Arc Welder is cool, but for technical parts it needs some considerations. Like any lossy compression it produces digital artefacts. The curves produced by Arc Welder are estimations that might differ from reality. The next problem is that firmwares like Klipper take this curves and try to combine small straight lines to reproduce this curves. So you have several stages of lossiness: 3D Software (original Dimensions and spacings)->STL Export Rasterriser (loss)->Cura Arc Welder (loss)->3D Printer Firmware (loss). As mentioned it might not be a big problem for figurines but maybe for technical parts with high expectations in spacings and dimensions.
HOLY CRAP!!! It's like I have a brand new printer. I used the Octoprint plugin to parse an existing print. Didn't touch a single thing. Same filament... just a few hours apart. Incredibly smooth and ALL of the vector change blobs are just gone. Thank so much for publishing this video. This is just amazing.
this is what i as a cnc gcode programmer have found strange in 3d printing gcode. The sotware produces a lot of unsnessesary data out of lasy programming . so i find this a super logical solution. TOP!!
Tried some prints sliced with Cura on a CR10s Pro with this and I have to say that the print quality with cheap PLA on "standard" settings are impressive!
I just printed a multi-arc print and my printer ran smoother and I think even a bit more quiet. The printout was excellent. I'll be using this and it might even push me over the edge on Octoprint. Thanks for the review.
Love arc Welder! Been using for a while. The other big thing is the speed improvement which I can't believe you didn't talk about! So to give an example I have a 1.5 hour print, when I arc weld it now takes 40 minutes!
Amazing Video, I started to print a duck call, then i noticed that no matter what i did to make things go faster, the printer was stuttering and slow printing. That's when I hit google looking for an answer. I came across your video. I installed Arc Welder to Octoprint. To my amazement I achieved a 94% compression on this print! My Ender 5 Pro is now printing as fast as it should be! I did install it on Cura too, but I like to see the stats that the Octoprint plugin shows. I'm going to be using Arc Welder in everyone of my prints from this moment on.
Just threw it on my octoprint server, cleaned up some zits and blobs on prints straight away with zero configuration elsewise...just a no brainer addition really!
Thanks for the video. Never heard of Arc Welder before. Everything has it's use cases so I'm not saying Arc Welder doesn't have it's place and I will keep trying to use it. But so far I've observed on some of the apparent benefits: 1) faster data transfer on 8 bit boards - use klipper. I run an Anet A8 and Anycubic Kossel simultaneously on a single raspberry pi 3B+ at 100 mm/s (actual, not just set) with no lag. 2) file compression - doesn't help with typical linear infill so there'll be lots of old G1 gcode in there. A hollow circular pipe is about the best example of file compression you'll get. 3) on smoothness - if you have the source file then use higher resolution to generate STL. Of course there'll be a ton of stuff from Thingiverse that might benefit. For the zillions of people who ask how to run ArcWelder with ... go to the Arc Welder github kindly linked by Makers Mashup. It's spelled out there for all the most popular ones. A couple of clicks, paste a line of text and your done. It's that easy.
This just popped up as a recommended video. After watching it I added the plug-in to Octoprint and tried it using the legacy slicer plug-in in Octoprint and I'm impressed with the results. I don't design many projects where this would be needed but when I do I will certainly use Arc Welder. Thanks for posting this video.
Incredible. I was just going through some GCODE last night when I made the sad realization for the first time that every move was a G1 and not a single arc... Odd and inefficient. Trying this out today!
@@jessicalane107 Arc Welder has been compressing by about 50% on average. All samples maintained precision within 0.05mm regardless of post process. As for the print result, I didn’t find a significant advantage at typical speeds for entry level printers with faster 32 bit boards installed. I can imagine the best advantage when the processor has become the performance bottleneck.
I've not seen too much for ruined prints, but I have always audibly heard the printer not changing pitch smoothly during arcs. Very interesting idea for a plugin! Love that it can run right in octoprint
Arc Welder seems to work great. Thanks for the video. Most of my test prints have been vastly reduced in size, but for one odd one. It was just a test piece to check if I had enough clearance to fit over something. Simple washer shape. 1.25" ID, 1.5O" OD and .25" thick. Arc Welder added 3% to the file size.
That fact that 3d printing relies so heavily on stl's is to blame. These file types are polygons to begin with. On "actual" cncs you're generating cam from file types that themselves are made up of Tru arcs. Interesting that stl's are default. This is old tech from machinists point of view. Excited to get this in the mainstream slicera
Slicers should abandon STL already and start using nurbs. Granted it's not going to be a walk in the park, but we're at a milestone that nobody wants to cross to evolve.
@@fcuk_x But how would you model with basic geometry? Sure works great for cad precision models, but what about everything else? You would have to convert from a poly-based mesh anyway.
Many of the CAD softwares use STEP files, which uses parametric functions to describe surfaces, and make perfectly smooth surfaces possible. I imagine it’s much easier to do arcs with a STEP file, because it’s hard to come up with arcs from polygons.
WOW!!!! I've just tested to generate the gcode file from Cura with this app installed and the "new" file is around 75% smaller than the original file! I will test how it is printed. Thanks for sharing!
Tested this in Octoprint and as far as I can see the quality of my regular prints is slightly better but I guess time will tell. It really is a set-and-forget function,
Thanks for making this! I just overhauled and upgraded my printer yesterday and as a result most of my standby gcodes have to be deleted and re-slliced. Now is literally the perfect time for me to implement this! Thanks again, liked and subscribed. :)
This is awesome, thank you! Something I really enjoy about 3D printing is how much there is that is simple and improves print speed/quality. Just by enabling a plug in I can get rid of artifacts and smooth out my prints!
