There is a LOT to cover here so you'll have to forgive me if I go a little fast or indeed
don't explain some of this stuff deeply enough, I thought about breaking this down into two
or three videos but...we all know what happens when I do that, right?
So new prusaslicer alpha was released, and don't at me with the whole it's not released,
what else would you call it, it was released in public alpha the other day and is available
to you to download.
So if you fancy trying out these features now then go get it and come back and watch
the rest of this.
First up and this is the big one.
I don't think anyone was more surprised than I was, other than the cura team, sorry cura
team I gotta get my joke quota in here, about how quickly the dev team have somehow managed
to implement the arachne engine's functionality into prusaslicer.
How many devs does prusaslicer have?
Hmm.
Do you guys eat?
To be clear, arachne was derived from a paper written a couple years ago that gives an entirely
new way of routing paths when you're turning individual slices of a model into sausagey
bits.
If you want me to try to explain how arachne works then comment below, I'm not making any
promises, because it's really hardcore stuff and I am not kidding, but if enough of you
want it I'll do it.
Or try to.
And probably fail.
I mean maybe I'll get the play doh out again, who knows.
But I did somewhat explain it a bit in my cura 5 video.
It's basically more of this, and less of this.
And more of this, and less of this.
It's also really good at small details because it fundamentally bothers to try to draw them
where previously they would have been ignored below a certain resolution.
And I did at the time think that this was such a huge change to cura that prusaslicer
risked being at a disadvantage.
But here we are.
Both of the main slicers are now arachne enabled or powered by arachne or whatever you want
to call it.
This is absolutely great news for the end users.
Next up - and this is another one I've done before.
I cut my finger doing this btw.
On camera.
Because I'm an idiot.
Do you want to see the out takes?
It's probably not youtube friendly.
But that's why I'm wearing gloves, to hide the fact :)
Another one that came from a paper.
I will link the papers below if you're interested, this one is definitely easier to get your
head round, in fact I explained it pretty well in my most popular video yet.
Statistically if you're watching this in the first 2 days since I release it, you're very
likely to have found this channel through lightning infill and shouldn't need any explanation.
For the rest of you, it's an algorithm that sort of works in the same way as tree supports
but inside a model.
The roof of a model doesn't have to be supported right from the base, this wastes material
and takes longer to print, so you can do what essentially is adhoc flying buttress things
to hold up any horizontal surfaces.
Some people say that lightning is a play on lightening as in the model will weigh less
but I don't buy it, I think it's from the zig zag patterns and I guess no better ideas
at the time.
I would have called it wiggly magic infill personally but that's me.
Anyway that is now available in prusaslicer.
And you should use it.
Because it is good.
Pressure equaliser is a new thing though, Sounds a bit like all the other things that
people talk about a lot but you might not have bothered to look up like linear advance
or pressure advance, of course I know exactly what they are.
Absolutely.
Anyway pressure equaliser is, as explained by the documentation, a way to mitigate the
phenomenon that you get when you change from one extrusion rate, to another.
Let me try to demonstrate this.
This is very much a bowden thing and I've gone into this extensively in fact in my previous
TPU videos so I think maybe this will work better for TPU even, something I want to test
out, but the principle is that pressure matters when extruding and for flexible filaments
pressure matters because they are elastic and compressible so obviously when you squish
one end you don't necessarily get the same amount of material translated to the other,
I think or hope that anyone who has watched my last TPU video will understand that, but,
here's the but, even on the most constrained bowden path, and even with the most rigid
filament, there's still room for the material building up I guess elastic potential if you
want to call it that - and what happens when you are extruding fast and want to then either
stop or extrude slow?
Yeah you've got this extra pressure in the system that you can't stop.
Except you can, that's what retraction does.
But this apparently helps too.
Or instead.
And I really want to test this out so expect that soon.
Finally, it seams.
Seams.
Get it.
The last thing I want to show you is improvements to the routing or placement of seams.
If you don't know what the seam is you're likely not the only one judging by how many
times I see people ask what the line is on the back of their pristine cylinder.
When you aren't printing in vase mode...oh that's a can of worms right there, but yeah
when you're printing normally the slicer will put a seam into the model, this is the point
at which you change layer.
You can, if you look at the preview on any model, have a look at the seam.
There's usually an in and an out because you don't necessarily or indeed often actually
start the next layer where you ended the last, think of each layer's outer wall as a long
twisty tapeworm and it has a head and a tail.
Hiding those is not always easy and this new change seams...there we go again...to think
it can do a better job.
Including apparently trying to smoothly route up the side of irregular objects by the look
of it.
I think in my opinion, this is one to file under things you normally won't notice but
will definitely be part of a gradual improvement in print quality.
So.
There ends the video.
That's four absolutely huge new features right there.
I think it's probably worth trying this alpha out.
To use it right now, it seams...no we're not still doing seams jokes..it would appear that
in windows you just have to download and unzip the files to a folder of your choosing and
run the executable, so I don't see how it will affect your existing installation of
a previous version but obviously back everything up if you aren't sure.
What do you think?
Worth using?
Still want tree supports?
Going to try it?
Waiting for cura to port paint on supports?
Me too.
Comment below and let me know if you try it or if you don't or whatever.
And I will see you next time!
Thank you for watching.