6 ms·

CUPS 2.1 Is Adding Basic 3D Printer Support

86 points by tomkwok 11y ago

joosters 11y ago
...why, was printer software becoming too reliable?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Why would this addition hurt reliability?
  - joosters 11y ago
    While my comment was a bit glib, new features do have a tendency to introduce complexity & bugs on seemingly entirely unrelated parts of software. If CUPS is going to make a big push on integrating 3d printing, I'd bet you that it causes more than one bug with the normal 2d printing, even if it is a compile-time option. I just hope that the 3d part of CUPS is easily removable... I'd hate to see it part of the common user experience, CUPS already has a reputation for a complex and bewildering UI as-is.
    - jfoster 11y ago
      Couldn't this argument be used against adding any new features to any established software? I agree that adding new features will introduce new defects. Should we allow fear of new defects to define what software should do?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      > While my comment was a bit glib, new features do have a tendency to introduce complexity & bugs on seemingly entirely unrelated parts of software. This is true. Given CUPS's modularity, I think this won't add too much complexity, though. > I just hope that the 3d part of CUPS is easily removable... I'd hate to see it part of the common user experience, CUPS already has a reputation for a complex and bewildering UI as-is. I don't imagine it affecting the normal user experience at all. 3D printers are still printers and presumably configured similarly.
      - Vendan 11y ago
        meh, the only similarities between 3d printers and "normal" printers is the word printer in the name and the fact that they are output devices. 3d printers have much more in common with 3 axis CNC machines then with printers. In fact, the control code that many hobbyist 3d printers use is actually based on the control code used by CNC machines.
        makomk 11y ago
        There are 3 axis CNC machines out there that use the Windows printer spooler, believe it or not.
        zokier 11y ago
        I thought that too first, but actually they do seem quite similar. Main difference from computers point of view is that paper printers take in postscript and 3d printers take in gcode. Of course the printer itself is completely different but that is all quite opaque to the computer.
        Vendan 11y ago
        If you want to be that pedantic, there is little difference between a monitor and a printer. There are a lot of configuration differences between 3d printers and normal.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
This makes more sense than it might first appear. By adding this to CUPS, you can take advantage of its print spooler, filter pipeline, and OS connectivity support (USB, parallel, etc.).
- contingencies 11y ago
  Also logical is integration with existing program UI dialogs, print to file and other features. Added support for 3D printers (basic types only, no built-in filters) based on PWG white paper. ... can anyone find the white paper?
  - Someone 11y ago
    Possibly http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-20150123.pdf http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-2... (found via https://www.pwg.org/blog/january-2015-3d-printing.html https://www.pwg.org/blog/january-2015-3d-printing.html) Note the "copyright (C) 2015 Apple Inc" part (makes some sense given that Apple owns CUPS)
    - contingencies 11y ago
      Thanks. This seems it was prepared before the February BOF and is out of date. Even so, it is a pretty solid read for someone interested in an overview of current 3D printing models. Unfortunately, it also makes it clear that the white paper currently only supports FDM (fused deposition modeling) based processes, while stating intent to expand to broader scope.
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    No, it makes no sense. Right now 3D printers eat files, so printing to file is tautology. 3D printers also tent to be very unreliable, you need ability to pause the print (jams, skips). How is putting CUPS between you and the printer helpful?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bitL 11y ago
Offtopic: What is currently the best home 3D printer? I am looking for something that produces reasonable level of detail and items that aren't easily destroyed by applying slight rotational forces.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  What's your budget? 3D printers for home use vary in price from a few hundred dollars to many thousands of dollars. Also, they vary quite a bit in terms of the materials they support printing. If you want one example of a good high end 3D printer for the home market, I'd say take a look at the Form 1+: http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/ http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/
  - dekhn 11y ago
    When I visited Autodesk, they had a ton of broken Form1+'s on the shelf. They said they always broke.
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      Good to know, thanks.
- jglauche 11y ago
  If you aren't too tight on budget, I'd recommend the Lulzbot TAZ Mini at the moment. It's sturdy and reliable. It's fully open hardware too.
- dekhn 11y ago
  We got a Wan Hao http://3dprint.com/62585/wanhao-usa-duplicator-i3/ http://3dprint.com/62585/wanhao-usa-duplicator-i3/ for about $400 and it's the best printer we have seen in that price range (part of my job is evaluating 3D printers). I've done a number of detailed, production-quality prints (I make parts for scientific equipment using it). The Taz and Taz mini are also quite good.
dekhn 11y ago
I stopped printing on Linux when it switched from the old printcap based tools (which while hard to configure, mostly worked) to CUPS. I was an experienced sysadmin, but no amount of configuration could make CUPS print anything but the text of postscript files to my laser printer. I'm sure it's gotten much better, but CUPS is pretty opaque, and when you're doing 3D printing, controlling the conversion pipeline from model to print code is typically done manually with a great attention to detail.
- tjradcliffe 11y ago
  My first thought on reading the headline was: hadn't they better get printing working first? I just assumed it still doesn't because after five years or so of not being able to print anything but postscript files to a postscript printer I completely gave up on printing on linux, because like you, no amount of messing with configuration stuff would make it work (I could on rare occasions get CUPS configured on a single machine with one printer, but it was always an incredibly fragile and delicate arrangement that fell to bits when anyone looked at it sideways.)
- mmastrac 11y ago
  That's not the fault of CUPS. Old Laser printers were brutally poor at modeswitching. You have to send the set of escapes for language selection in exactly the right state in the state machine for it to take effect. If you've left a bit of an old job in a buffer somewhere -- oops, that's 50 pages of raw postscript. Modern printers that ditched plain-ASCII printing are far more reliable.
  - dekhn 11y ago
    I disagree about the old laser printers. I had printcap files that would take dvi2ps postscript just fine. This was CUPS just catting ps output of ghostscript at the printer without setting control codes no matter how it was configured.
- kitsunesoba 11y ago
  I'm kind of surprised to hear that CUPS gives some people so much trouble. I've been using OS X and Linux since around 2001 and neither have given me any mentionable trouble with printing. It's always been install drivers -> flawless printing. In the case of my newest printer, I didn't even need to install drivers since it's AirPrint compliant. CUPS has been great for me.
decktech 11y ago
Maybe someone can explain how this works to me: In the white paper (http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-20150123.pdf http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-2...) section 5, it lists a bunch of attributes ("material-type", "filament-retraction-speed", etc.) These are all attributes that would be inputs to a slicer. Furthermore, there are a million such parameters (CUPS will never cover them all), are different between different slicers, are ever-changing, and sometimes undocumented. Why would cups concern itself with these parameters, versus, for example, just acting as a transport for the actual print file (gcode, x3g, etc.)? I feel like this is akin to having CUPS assemble a PDF, versus just acting as a transport for postscript file that gets printed.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Well, CUPS does assembly PDFs nowadays.
cmurf 11y ago
OS X's been using CUPS for a long time and, as other OS X users have noted, doesn't have the reliability problems people are reporting here on Linux. So those problems must have to do with things that aren't directly CUPS related, like possibly an application, PPD, Ghostscript, backend, or network or USB problem. Each distro packages this up a bit differently and with different versions so that could also be part of the inconsistency.
fake-name 11y ago
Can we first stop making fucking ANY x support depend on the entire CUPS subsystem? I have a LOT of different computers/VMs that need X in some form, and will never, ever EVER print anything. Why do I need the 10+ CUPS packages to install a minimal desktop environment? This is also true for audio bullcrap.