OMG!!! This has made such a difference to the print quality using the Cura install. It's going to be a default on everything I think. Didn't see any real difference in expected time to print with or without, but the quality change is night and day. Arc Welder and ironing makes for such smoother prints on my Anycubic Mega S.
I'm so glad I found this video. Thanks for making it and thanks to FormerLurker! I had no idea Marlin could handle arcs in GCode. Top notch software works a treat. If anyone is curious I'm running my octo-print server on a Pi Zero W and Arc Welder runs fine.
Its good software, but it also has its weakness. It's not standard because it screws with the resolutions of the print, and can ruin quality if not careful. But at the end of the day, people need to use common sense, but it's not that common.
@@sandman7793 to be fair, slicers also mess with resolution. Many people suggest limiting cura resolution as an alternative to arcwelder. Just like cura, the resolution in arcwelder is also configurable.
@@FormerLurker I did my mech eng degree 20 years ago and vaguely recall g code for automation class. You mean to tell me slicers pump out straight lines to make arcs?
Just found your channel, while looking for Laser engraving information and this information about Arc Welder for 3D printers popped up , just subscribed, thanks. Alan
I was just talking with my class about this a few days ago and wondered if someone had built any software that turned the line segments into arcs. Thanks for the video!
I've had arc welder enabled for a long time without even changing the settings and I've had great prints these days. I hadn't even thought about it, I watch this video thinking about getting it and I realized I already had it installed and turned on. The cura plugin is what I'm talking about. It's pretty legit guys
I've already been using the octoprint installed plug in, but really didn't get into the weeds of it. This video was really informative. Thanks for posting this. I am sure I can get even more out of arc welder now.
The only thing to note here is that you've followed some other TH-cam channels on compiling firmware to add something like a bl touch they quite often recommend disabling the arc support to 'save room'. The reason slicers haven't implemented this is because STL files are made of triangles, so I guess it is easier to follow the straight lines of an STL rather than recalculate the curve in an object to generate an arc.
Yeah but I think for those poor 8 bit boards the speed issue (stuttering with too many commands per time) isn't that big because really, who does 200mm/s prints on a standard ender 3. Anything with 32 bit boards can easily do it even with everything from bl touch to pressure advance etc enabled, at least with marlin fw. Should be even less of an issue with Klipper. Not sure about reprap and others, though so least the modern reprap boards also have loads of memory.
It’s great that it exists but frankly it’s a slap in the face of the slicers’ developers who should generate high-level primitives such as arcs natively ! 😔
Maybe, maybe not. On default settings it messes up tiny details, and on larger parts lines can occasionally stick out of the walls. In the end I uninstalled it. I guess I prefer having predictable results over ehm, mostly perfect curves. Still may be fun for guys with lots of spare time and filament. They may turn it mainstream eventually.
@@przemekkobel4874 , your issues with tiny details could be firmware related. The default deviation in ArcWelder is the same as the maximum deviation (0.05mm) in cura. If you need more accuracy, you could decrease the maximum deviation in cura, and let arc welder compress the extra gcode. It's definitely an issue that slicers are reducing the resolution before ArcWelder gets hold of the gcode. It actually often does MUCH better with high res gcode. It is also definitely an issue that many printers are running forks of Marlin 1, where arc interpolation isn't mature. Recent updates to Marlin 2 (starting in 2.0.6) and smoothieware have greatly improved results.
@@FormerLurker This is a good point for not enabling arcs (at least not by default) in any slicer that cares about the size of its user base. In few years situation may change though.
Honestly, it is mostly because STL files are purely based on vertexes and the lines that join them, NOT (analog) geometry. The slicer simply takes the model and slices it without knowing what the original modeler intended. If slicers accepted geometry files like STEP or OpenSCAD scripts, *THEN* the gcode could include arcs and full-on NURB splines. The problem with that is whether or not the printer controller's firmware and hardware will support those computationally expensive features.
@@KeithOlson I think that CPU power could become a non-issue in a very short time. For example, you could throw a bunch of Pi Picos at your printer instead of typical controller. They are 1 GHz twin core ARMs. Even a single board could handle typical printer features, and it costs what - four bucks?
Looking at the post-Arc Welder parts... 0.9 degree stepper motors would still be a huge upgrade, especially if they were also capable of microstepping.
It's possible that I had it configured incorrectly, but I had tried it myself previously, and it did not work well when printing a spiraled vase. Of course most prints are not vases, but I find them useful as part holders, and figured I should mention it. Good video!
"*Allow 3D Arcs* is an option that allows G2/G3 commands to be generated when using vase mode. This is experimental and it's possible that there are some unknown firmware issues when adding Z coordinates to arc commands. That being said, I've gotten pretty good results from this option. At some point, this will be enabled by default." I see it is also available to activate in the latest Cura plugin...should we dare? haha
I used to create models in tinkercad and i would notice when printing round objects there would be quite a bit of stepping and you could see the straight lines. But I have finally gotten comfortable using Blender 3d, so when I create objects that require smooth outside surfaces, I just make sure to increase my geometry to compensate. I've been able to get flawless outer surfaces on prints since moving to blender. Either I will create the circle and increase the vertices from step 1, or I simply add a subdivide surface on the object. Yes the file sizes are larger, but my workflow hasn't suffered much, and blender is also very specific when it comes to things like excess geometry, flipped normals, walls trapped inside geometry and the interface allows you to get really surgical when it comes to getting a perfect manifold model for 3d printing.
That's awesome. Gcode supports making arcs and circles (It's been that way for a long time),, but sliders do not. It's about time we can make actual arcs.
