G-code Snippets, Config and Scripts for Using PrusaSlicer (formerly Slic3r) with the Flashforge Creator Pro

This is a set of configuration bundles and post-processing scripts that allow to use the FlashForge Creator Pro 3D printer and compatible clones with PrusaSlicer. On my website I explain why you should use these files, and how to use PrusaSlicer after installing them. This repository contains the actual software and installation instructions. If you didn't come from that page already, read the webpage itself for the full story, it will link back here at the appropriate moment.

These configs and G-code are made specifically for PrusaSlicer. They might work in the original Slic3r from which PrusaSlicer was forked, but I give no guarantees, and I give no support if you use this with anything else than PrusaSlicer.

Since PrusaSlicer version 2.2, I'm now making releases for these configs with the same (major) version as the PrusaSlicer version they were made for. If for some reason you are using an older version of PrusaSlicer, you should take the .ini file from the release of my configs with the same older version, to avoid backwards compatibility issues.

This repository contains six things:

1. ConfigBundles: the main PrusaSlicer config bundle. This is the bare minimum to get things working, but you should preferably also install the next thing:
2. make_fcp_x3g.pl: a post-processing script that can automate the essential GCode-to-X3G conversion for you, as well as work around an annoying bug in PrusaSlicer, and optionally also invoke certain extra post-processing scripts. You can make do without this script, but it can make your workflow a lot easier.
3. make_fcp_x3g.txt: a template for the configuration file needed by the post-processing script. Simplest is to ensure that the filled-in template is in the same directory as where you deploy the script.
4. Optional-postprocessing-scripts: what the name says. See the README inside that directory for more info.
5. GCode: the same G-code snippets that are already embedded into the config bundles, strictly spoken you can ignore this. It is possible that I will make small updates to these snippets without updating the whole config bundles, because that's kind of a hassle. If you see more recent commits in this GCode folder than inside the ConfigBundles folder and you want the latest and greatest, follow the instructions on my site to update them.
6. Bed_model: an optional 3D model and texture to have a fancier display in PrusaSlicer. (Some extra work is needed to use these, see the instructions below.)

A warning in advance

Be careful with the temperatures in the filament presets! If you have not upgraded anything about your printer, you will need to reduce certain temperatures because I tweaked them on a Micro Swiss all-metal hot-end with glass bed + hairspray and hardened steel nozzle, and this setup requires higher temperatures than the stock hot-ends. The temperatures for PLA and ABS are safe, but the temperatures for PETG, flexible filaments, and especially polycarbonate (PC), are well above the 240°C limit for the stock hot-ends with their teflon liners. When in doubt, read the ‘Notes’ for a certain filament profile in PrusaSlicer.

You should never exceed 240°C for longer than a few minutes if you have not upgraded your hot-ends to all-metal. For PETG you should be able to get decent results at 240°C but I do recommend an all-metal hot-end with a pointy steel nozzle and higher temperatures to obtain good results with PETG. (For the best results, you also need variable fan speed to apply mild cooling.) I have included one example PETG filament profile (the one whose name does not end in -fan) that is safe to use on an unmodified FFCP, but don't expect nice-looking results with it on a stock extruder.

Installation and Setup Instructions

If you have a question, please go through both the companion webpage and this README (again). I will most likely not answer any mails that ask something already clearly explained on any of those two pages. If you think parts of this README can be improved, the best thing you can do is provide the improved text, for instance by creating a new GitHub issue or maybe even a pull request, or just by sending the remarks through the contact page of my website.

If you are truly stuck and need to contact me, make sure to mention what operating system you are using, what version of PrusaSlicer, and any other possibly relevant information that could help with troubleshooting.

Step 1: install the make_fcp_x3g.pl script

This script can do many things, but its core functions are to apply an important workaround for a certain bug in PrusaSlicer, and then invoke the GPX program to convert the G-code produced by PrusaSlicer into x3g files that the printer understands. This script will be directly or indirectly configured as a post-processing script in PrusaSlicer to be run automatically after slicing. It will make your workflow easier.