86 points by tomkwok 11y ago

joosters 11y ago

...why, was printer software becoming too reliable?

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Why would this addition hurt reliability?
- joosters 11y ago
  While my comment was a bit glib, new features do have a tendency to introduce complexity & bugs on seemingly entirely unrelated parts of software. If CUPS is going to make a big push on integrating 3d printing, I'd bet you that it causes more than one bug with the normal 2d printing, even if it is a compile-time option. I just hope that the 3d part of CUPS is easily removable... I'd hate to see it part of the common user experience, CUPS already has a reputation for a complex and bewildering UI as-is.
  - jfoster 11y ago
    Couldn't this argument be used against adding any new features to any established software? I agree that adding new features will introduce new defects. Should we allow fear of new defects to define what software should do?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > While my comment was a bit glib, new features do have a tendency to introduce complexity & bugs on seemingly entirely unrelated parts of software. This is true. Given CUPS's modularity, I think this won't add too much complexity, though. > I just hope that the 3d part of CUPS is easily removable... I'd hate to see it part of the common user experience, CUPS already has a reputation for a complex and bewildering UI as-is. I don't imagine it affecting the normal user experience at all. 3D printers are still printers and presumably configured similarly.
    - Vendan 11y ago
      meh, the only similarities between 3d printers and "normal" printers is the word printer in the name and the fact that they are output devices. 3d printers have much more in common with 3 axis CNC machines then with printers. In fact, the control code that many hobbyist 3d printers use is actually based on the control code used by CNC machines.
      - makomk 11y ago
        There are 3 axis CNC machines out there that use the Windows printer spooler, believe it or not.
      - zokier 11y ago
        I thought that too first, but actually they do seem quite similar. Main difference from computers point of view is that paper printers take in postscript and 3d printers take in gcode. Of course the printer itself is completely different but that is all quite opaque to the computer.
        Vendan 11y ago
        If you want to be that pedantic, there is little difference between a monitor and a printer. There are a lot of configuration differences between 3d printers and normal.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