I used to accomplish a similar effect telling TinkerCad to create circular objects with maximum number of steps (up to 64), but often on items with lots of holes, that caused TinkerCad to slow to a crawl every time I told it to group pieces. It also resulted in HUGE stl files. Since adding Arcwelder to Cura, I leave the steps in TinkerCad at the default 20. My stl files are smaller, Cura slices them more quickly and I don't get any stuttering on my Aquilas ( I run Alex's firmware). Once my first layer is down, I usually bump speed up to 200% or higher. On my printers it looks like 300% is the maximum where I can see the speed difference. Higher than that, and I see no obvious improvement. I love Arc Welder!
I am using Cura. First layer, only one corner printed round ( brim ) the other 3 corner were printed at 45 deg. My cube part had round corner on each four corners.
I added the Arc Welder plugin to Octoprint and it works very well, except that the other day I noticed some rather ugly perimeters on a small print with very tight curves. The model (it was an STL downloaded from Thingiverse) had a spring in it that consisted of a sub-2mm wide structure turning through 180 degrees with about 1mm between one part and its neighbour. The perimeter U-bends were far from regular and there was poor adhesion between the perimeters. After switching off the Arc Welder plugin the print from the same STL file came out as I would have expected. I do agree though that on bigger prints the file size reduction is usually significant.
Compression alone this is super helpful. I have a rather big 450x600mm delta and I ran into a issue where I couldn't even attempt some large prints due the massive g-codes just straight up crashed pronterface and once or twice crashing my smoothieboard completely well printing via SD. Curious is there any observed print speed increase? Even a small increase would result in decent time savings when dealing with 30+ hour prints.
Not using arc's seems completly crazy to me. That adds an insane amount of unnecessary gcode and makes worse parts. I manually write gcode for industrial lasers daily and I can not believe the printers/slicers aren't configured to use G2/G3 by default.
Microcontrollers that compute the moves are too underpowered, for hobbyist 3D printers anyway. They used to be barely capable of running the steppers when the moves were precomputed.
Don't care about the file size, I care about the quality of prints. But to me seems only good if you only have arcs. in straight-line is quite slow at printing. Never Mind I think is slow at filling the gaps not on the straight lines. You shared Very useful wisdom. Thank you.
Remember everyone! You've to enable arc support in marlin! I've skr mini e3 1.2 and default firmware have this option disabled. I had to recompile the firmware with arc support enabled.
I love Arc Welder, it can improve prints, but it just straight up makes print streaming faster. I have honestly been thinking about running some speed tests, since there is less gcode to run and combine, it should be faster... But yeah been using it since beta and my only complaint with it is that its a little too easy to use, it feels like i should be doing something, nah just install and boom magic
To those that keep crying, "why isnt this standard?" there are times when you don't want the extra processing overhead and are willing to sacrifice smoothness. I installed ArcWelder plugin to my Octoprint and the stuttering actually became worse. YMMV. Still a great idea and a great explanation of the technology. Thanks.
You took the words right out of my mouth , there is in the CNC-world already code that is used for circular movement. I am a bit rusty what G-numders it comprises.
@@sergevereecke680 exactly. I was frankly shocked to learn that 3D printing isn't using circular interpolation. I guess the print world didn't bother to consider that people have been CNC machining parts with arcs for decades.
Oh and i had been compiling Arc support out of my firmwares for years now, thinking there is no point... Well whenever i get around to rebuild, i guess that's coming in then. Not sure how well it'll work with increased planner buffer size or if i need to reduce that...
You shouldn't need to touch your buffer sizes if they are working. Just enable arcs with the default settings (they are quite good as a starting point) and go from there. The most important thing is that you download the latest firmware version. There have been a lot of updates for arcs that improve quality and speed.
Thank you very much fot the detailed explanation. I´ve used Arc Welter Plugin since the first print caus someone recommended it to me - but i never understood what AW is doing....even after a quick research.... So now i got it! THX for the Video again See you next time!
Thanks for the video! This is great, but don't know why (I'm a noob) my printer already prints perfect cilinders, you can't tell it's printing in straight lines as you say, actually if I hadn't watched this vid I would have never known. There are no bumps like the ones you show. I've tried different sizes. I will give Arc Welder a try anyway. BTW, my printer is a Hellbot Magna I and I'm using Simplify3D as a slicer.
You are really right. Cura and co just made GCODE plenty of strait lines, never use other GCODE, so why devellop firmware that support circle command or arc command ???? Thanks for this video !!!
Many, many people who are using Sanguino boards, such as the Creality 1.1.4 or 1.1.5, have disabled ARC support in order to install a BLTouch, and as such they will have a problem running the gcode processed with ArcWelder. Also, ARC support used to be supported in much older slicers and its use sort of fell out of favor. You should have mentioned the impact of disabling ARC support in the firmware as the numbers of printers, particularly Ender 2, Ender 3, Ender 3 Pro, Ender 5 and Ender 5 Pro and CR10 printers.
Excellent video! You have a natural talent for teaching. I don't have a 3D printer yet, but I'm researching because I'm ready to buy. This is something I am definitely going to look into. If you were going to spend around $500 for a 3D printer now, do you know what top 2 or 3 you would consider? I found that many of the ones that I thought were top notch have horrible reviews, and I am back at square one after a week of research.
So, I've heard Arc Welder won't really do anything for printers running files off an SD card. It really only effects serial communication buffers. The same effect can be done in Cura by reducing the resolution numbers.
Not sure I agree. SD card performs better than serial cable but the buffer underrun happens Marlin regardless of serial or SD. Buffers and marlins ability to process that buffer exists regardless of how it receives the data. Changing cura resolution may reduce line segments but it's certainly not creating arcs. Arc welder creates G2 commands where cura doesn't.