You can choose not to use this and do the GPX conversion and bug workarounds all manually and tediously. In that case, skip to step 2 below, but I recommend you do not.

If you are using OctoPrint, you don't need GPX because it does the x3g conversion for you. Otherwise, you do need GPX: first obtain the GPX binary and install it somewhere. Use the most recent GPX build you can find. Do not use 2.0-alpha, it is broken. In Mac OS X, gpx can be installed through homebrew.
Important: if you are going to use the WSL Linux environment in Windows, do not install the Windows EXE. Instead, install the Linux GPX executable inside the Linux WSL environment. If you are using Ubuntu 18.04 or newer, running “sudo apt install gpx” in a Linux terminal will do the job. Otherwise, manually install the gpx binary and ensure it has executable permissions.

As for the post-processing script itself, you need it regardless of whether you use OctoPrint or not.

Upgrading from a previous release

If you are upgrading from a release of this config bundle older than 2.4, there is an important change. Configuration has been split off to a separate text file that has to reside in the same folder as the script, and the script itself must no longer be modified. It is a good idea to make a backup of your old script before overwriting it, so you can easily port your old configuration to the new file.

From 2.4 on, upgrading the script is as simple as replacing the .pl file and keeping your current .txt configuration file. Should there ever be a change like a new config item, I will mention it in a release notes file, but so far there is none.
Steps 2 and 3 should also be repeated when upgrading, to have the latest G-code and improved print settings.

How to deploy and configure the script

The workflow depends on your operating system and how you want to run the script.

1. You are running Linux or Mac OS X: copy both make_fcp_x3g files (.pl and .txt) to a directory whose location will never change. A suitable location would be a ‘bin’ folder in your home directory where you might also store other personal executable files.
   Open make_fcp_x3g.txt in a text editor and modify it according to its instructions. When done, ensure the make_fcp_x3g.pl file is executable (chmod a+x make_fcp_x3g.pl) and remember the full absolute path to where you placed it. This will be referred to as PATH below. (An easy way to obtain the absolute path in Mac OS and many recent Linux UIs, is to drag the file into a terminal window.)
   Try running the script in a terminal with -c argument to see whether you configured it correctly. In Linux, you may need to install the File::Which Perl module (Debian or Ubuntu package libfile-which-perl).
   You can now move to step 2.
2. You use a Perl interpreter in Windows: this is the easiest way to use the script in Windows. I recommend Strawberry Perl. Copy both make_fcp_x3g files (.pl and .txt) to a directory whose location will never change, and where you have write permissions. A subdirectory of your user home folder is a good place (a Windows system directory is not).
   Open make_fcp_x3g.txt in a text editor (I recommend Notepad++). Modify it according to its instructions. When done, figure out the full paths to both the Perl executable and the make_fcp_x3g.pl script. To obtain what will be referred to as PATH below, put the perl.exe path between double quotes, followed by a space, then the script path between double quotes. For instance if you installed Strawberry Perl in its default location, then PATH would look like:
   "C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe" "C:\path\to\make_fcp_x3g.pl"
   or if you would be using 64-bit Cygwin:
   "C:\cygwin64\bin\perl.exe" "C:\path\to\make_fcp_x3g.pl"
   Try running the script in a command shell with -c argument to see whether you configured it correctly. Just paste your value of PATH into a cmd shell and append -c at the end with a space before it. Fix any problems until it reports “OK.” You can now move to step 2.
3. You are running WSL inside Windows: this is more complicated but if you already have WSL, then it makes more sense to rely on its Perl (and maybe Python) interpreter than to install yet another one in Windows. You need the make_fcp_x3g.pl script, but also a BAT wrapper script to invoke it from within Windows. Follow the ‘WSL instructions’ subsection below.

The above list is sorted from most to least recommended when it comes to ease and functionality. This indeed means that if you have the choice between either, then Linux or Mac OS are preferable over Windows when it comes to running PrusaSlicer with these post-processing scripts.

WSL instructions

This is only relevant if you want to run the scripts inside WSL. Otherwise, skip to step 2.

