Cura supports “plug-ins”. There are a few LulzBot-specific plug-ins in Cura 3 that don’t exist for Cura 4. More… from what I can tell, it looks like Ultimaker (the author of Cura now works for Ultimaker) how the plug-in system works so I don’t think you can just copy the plug-ins and expect them to work.
But the most notable difference I found when trying to use Cura 4 is that the start G-code has several variables in it for things like:
- Material soften temperature
- Material wipe temperature
- Bed level probe temperature
And there are others.
The ‘wipe’ temperature (just to pick one example) varies by material … so would you could hard-code those temps into the start g-code, you’d need to edit the start g-code anytime you change filament type.
Part of the reason other slicers don’t support this is because I am not aware of any other printer that has wiper-pads for the nozzles – so they don’t need it. But wiping the nozzles is needed because of the automatic bed leveling system (which is based on electrical conductivity … and that requires a clean metal-to-metal contact). Other printers historically did not have automatic bed leveling (although they do now … just not based on electrical contact).
I ran into an issue (bug) with support blockers in Cura 3.6 and had to use Cura 4.4 to get around it … and that’s when I learned that none of the start g-code variables worked and I had to hard-code everything.
So you can use other slicers. But when you copy the start g-code from Cura LE to wherever you want to use it… just make sure you check all those variables (they are always in curly braces {}) and be prepared to hard-code them with the actual values if the slicers doesn’t support the variables.