@@MakersMashup Interesting. I'll just have to try it out then. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm running a modified Ender 3, using Marlin firmware. It was explained to me that the stepper motors are not capable of performing a true arc movement. That they can only perform micro straight lines. So running the G code through Arc Welder wouldn't be any more effective than just increasing the resolution settings in Cura because the SD card setup doesn't have buffer issues compared to serial communication. I have no experience with Arc Welder so I have no idea. Lol but I do have my resolution settings in Cura turned up so my line segments are a lot shorter. I don't know if I would be able to notice any difference or not. I'll try it out on some test prints and see how it performs. I was told this by a person that has been professionally printing for several years, but they run Octoprint over internet connections and do not use SD cards and they love Arc Welder, but they were trying to explain to me why it wouldn't give me any benefit because I run off the SD card. This person doesn't have any experience with Marlin firmware so maybe it was just their assumption.
I've heard that too @salty steel about the steppers. I have tested it though in SD and USB so I'm just providing my experience. @formerlurker did mention when I was working on this that same point on steppers. .9 deg steppers should provide some improvements along with arc welder. It's not perfect arcs with the steppers creating straight lines at the lowest level but I saw marked improvements over the slicers line segments. I believe that is because the arcs are handed off to marlin vs. The slicer plotting the segments. I've tweaked that resolution in cura myself and it's a good tool as well to improve performance and prints. I just look at arc welder as another cheap easy tool to help the prints. Let me know your results. This video received a ton of visibility and I know @formerlurker has been able to improve arc welder based on all the feedback. So I would love to hear how your testing goes so others can benefit from it. Thanks again for your insight.
@@MakersMashup Your in depth knowledge is extremely informative and helpful. Paints a better picture for me to understand. I'll try to come back with any info about testing. Just thinking about some simple cylinder shapes to print with Arc Welder processed files, and just regular Cura processed files and see the difference. Right now I'm fighting all metal hotend clogging issues. I've narrowed it down to the nozzle instead of heat creep, cooling, correct PID settings, or retractions. The Overture hardened steel nozzle is not playing well with PLA but does great for CF nylon. Switched back to the brass nozzle and all problems go away. Cold pull test on steel nozzle is indicating that the PLA is sticking to it, even when it's clean. I'm waiting on my new Micro Swiss M2 coated nozzle (supposed to be the best) to come in, if it works well then I'll get back to trying out Arc Welder. I'm running everything from PLA up to PC through this Ender 3. Also considering the Micro Swiss direct drive kit for trying out flexible filaments. It should provide more extrusion force/pressure without slipping or skipping.
Arc Welder is cool, but for technical parts it needs some considerations. Like any lossy compression it produces digital artefacts. The curves produced by Arc Welder are estimations that might differ from reality. The next problem is that firmwares like Klipper take this curves and try to combine small straight lines to reproduce this curves. So you have several stages of lossiness: 3D Software (original Dimensions and spacings)->STL Export Rasterriser (loss)->Cura Arc Welder (loss)->3D Printer Firmware (loss). As mentioned it might not be a big problem for figurines but maybe for technical parts with high expectations in spacings and dimensions.
HOLY CRAP!!! It's like I have a brand new printer. I used the Octoprint plugin to parse an existing print. Didn't touch a single thing. Same filament... just a few hours apart. Incredibly smooth and ALL of the vector change blobs are just gone. Thank so much for publishing this video. This is just amazing.
The blobs go away?!
this is what i as a cnc gcode programmer have found strange in 3d printing gcode. The sotware produces a lot of unsnessesary data out of lasy programming .
so i find this a super logical solution. TOP!!
Tried some prints sliced with Cura on a CR10s Pro with this and I have to say that the print quality with cheap PLA on "standard" settings are impressive!
I just printed a multi-arc print and my printer ran smoother and I think even a bit more quiet. The printout was excellent. I'll be using this and it might even push me over the edge on Octoprint. Thanks for the review.
Love arc Welder! Been using for a while. The other big thing is the speed improvement which I can't believe you didn't talk about! So to give an example I have a 1.5 hour print, when I arc weld it now takes 40 minutes!
Amazing Video, I started to print a duck call, then i noticed that no matter what i did to make things go faster, the printer was stuttering and slow printing. That's when I hit google looking for an answer. I came across your video. I installed Arc Welder to Octoprint. To my amazement I achieved a 94% compression on this print! My Ender 5 Pro is now printing as fast as it should be! I did install it on Cura too, but I like to see the stats that the Octoprint plugin shows. I'm going to be using Arc Welder in everyone of my prints from this moment on.
Just threw it on my octoprint server, cleaned up some zits and blobs on prints straight away with zero configuration elsewise...just a no brainer addition really!
How do you get octo print
Thanks for the video. Never heard of Arc Welder before. Everything has it's use cases so I'm not saying Arc Welder doesn't have it's place and I will keep trying to use it. But so far I've observed on some of the apparent benefits:
1) faster data transfer on 8 bit boards - use klipper. I run an Anet A8 and Anycubic Kossel simultaneously on a single raspberry pi 3B+ at 100 mm/s (actual, not just set) with no lag.
2) file compression - doesn't help with typical linear infill so there'll be lots of old G1 gcode in there. A hollow circular pipe is about the best example of file compression you'll get.
3) on smoothness - if you have the source file then use higher resolution to generate STL. Of course there'll be a ton of stuff from Thingiverse that might benefit.