For this to work, inside your WSL environment you must have a command wslpath that converts Windows paths to their Linux equivalent. This is automatically the case if you have Windows 10 version 1803 or newer with a standard WSL image. If not, follow the instructions in the file poor_mans_wslpath.txt. Your WSL version must also support the WSLPATH variable, which should be the case for any recent build.

Copy both make_fcp_x3g files (.pl and .txt) to the same location of your choice inside the WSL environment, pick a directory whose path will never change. Open make_fcp_x3g.txt in a text editor and modify it according to its instructions. Important: everything will run inside WSL, therefore each time you need to specify the path to a program or script, specify the Linux file path where you placed that program (e.g. gpx) or script inside the WSL Linux environment.

When done, ensure both the script and gpx binary (if needed) are executable (chmod a+x make_fcp_x3g.pl).

You should now run the script with -c argument to check whether it works. It is possible you will have to install the File::Which Perl module, which can be done in Ubuntu with:

sudo apt install libfile-which-perl

Now create a BAT wrapper script in your Windows filesystem, any text editor will do. Save the following content under the file name slic3r_postprocess.bat:

set fpath=%~1
set fpath=%fpath:'='$'\'''%
set WSLENV=SLIC3R_PP_OUTPUT_NAME/up
bash -c "perl '/your/linux/path/to/make_fcp_x3g.pl' -w '%fpath%'"

In the above lines, replace “/your/linux/path/to” with the full UNIX style path where you placed the make_fcp_x3g.pl script inside the Linux environment. Avoid having spaces, quotes, $, or other terminal-unfriendly characters in this path unless you know how to deal with them. (Regarding special characters: the cryptic second line in the BAT file makes it safe to use spaces and ' quotes in G-code file names, but you should still avoid characters like $.)

Now remember the full absolute Windows path to this slic3r_postprocess.bat file, you will need it in the next step. This will be referred to as PATH below. For instance if your Windows account name is Foobar and you placed the file slic3r_postprocess.bat in your documents folder on your C drive, then PATH is:

"C:\Users\Foobar\Documents\slic3r_postprocess.bat"

Now you can move to step 2.

A note about Cygwin

It is possible to make this work with Cygwin, but since I expect the number of Cygwin users to be rather small, you're pretty much on your own. As with WSL, you need to ensure File::Which is installed. The most difficult thing is not to get confused between Windows, UNIX, and cygdrive paths. It is best to specify full paths everywhere.

Step 2: modify the config bundles

In the folder ConfigBundles you will find two variations: most likely you will need the regular config bundle. The other one (with ‘MVF’ in its name) is only to be used if you have upgraded your printer with the MightyVariableFan system.

You need to modify the .ini file before loading it into PrusaSlicer. The steps are described below, but I provide a helper webpage that does everything for you. This page needs 2 things as input: the PATH value as described in the previous steps, and the appropriate config bundle ini file.

Remember, PATH must be one of the following, as described in the previous steps:

• if you are running PrusaSlicer in Linux or Mac OS X: the absolute UNIX-style path to the make_fcp_x3g.pl script;
• if you use a Perl interpreter in Windows: the absolute Windows-style paths to both perl.exe and the make_fcp_x3g.pl script, both between double quotes and with a space in between;
• if you run make_fcp_x3g.pl inside WSL: the absolute Windows-style path to slic3r_postprocess.bat;
• if you opted to skip step 1: nothing, empty (again, not recommended).

If you want to use the bed 3D model and texture from the Bed_model directory without having to configure them manually for each printer profile:

1. Place the STL and PNG file somewhere on your computer's disk in a location that won't change.
2. Obtain the full filesystem paths to both files, without surrounding quotes or escape characters.
3. Paste those paths in the appropriate fields on the helper webpage.

Follow the instructions on the page to obtain the transformed ini file, and then go to step 3.

