How to hack Cura 2.1 for LulzBot 3D Printers

Installing on a Mac under El Capitan wasn’t difficult (though I’m very familiar with command line use so your expirience may vary). Open the .dmg file, drag Cura to the Applications folder, then navigate to the main Applications folder in Finder and OPEN Cura from there via a right-click. Confirm that yes, you really want to run unknown software, and it will start. Once it’s started, quit and configure as in Linux instructions starting at step 9, except the directory you want to put your Lulzbot configuration in will be “~/.cura/machines”

I had to perform one more step before I could print:

    cp /Applications/Cura.app/Contents/Resources/cura/resources/machines/fdmprinter.json ~/.cura/machines/

That second file was needed or printing silently failed.

You can import profile.ini files from the old Cura. I had mixed results. For example, it seemed to think I wanted 6.5mm of retraction even though the profile stated 1.0mm. It set a flow of 107% instead of 100%. Go through the settings carefully.

The printer control is practically non-existent. Start a print, or cancel a print – that’s it. No ability to move, heat, or extrude. I had to fire up old Cura to heat up my hot end for a filament change. When I cancelled a print because something was obviously wrong with a setting, I was at least able to move back to a starting position by briefly starting and immediately re-cancelling.

Performance was tolerable (I have a quad-core i7 Mac Mini). Other aspects of the UI (besides printing) usually worked, except for a few problems with cursor focus. Layer view was frustrating: once I clicked on the layer number my arrow keys no longer allowed me to reposition the object but only stepped through layers no matter where I clicked. (Switching to normal view and back fixed this.)

I’m not making this my everyday slicer – on a Lulzbot Mini the printer control interface is essential. But at least so far the things I’ve tried – different supports and fill options, mainly – show a lot of promise.

any updates on this project?

See the newer forum post for version 2.3.1 https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/using-cura-2-3-1-with-lulzbot-3d-printers/4158/5