For the zillions of people who ask how to run ArcWelder with ... go to the Arc Welder github kindly linked by Makers Mashup. It's spelled out there for all the most popular ones. A couple of clicks, paste a line of text and your done. It's that easy.
I saw that plugin and downloaded it to my Cura just because it sounded super nifty, but couldn't figure out how it worked. Now I know, nice!
I downloaded it as well but didn't use it because i did not know how it worked !!! nice
Thanks for this! Has made a HUGE difference in print quality with my Ender 3 Pro... Printed 4 parts at once with no stringing, blobs, ect.
This just popped up as a recommended video. After watching it I added the plug-in to Octoprint and tried it using the legacy slicer plug-in in Octoprint and I'm impressed with the results. I don't design many projects where this would be needed but when I do I will certainly use Arc Welder. Thanks for posting this video.
Thanks for sharing! As a cnc machinist, ive always wondered why arcs aren't used.
Incredible. I was just going through some GCODE last night when I made the sad realization for the first time that every move was a G1 and not a single arc... Odd and inefficient. Trying this out today!
How’d it work for you?
@@jessicalane107 Arc Welder has been compressing by about 50% on average. All samples maintained precision within 0.05mm regardless of post process. As for the print result, I didn’t find a significant advantage at typical speeds for entry level printers with faster 32 bit boards installed. I can imagine the best advantage when the processor has become the performance bottleneck.
@@Inventorsquare I have a flsun q5 mini and I’m still doing quite a bit of research. Thanks for your insight!
Added arc-welder to Octoprint and it works really well and the improvement is noticeable!
I've not seen too much for ruined prints, but I have always audibly heard the printer not changing pitch smoothly during arcs. Very interesting idea for a plugin! Love that it can run right in octoprint
Arc Welder seems to work great. Thanks for the video. Most of my test prints have been vastly reduced in size, but for one odd one. It was just a test piece to check if I had enough clearance to fit over something. Simple washer shape. 1.25" ID, 1.5O" OD and .25" thick. Arc Welder added 3% to the file size.
That fact that 3d printing relies so heavily on stl's is to blame. These file types are polygons to begin with. On "actual" cncs you're generating cam from file types that themselves are made up of Tru arcs. Interesting that stl's are default. This is old tech from machinists point of view. Excited to get this in the mainstream slicera
Slicers should abandon STL already and start using nurbs. Granted it's not going to be a walk in the park, but we're at a milestone that nobody wants to cross to evolve.
@@fcuk_x But how would you model with basic geometry? Sure works great for cad precision models, but what about everything else?
You would have to convert from a poly-based mesh anyway.
STL is generally considered a particular evaluation of the NURBS geometry anyway. They will get to using IGES files eventually...
Many of the CAD softwares use STEP files, which uses parametric functions to describe surfaces, and make perfectly smooth surfaces possible. I imagine it’s much easier to do arcs with a STEP file, because it’s hard to come up with arcs from polygons.
@@LuisHansenNH isn’t it possible to have a slicer that supports both CAD files and STL files?
I've been using it for 5 months now. Great Video works great. prints better quality and faster prints. :) Thanks
WOW!!!! I've just tested to generate the gcode file from Cura with this app installed and the "new" file is around 75% smaller than the original file! I will test how it is printed. Thanks for sharing!
How did the prints come out and how was the time?
@@phoenixamaranth I did not see so much improvement on speed (it could be ralated to my RepRap printer) but the final quality is amazing!
@@carlosfranciscovillegas2879 Awesome! Thanks for the reply! I'm definitely going to give it a go on mine
Tested this in Octoprint and as far as I can see the quality of my regular prints is slightly better but I guess time will tell. It really is a set-and-forget function,
That is honestly ingenius
Thanks for making this! I just overhauled and upgraded my printer yesterday and as a result most of my standby gcodes have to be deleted and re-slliced. Now is literally the perfect time for me to implement this!
Thanks again, liked and subscribed. :)
Just did the same, excited to see the improvements, I think the arc welder will also be a big help
This is awesome, thank you! Something I really enjoy about 3D printing is how much there is that is simple and improves print speed/quality. Just by enabling a plug in I can get rid of artifacts and smooth out my prints!
OMG!!! This has made such a difference to the print quality using the Cura install. It's going to be a default on everything I think. Didn't see any real difference in expected time to print with or without, but the quality change is night and day. Arc Welder and ironing makes for such smoother prints on my Anycubic Mega S.
Wow, great software!
"It is in the software the magic is happing"
Thanks for sharing your experience to all of us👍😀
Seen it in Cura. Makes sense to use arc commands. Definitely going to try it!
Thanks for this! Not only did I learn about Arc Welder mode but I didn't realize Cura had a Dark Mode! Thanks
I'm so glad I found this video. Thanks for making it and thanks to FormerLurker! I had no idea Marlin could handle arcs in GCode.
Top notch software works a treat.
If anyone is curious I'm running my octo-print server on a Pi Zero W and Arc Welder runs fine.
Arc welder installed and testing. Can’t wait to see the results.
Let us know! I'll download it now.
Yes, please follow up and let us know your results. Thanks!
How is this not standard? It adds a massive amount of value to a printer, they should be paying the authors
Yes please, lol
Its good software, but it also has its weakness. It's not standard because it screws with the resolutions of the print, and can ruin quality if not careful. But at the end of the day, people need to use common sense, but it's not that common.
agreed - however, Smoothieware does support this natively. It just hasn't been implemented by slicers (absolutely no idea why).
@@sandman7793 to be fair, slicers also mess with resolution. Many people suggest limiting cura resolution as an alternative to arcwelder. Just like cura, the resolution in arcwelder is also configurable.