Manually preparing the .ini file

In case the helper webpage is unavailable, or you simply crave doing low-level editing of config files, open the appropriate .ini file in a text editor and do a find & replace on all occurrences of the following line, or use sed if you are a Linux/UNIX wizard:

post_process = /You-need-to-update-print-configs/see-https://bit.ly/3l13MrN

Replace all these lines with:

post_process = trans_PATH

Where you substitute trans_PATH with the transformed value of PATH as follows. Do the following operations on PATH in this order to end up with trans_PATH:

1. replace every backslash \ with a double backslash: \\
2. prepend every double quote " with one backslash: \"
3. put the whole thing between double quotes.

Example: if your PATH was:
"C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe" "C:\Stuff\script.pl"

then the lines in the .ini file must become:
post_process = "\"C:\\Strawberry\\perl\\bin\\perl.exe\" \"C:\\Stuff\\script.pl\""

Even if you skipped step 1, you must still update the ini file. The line must be “post_process = ” in this case.

Step 3: load the config bundles in PrusaSlicer

If you open PrusaSlicer for the first time, try to bypass its config wizard and don't select any specific printer type. The way to do this seems to change with every release so it is pointless to try to describe this in detail. If the wizard did create any Print, Filament, or Printer settings, I recommend to delete them before loading the config bundle.

Now import the .ini file you prepared in step 2 with the “Import Config Bundle” menu option. PrusaSlicer will overwrite existing configs with the same names, other ones will be left untouched (including any settings you may have for other printers). This does mean obsolete print settings can accumulate, unless you wipe all settings whose names start with “Lex-” before importing the bundle, but this is optional.
It also means that when you make modifications to a Lex- print setting and you want to preserve those customizations, you must save it as a new print setting with a unique name to prevent it from being overwritten in a future update.

You can discard the .ini file, it is no longer needed unless you want to keep it as a backup.

Now would be a good time to return to the main article to read how to use PrusaSlicer with this config bundle.

Troubleshooting

If the make_fcp_x3g.pl script does not seem to work or produces incorrect output, the first thing you should try is to manually invoke it in a command shell, with the -c parameter to run a ‘sanity check’. For even more verbose information, use -vc. In Unix-like environments you can probably run the script directly. In Windows you will need to call it as an argument to perl.exe, for instance:

perl.exe "C:\My Stuff\make_fcp_x3g.pl" -vc

If this reports everything to be OK, the next thing to try is to enable the same check when PrusaSlicer invokes the script. This can be done in either of the following ways:

• In PrusaSlicer, go to Print Settings → Output options (enable Expert mode), and add "-d" after the script path, like this:
  "C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe" "C:\Stuff\make_fcp_x3g.pl" "-d";
  (Do not save these modified Print Settings, or remember to remove the "-d" afterwards.)
• Or, if you invoke the script from a BAT file, add the -d parameter there.
• Or, set DEBUG = 1 in your make_fcp_x3g.txt config file.

Then try to export the sliced model again. The result should be that a file ‘make_fcp_x3g_check.txt’ appears next to the G-code file, containing the same sanity check report as when running the script with -c. If this looks OK but there is also a FAIL file, look in that one for the actual error. If neither of these files are being created, then the problem happens even before the script is being called and you will have to try the following.

In Windows, the script is being run in a command window that may reveal what is going wrong. Normally this window is closed immediately regardless of success or failure, which makes it hard to see any warnings or error messages. To keep the window open for 20 seconds, you can add "-s" "20" to the invocation of the make_fcp_x3g.pl script, in the same way as explained above for the "-d" parameter.
If you are invoking the script from a BAT file, the same effect can be obtained by adding this extra line at the end of the BAT file:

timeout /t 20

The Mac OS version of PrusaSlicer doesn't show this kind of output window and I'm not sure whether the Linux version does, so in those cases the -s option is useless and you have to resort to the -c and -d options, or start PrusaSlicer from a terminal or look in a system log to see all of its output.

For the perfectionists

You should calibrate your home offsets to be able to use the entire surface of the print bed. In a nutshell, make sure that the initial priming extrusion is at exactly 3 mm of the front edge of the bed. It is also possible that you can print taller objects than the theoretical 150 mm limit. For more details, see my FFCP hints webpage.

License

These files are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.