Iris 2.7 alpha1 prerelease

Iris version alpha1 prelease is out! The first slicer made for mixing extruders!!

It it a prerelease to the PrusaSlicer 2.7.0 alpha1 based prerelease version that still contains a number bugs that need to be fixed before calling it a release, but the whole is working and ready to be test driven by users.

The final version will have a hole compensation feature and ranged layer printing included but this version has the following features already built in:

• Mixing extruder gcode generation in alpha test (M165 gcode, see tutorial on releases page)
• Coloring picking/ using system with right clicks integrated. Colors are loaded/saved from the project you pick and you can then store them to the printer config with a right click on the color and choosing “Store”.
• Fully fledged 3MF colored file support, no more multipart STL files needed. It supports bambulabs generated 3MF and more ‘spec compliant’ 3MF’s. It will automatically load the colors on to your mixing extruder automatically, picking colors printable with it s close as possible. You can print and slice color files right away, or edit the colors to your liking. Fully backwards compatible.
• Arc overhang and pedestal spiral infill are still used, but now can be set under “Infill” settings.
• For the rest Iris alpha1 pre contains all PrusaSlicer 2.7 alpha 1 features.

Some small starting tips to do before testing it out as mixing extruder slicer:

• Choose your printer and instead of having multiple extruders make 1 single and check the box on mixing extruder in the extruder’s settings
• Store and restart
• Choose the amount colors on the extruder now
• Store and restart
• Choose the right colors you use, order has to match the klipper / marlin firmware settings as the used M165 Ax Bx Cx Dx gcode is assuming you set the order of colors right
• Next store it!
• Now you can load the 3mf test file and open the painting tool (set it to Expert in top right if you dont see the option on the left bar)
  You can now change the colors by changing the extruder colors in the paint tool (choose it in either top two pickers).
• Paint etc. and store the file to store the colors.
• You can also right click a color in the color palette and then store it to the system or load it as a new extruder.

IMPORTANT THING!!!!: dont store the virtual extruders, to change settings while having mix extruders: click tab ‘printer’ -> ‘general’ and change to extruder amount toggle and pick ‘yes’. Then store the settings and go back to the paint tool and choose ‘Refresh’ to rebuild the mix extruders. Future versions will do this for you automatically but for now it needs this workaround.

P.S>>> The colors you pick are going through a mathematical check to confirm if they are possible to print. This is because you are bound to mixing the colors, limiting the amount of colors you can print. My system uses RGBW and can print almost anything but pure yellow and pure black. For a CMYK system you would be limited in getting pure red, blue, green and white but get all mixed colors and black. You can keep your mouse clicked and slice over the picker and find a possible color that matches what you want, needs some practise but then you can get a lot of good colors.
P.S2>>> The amount of mixing extruder colors is limited to max 4. This is because I dont know of bigger sized mixing extruders so i didnt add the color pickers for more. If anyone needs more, let me know and i will add the extra, simple addition of a line of code.

Last important thing for using the gcode M165 command:

• Marlin has built in support for it so it should work fine. Only problem that might come up is toolchange commands in the gcode, the virtual extruders have Tx gcodes in the gcode. I dont know if Marlin stops the printer or ignores the wrong toolnumbers. If problematic go to settings -> ‘print’ -> ‘output options’ -> ‘gcode substitions’ -> ‘+’ and add T[1-9] in the first field and let the others empty. This removes all T1-T9 gcodes.
• Klipper needs the M165 macro as in the txt file below.