@@FormerLurker I did my mech eng degree 20 years ago and vaguely recall g code for automation class. You mean to tell me slicers pump out straight lines to make arcs?
Great explanation! I’ve been using Arc Welder for a couple weeks now. And it works well. You described it better than I ever could. Thanks.
I have just watched your video and installed this to my Cura instance. I'll complete some prints with it and update. Thank you for this information.
Just found your channel, while looking for Laser engraving information and this information about Arc Welder for 3D printers popped up , just subscribed, thanks. Alan
I was just talking with my class about this a few days ago and wondered if someone had built any software that turned the line segments into arcs. Thanks for the video!
I've had arc welder enabled for a long time without even changing the settings and I've had great prints these days. I hadn't even thought about it, I watch this video thinking about getting it and I realized I already had it installed and turned on. The cura plugin is what I'm talking about. It's pretty legit guys
I've already been using the octoprint installed plug in, but really didn't get into the weeds of it. This video was really informative. Thanks for posting this. I am sure I can get even more out of arc welder now.
The only thing to note here is that you've followed some other TH-cam channels on compiling firmware to add something like a bl touch they quite often recommend disabling the arc support to 'save room'. The reason slicers haven't implemented this is because STL files are made of triangles, so I guess it is easier to follow the straight lines of an STL rather than recalculate the curve in an object to generate an arc.
Yeah but I think for those poor 8 bit boards the speed issue (stuttering with too many commands per time) isn't that big because really, who does 200mm/s prints on a standard ender 3. Anything with 32 bit boards can easily do it even with everything from bl touch to pressure advance etc enabled, at least with marlin fw. Should be even less of an issue with Klipper. Not sure about reprap and others, though so least the modern reprap boards also have loads of memory.
As a welder and a 3D printer, the title had my head spinning.
It’s great that it exists but frankly it’s a slap in the face of the slicers’ developers who should generate high-level primitives such as arcs natively ! 😔
Maybe, maybe not. On default settings it messes up tiny details, and on larger parts lines can occasionally stick out of the walls. In the end I uninstalled it. I guess I prefer having predictable results over ehm, mostly perfect curves.
Still may be fun for guys with lots of spare time and filament. They may turn it mainstream eventually.
@@przemekkobel4874 , your issues with tiny details could be firmware related. The default deviation in ArcWelder is the same as the maximum deviation (0.05mm) in cura. If you need more accuracy, you could decrease the maximum deviation in cura, and let arc welder compress the extra gcode.
It's definitely an issue that slicers are reducing the resolution before ArcWelder gets hold of the gcode. It actually often does MUCH better with high res gcode. It is also definitely an issue that many printers are running forks of Marlin 1, where arc interpolation isn't mature. Recent updates to Marlin 2 (starting in 2.0.6) and smoothieware have greatly improved results.
@@FormerLurker This is a good point for not enabling arcs (at least not by default) in any slicer that cares about the size of its user base. In few years situation may change though.
Honestly, it is mostly because STL files are purely based on vertexes and the lines that join them, NOT (analog) geometry. The slicer simply takes the model and slices it without knowing what the original modeler intended. If slicers accepted geometry files like STEP or OpenSCAD scripts, *THEN* the gcode could include arcs and full-on NURB splines. The problem with that is whether or not the printer controller's firmware and hardware will support those computationally expensive features.
@@KeithOlson I think that CPU power could become a non-issue in a very short time. For example, you could throw a bunch of Pi Picos at your printer instead of typical controller. They are 1 GHz twin core ARMs. Even a single board could handle typical printer features, and it costs what - four bucks?
Looking at the post-Arc Welder parts... 0.9 degree stepper motors would still be a huge upgrade, especially if they were also capable of microstepping.
This is awesome! I'm definitely going to give it a test today! Thank you for making this video!👍
It's possible that I had it configured incorrectly, but I had tried it myself previously, and it did not work well when printing a spiraled vase. Of course most prints are not vases, but I find them useful as part holders, and figured I should mention it. Good video!
"*Allow 3D Arcs* is an option that allows G2/G3 commands to be generated when using vase mode. This is experimental and it's possible that there are some unknown firmware issues when adding Z coordinates to arc commands. That being said, I've gotten pretty good results from this option. At some point, this will be enabled by default." I see it is also available to activate in the latest Cura plugin...should we dare? haha
This is fantastic! Thank you very much. I'm definitively gonna give it a go. I love these quick videos with tips.
I used to create models in tinkercad and i would notice when printing round objects there would be quite a bit of stepping and you could see the straight lines. But I have finally gotten comfortable using Blender 3d, so when I create objects that require smooth outside surfaces, I just make sure to increase my geometry to compensate. I've been able to get flawless outer surfaces on prints since moving to blender. Either I will create the circle and increase the vertices from step 1, or I simply add a subdivide surface on the object. Yes the file sizes are larger, but my workflow hasn't suffered much, and blender is also very specific when it comes to things like excess geometry, flipped normals, walls trapped inside geometry and the interface allows you to get really surgical when it comes to getting a perfect manifold model for 3d printing.
That's awesome.
Gcode supports making arcs and circles (It's been that way for a long time),, but sliders do not. It's about time we can make actual arcs.
I used to accomplish a similar effect telling TinkerCad to create circular objects with maximum number of steps (up to 64), but often on items with lots of holes, that caused TinkerCad to slow to a crawl every time I told it to group pieces. It also resulted in HUGE stl files. Since adding Arcwelder to Cura, I leave the steps in TinkerCad at the default 20. My stl files are smaller, Cura slices them more quickly and I don't get any stuttering on my Aquilas ( I run Alex's firmware). Once my first layer is down, I usually bump speed up to 200% or higher. On my printers it looks like 300% is the maximum where I can see the speed difference. Higher than that, and I see no obvious improvement. I love Arc Welder!
