Hi everyone !

I’ve got some pretty large prints to do at the moment (the longest takes 60h+) and during the printing I noticed, that a bit of filament gets stuck to the outside of the nozzle, due to retraction, travel movements etc.

I had to pause the print at least 3 times, to clean the nozzle a bit,since that filament on the outside was ruining the printing of bridges and faster printed infill patters.

Some time ago I saw the lulzbot Mini, which has an auto nozzle cleaning function, in which the nozzle (heated to 100-150°C) rubs over a piece of heat resistant foam, to remove access material from the nozzle.

I was thinking about implementing this feature to other printers, like my Creatr HS by leapfrog.

Basically I want the printer to move to a specific position ( in X and Y ) to move over the foam and to perform the cleaning motion.

I know, how to work with G-Code and thanks to Simplify3d’s option, to add custom G-Code between layer changes, I was able to implement such movement, however Simplify3d only allows you to implement GCode, that gets executed EVERY LAYER SWITCH!

Of course I dont want the printheat to rub on the foam between each layer, especially since the prints have up to 1500 layers.

I’m now thinging about a solution, to implement this cleaning feature every 10 or 20 or 50 layers.

So either I need to install a counter in Simplify3d’s layer change G-Code, like so:

set layertimer =0 // this command will be executed once, before the print starts

if layertimer = 20

then perfom cleaning move //each 20th layer a cleaning move is executed

set layertimer = 1 //after the cleaning move the counting starts again

else set layertimer = layertimer+1 //continues counting, if the current layer wasnt the 20th

As I’m pretty sure, that such code won’t work in Simplify3d, I’ll have to add a custom G-Code that works as the timer (or even better, does the whole cleaning move).

If anyone here has experience with such programming, or has other suggestions/improovements, please share them with me !

Maybe someone from the 3dHubs staff, like @gabriela3d or @derKarsten know someone to help ?

Cheers,

Marius Breuer

1 Like

PS: I would even pay for such modifications.

Hey Marius, my go to person would @ydg54ymail, he’s a big Simplify3D fan so he might be able to help.

If not, maybe @Simplify3D_Nat or @ can recommend few tips or the best person to help with this.

Hope this works out, I’ll keep an eye out for Simplify3D pros. Cheers

@maia_canes is this something you can help with?