic idea is:

  • wizard is triggered with a desired nozzle and bed temperature
  • wizard prints 5 pairs of separated 10mm cubes (or other suitable models) with varying rough granularity of retraction for pairs (e.g. pair 1 is 0mm retraction, pair 5 is 10mm)
  • wizard prompts for choice of best pair (e.g. user picks 3, which in this example would be roughly 6mm retraction)
  • wizard then asks user to clear bed, and once cleared wizard then reprints 5 more sets with higher granularity (e.g. based on original round pair 3 looking the best, perhaps 5mm-7mm retraction in 0.5mm steps)
  • Again, user picks best, and wizard notes current best settings for the printer.
    -- Potentially continue on down to 0.25mm granularity, or stop at 0.5mm.
  • Potentially have a retraction speed tuning (e.g. from 10mm/s up to 90mm/s or similar)
  • Potentially update CuraEngine profile to match this new tuned value for users that slice on Pi?

I don't know if the idea's of interest, or if there's better ways to improve finding a good retraction value sooner (maybe the user could even put in a manufacturer value [or last known good value?] to skip step 1?) but looking at the plugins you've made in the past, I figured it might be something you might like the idea of?

1 Like