Mate, what a well put together and well explained video. Subscribed and looking forward to trying this out when I get home.
Subscribed, and I appreciate that you said "feel that" instead of "feel like" which everyone says now. Good video, thanks.
Dind't know about this plugin thanks dude :)
I am using Cura. First layer, only one corner printed round ( brim ) the other 3 corner were printed at 45 deg. My cube part had round corner on each four corners.
I really would've thought arcs would already be used if the firmware/cpu could handle em. Thanks for pointing out this isn't the case!
Subscription-worthy detailed lesson. Thanks.
I added the Arc Welder plugin to Octoprint and it works very well, except that the other day I noticed some rather ugly perimeters on a small print with very tight curves. The model (it was an STL downloaded from Thingiverse) had a spring in it that consisted of a sub-2mm wide structure turning through 180 degrees with about 1mm between one part and its neighbour. The perimeter U-bends were far from regular and there was poor adhesion between the perimeters. After switching off the Arc Welder plugin the print from the same STL file came out as I would have expected.
I do agree though that on bigger prints the file size reduction is usually significant.
Compression alone this is super helpful. I have a rather big 450x600mm delta and I ran into a issue where I couldn't even attempt some large prints due the massive g-codes just straight up crashed pronterface and once or twice crashing my smoothieboard completely well printing via SD. Curious is there any observed print speed increase? Even a small increase would result in decent time savings when dealing with 30+ hour prints.
Not using arc's seems completly crazy to me. That adds an insane amount of unnecessary gcode and makes worse parts. I manually write gcode for industrial lasers daily and I can not believe the printers/slicers aren't configured to use G2/G3 by default.
Microcontrollers that compute the moves are too underpowered, for hobbyist 3D printers anyway. They used to be barely capable of running the steppers when the moves were precomputed.
Don't care about the file size, I care about the quality of prints. But to me seems only good if you only have arcs. in straight-line is quite slow at printing. Never Mind I think is slow at filling the gaps not on the straight lines. You shared Very useful wisdom. Thank you.
I just started using CURA 2 months ago. I just figured out Arc-Welder two weeks ago.
thanks for the info. Just installed this on my creality slicer. can hardly wait to see the difference.
Can you show a tutorial on how to work it through simplify3D?
Thank you just installed and can’t wait for the print to finish!!! Awesome made me subscribe!!
Remember everyone! You've to enable arc support in marlin! I've skr mini e3 1.2 and default firmware have this option disabled. I had to recompile the firmware with arc support enabled.
Things like might be the reason why this isn't standard yet. Not that it's a good excuse, but it's an excuse...
I love Arc Welder, it can improve prints, but it just straight up makes print streaming faster.
I have honestly been thinking about running some speed tests, since there is less gcode to run and combine, it should be faster...
But yeah been using it since beta and my only complaint with it is that its a little too easy to use, it feels like i should be doing something, nah just install and boom magic
I wish I could like this video more than once.
Ive been waiting Years for this
Same here.
Much much faster and better quality, what else could you ask for?
What a generic bot response
@@tonyg5132 Would you prefer less generic bot responses, fellow human?
First time on your channel, nicely done, clear and concise. Subbed!
To those that keep crying, "why isnt this standard?" there are times when you don't want the extra processing overhead and are willing to sacrifice smoothness. I installed ArcWelder plugin to my Octoprint and the stuttering actually became worse. YMMV. Still a great idea and a great explanation of the technology. Thanks.
Going to give it a shot. newbie here. I am also going to try cura.
Interesting I need to print some 65 to 100 and 80 to 100 pipe-tube convertors will give this arc welder thing a go!
Sounds like some cnc machinists are breaking into the 3D print code! 😏
Considering it's all gcode, surprised it's taken this long
You took the words right out of my mouth , there is in the CNC-world already code that is used for circular movement. I am a bit rusty what G-numders it comprises.
@@sergevereecke680 g0=rapid, g1=line, g2=clockwise, g3=counter-clockwise
@@sergevereecke680 exactly. I was frankly shocked to learn that 3D printing isn't using circular interpolation. I guess the print world didn't bother to consider that people have been CNC machining parts with arcs for decades.
holy crap! this is super cool !
Thank you so much! Definitely will be using this plug in.
Can hardly wait to try it out.
Thanks for this , always looking to better my prints.
Awesome, gonna reflash with arc support and test this out. Ooh will this improve accuracy of holes?
Not sure if it will improve them but they should be smoother much like the prints in the video.
Wow, super cool. I don't know why this functionality isn't in cura by default.
why the hell aint this standard??! awesome w3ork
Google pops a warning... just ignore it.... has that been addressed over the last year? This product sounds great.
I MUST try this. Thank you!
Excellent video! Very thorough nicely explained made me subscriber. Keep up the good work
Oh and i had been compiling Arc support out of my firmwares for years now, thinking there is no point...
Well whenever i get around to rebuild, i guess that's coming in then. Not sure how well it'll work with increased planner buffer size or if i need to reduce that...
You shouldn't need to touch your buffer sizes if they are working. Just enable arcs with the default settings (they are quite good as a starting point) and go from there. The most important thing is that you download the latest firmware version. There have been a lot of updates for arcs that improve quality and speed.
wow I never realized there was a data bottleneck with usb compared to sd card. Makes sense, but never thought of it that way. cool.
I've got about 6 hours until my current print finishes... then I'm testing this!
hahaha! Same here, got 10.5hours left until I test this!!!
