Ultimaker Cura 5.2 is here. This time we’ve focused on improving teamwork. If you have a fleet of multiple Ultimaker printers, or a classroom full of students trying to work with your Ultimaker printers. We have something for you. This release offers the most cooperative friendly workflow yet.
Additionally, we introduced three new settings you can tune to improve the flow of your initial layer which will allow you to improve your adhesion and potentially reduce elephant’s foot.
We have also made it much easier to build and run Ultimaker Cura from source. Improving the way that Ultimaker Cura is built, and the associated documentation, enables open-source contributors to more easily help us improve Ultimaker Cura. Building from source is currently supported on Mac and Linux and support for Windows will come at a later date.
Choose a printer after slicing with abstract printer types
We introduced a new flow for connected Ultimaker 3D printers. If you have multiple Ultimaker 3D printers in your workshop, your printers are now automatically bundled by printer type. You can select this abstract printer type when you start slicing your part. If you prefer sticking to the old workflow that you are used to, this is still available to you.
You can now see the loaded materials and print cores of all printers available to you via the Ultimaker Digital Factory without selecting each individual printer. When you’ve finished finding the right print settings for your part, you are shown the printers that can print that part for you. You can change your mind or even print the same print job on multiple printers without any cumbersome switching.
Your connected Ultimaker printers are now bundled in Abstract Printer Types for easier navigation
Role approval for users with Education roles in Ultimaker Digital Factory
Organizations with not only multiple printers but also many users also have something to look forward to in Ultimaker Cura 5.2. When you have an Ultimaker Professional, Excellence, or Education subscription, you can assign ‘Guest’ roles. Colleagues or students in a ‘Guest’ role can prepare print jobs in Ultimaker Cura and send them to the printers via the Ultimaker Digital Factory. Print jobs prepared like this will not start immediately but will require approval from a user with the 'Member' or 'Admin' roles.
Print job approval is meant for those Ultimaker Digital Factory organizations that have a lot of users sending in prints and where there needs to be some level of control over what is printed. Ultimaker Digital Factory will allow you to leave notes regarding the print job and the approver can examine the print job of a guest before approving. Guests only have the rights to interact with their own print jobs and can’t interfere with other printers or print jobs.
Learn more about the available roles in an organization here.
Print jobs sent by users in a Guest role need approval before they are picked up by a printer. An approver can download the file in the Ultimaker Digital Factory.
If you sent a print job in a “Guest” role it needs to be approved in the Ultimaker Digital Factory before the it is printed.
More control over initial layer flow
When a brim is not an option for your model, or you have a flexible build plate that removes the need for a brim, we’ve introduced three new settings that will help you tune your initial layer. When tuned correctly, these settings can be used to help improve your adhesion and decrease elephant’s foot. The ideal values may differ per 3D printer. The three new settings are:
Initial Layer Outer Wall Flow
Initial Layer Inner Wall Flow
Initial Layer Bottom Flow
These three new settings can help you tune the flow in your initial layer. You can see their effect in the flow color scheme in your preview.
Additional improvements
The following improvements have also been implemented in the Ultimaker Cura 5.2 beta:
Building from source is now more accessible on Max and Linux (Windows support will come later). If you want to contribute, it’s easier than ever to get started. Read more about it here.
Fixed a bug so that the random Z-Seam setting is now more random
Fixed a bug where tree support had infill by default where it was supposed to be hollow
Fixed a bug where Windows users saw pointless notifications when they left Ultimaker Cura running in the background
Give us your feedback
Try out the exciting features mentioned in this article right now by downloading the beta. And please, share your feedback with us and the rest of the Ultimaker community!