3.5 hours left and I'm trying.. LETS GO
Thank you very much fot the detailed explanation.
I´ve used Arc Welter Plugin since the first print caus someone recommended it to me - but i never understood what AW is doing....even after a quick research....
So now i got it!
THX for the Video again
See you next time!
great video
Awesome video! I'm going to try this. New subscriber.
Thanks for the video! This is great, but don't know why (I'm a noob) my printer already prints perfect cilinders, you can't tell it's printing in straight lines as you say, actually if I hadn't watched this vid I would have never known. There are no bumps like the ones you show. I've tried different sizes. I will give Arc Welder a try anyway. BTW, my printer is a Hellbot Magna I and I'm using Simplify3D as a slicer.
You are really right. Cura and co just made GCODE plenty of strait lines, never use other GCODE, so why devellop firmware that support circle command or arc command ???? Thanks for this video !!!
Wow great video!!!
Many, many people who are using Sanguino boards, such as the Creality 1.1.4 or 1.1.5, have disabled ARC support in order to install a BLTouch, and as such they will have a problem running the gcode processed with ArcWelder. Also, ARC support used to be supported in much older slicers and its use sort of fell out of favor. You should have mentioned the impact of disabling ARC support in the firmware as the numbers of printers, particularly Ender 2, Ender 3, Ender 3 Pro, Ender 5 and Ender 5 Pro and CR10 printers.
Fwiw, there is a firmware tester in the beta version of the plugin.
May be an extra questoin but do you have a video talking about you octoprint setup I love the way yours looks over mine.
Actually I do! th-cam.com/video/iSYcBsaAaDo/w-d-xo.html&lc=UgzH6BqrMvDRhiKGB954AaABAg
Sounds and looks super awesome! I’ll definitely try it...
Excellent video! You have a natural talent for teaching. I don't have a 3D printer yet, but I'm researching because I'm ready to buy. This is something I am definitely going to look into.
If you were going to spend around $500 for a 3D printer now, do you know what top 2 or 3 you would consider? I found that many of the ones that I thought were top notch have horrible reviews, and I am back at square one after a week of research.
for 500 bucks you could get 2 ender 3 pros and they print really good. Just make sure and keep the rollers clean and adjusted correctly as they ware.
Amazing video
So, I've heard Arc Welder won't really do anything for printers running files off an SD card. It really only effects serial communication buffers.
The same effect can be done in Cura by reducing the resolution numbers.
Not sure I agree. SD card performs better than serial cable but the buffer underrun happens Marlin regardless of serial or SD. Buffers and marlins ability to process that buffer exists regardless of how it receives the data. Changing cura resolution may reduce line segments but it's certainly not creating arcs. Arc welder creates G2 commands where cura doesn't.
@@MakersMashup
Interesting. I'll just have to try it out then. I'm not disagreeing with you.
I'm running a modified Ender 3, using Marlin firmware.
It was explained to me that the stepper motors are not capable of performing a true arc movement. That they can only perform micro straight lines. So running the G code through Arc Welder wouldn't be any more effective than just increasing the resolution settings in Cura because the SD card setup doesn't have buffer issues compared to serial communication.
I have no experience with Arc Welder so I have no idea. Lol but I do have my resolution settings in Cura turned up so my line segments are a lot shorter.
I don't know if I would be able to notice any difference or not.
I'll try it out on some test prints and see how it performs.
I was told this by a person that has been professionally printing for several years, but they run Octoprint over internet connections and do not use SD cards and they love Arc Welder, but they were trying to explain to me why it wouldn't give me any benefit because I run off the SD card.
This person doesn't have any experience with Marlin firmware so maybe it was just their assumption.
I've heard that too @salty steel about the steppers. I have tested it though in SD and USB so I'm just providing my experience. @formerlurker did mention when I was working on this that same point on steppers. .9 deg steppers should provide some improvements along with arc welder. It's not perfect arcs with the steppers creating straight lines at the lowest level but I saw marked improvements over the slicers line segments. I believe that is because the arcs are handed off to marlin vs. The slicer plotting the segments. I've tweaked that resolution in cura myself and it's a good tool as well to improve performance and prints. I just look at arc welder as another cheap easy tool to help the prints. Let me know your results. This video received a ton of visibility and I know @formerlurker has been able to improve arc welder based on all the feedback. So I would love to hear how your testing goes so others can benefit from it. Thanks again for your insight.
@@MakersMashup
Your in depth knowledge is extremely informative and helpful. Paints a better picture for me to understand.
I'll try to come back with any info about testing. Just thinking about some simple cylinder shapes to print with Arc Welder processed files, and just regular Cura processed files and see the difference.
Right now I'm fighting all metal hotend clogging issues. I've narrowed it down to the nozzle instead of heat creep, cooling, correct PID settings, or retractions. The Overture hardened steel nozzle is not playing well with PLA but does great for CF nylon. Switched back to the brass nozzle and all problems go away. Cold pull test on steel nozzle is indicating that the PLA is sticking to it, even when it's clean.
I'm waiting on my new Micro Swiss M2 coated nozzle (supposed to be the best) to come in, if it works well then I'll get back to trying out Arc Welder.
I'm running everything from PLA up to PC through this Ender 3.
Also considering the Micro Swiss direct drive kit for trying out flexible filaments. It should provide more extrusion force/pressure without slipping or skipping.
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing, and thanks to the creator!
This was awesome thanks
Thanks for sharing this info mate! I will def be giving this a try with both my FDM printers. Cheers!
Looks like a great piece of software, thanks for the easy to follow video. Can you use it with Simplify3D and if so how? Many thanks Chris