This makes more sense than it might first appear. By adding this to CUPS, you can take advantage of its print spooler, filter pipeline, and OS connectivity support (USB, parallel, etc.).

contingencies 11y ago
Also logical is integration with existing program UI dialogs, print to file and other features. Added support for 3D printers (basic types only, no built-in filters) based on PWG white paper. ... can anyone find the white paper?
- Someone 11y ago
  Possibly http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-20150123.pdf http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-2... (found via https://www.pwg.org/blog/january-2015-3d-printing.html https://www.pwg.org/blog/january-2015-3d-printing.html) Note the "copyright (C) 2015 Apple Inc" part (makes some sense given that Apple owns CUPS)
  - contingencies 11y ago
    Thanks. This seems it was prepared before the February BOF and is out of date. Even so, it is a pretty solid read for someone interested in an overview of current 3D printing models. Unfortunately, it also makes it clear that the white paper currently only supports FDM (fused deposition modeling) based processes, while stating intent to expand to broader scope.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  No, it makes no sense. Right now 3D printers eat files, so printing to file is tautology. 3D printers also tent to be very unreliable, you need ability to pause the print (jams, skips). How is putting CUPS between you and the printer helpful?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bitL 11y ago

Offtopic: What is currently the best home 3D printer? I am looking for something that produces reasonable level of detail and items that aren't easily destroyed by applying slight rotational forces.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
What's your budget? 3D printers for home use vary in price from a few hundred dollars to many thousands of dollars. Also, they vary quite a bit in terms of the materials they support printing. If you want one example of a good high end 3D printer for the home market, I'd say take a look at the Form 1+: http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/ http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/
- dekhn 11y ago
  When I visited Autodesk, they had a ton of broken Form1+'s on the shelf. They said they always broke.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    Good to know, thanks.
jglauche 11y ago
If you aren't too tight on budget, I'd recommend the Lulzbot TAZ Mini at the moment. It's sturdy and reliable. It's fully open hardware too.
dekhn 11y ago
We got a Wan Hao http://3dprint.com/62585/wanhao-usa-duplicator-i3/ http://3dprint.com/62585/wanhao-usa-duplicator-i3/ for about $400 and it's the best printer we have seen in that price range (part of my job is evaluating 3D printers). I've done a number of detailed, production-quality prints (I make parts for scientific equipment using it). The Taz and Taz mini are also quite good.

dekhn 11y ago

I stopped printing on Linux when it switched from the old printcap based tools (which while hard to configure, mostly worked) to CUPS. I was an experienced sysadmin, but no amount of configuration could make CUPS print anything but the text of postscript files to my laser printer. I'm sure it's gotten much better, but CUPS is pretty opaque, and when you're doing 3D printing, controlling the conversion pipeline from model to print code is typically done manually with a great attention to detail.

tjradcliffe 11y ago
My first thought on reading the headline was: hadn't they better get printing working first? I just assumed it still doesn't because after five years or so of not being able to print anything but postscript files to a postscript printer I completely gave up on printing on linux, because like you, no amount of messing with configuration stuff would make it work (I could on rare occasions get CUPS configured on a single machine with one printer, but it was always an incredibly fragile and delicate arrangement that fell to bits when anyone looked at it sideways.)
mmastrac 11y ago
That's not the fault of CUPS. Old Laser printers were brutally poor at modeswitching. You have to send the set of escapes for language selection in exactly the right state in the state machine for it to take effect. If you've left a bit of an old job in a buffer somewhere -- oops, that's 50 pages of raw postscript. Modern printers that ditched plain-ASCII printing are far more reliable.
- dekhn 11y ago
  I disagree about the old laser printers. I had printcap files that would take dvi2ps postscript just fine. This was CUPS just catting ps output of ghostscript at the printer without setting control codes no matter how it was configured.
kitsunesoba 11y ago
I'm kind of surprised to hear that CUPS gives some people so much trouble. I've been using OS X and Linux since around 2001 and neither have given me any mentionable trouble with printing. It's always been install drivers -> flawless printing. In the case of my newest printer, I didn't even need to install drivers since it's AirPrint compliant. CUPS has been great for me.

decktech 11y ago

Maybe someone can explain how this works to me: In the white paper (http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-20150123.pdf http://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/BOFs/3d-printing/wd-apple-ipp3d-2...) section 5, it lists a bunch of attributes ("material-type", "filament-retraction-speed", etc.) These are all attributes that would be inputs to a slicer. Furthermore, there are a million such parameters (CUPS will never cover them all), are different between different slicers, are ever-changing, and sometimes undocumented. Why would cups concern itself with these parameters, versus, for example, just acting as a transport for the actual print file (gcode, x3g, etc.)? I feel like this is akin to having CUPS assemble a PDF, versus just acting as a transport for postscript file that gets printed.

marcosdumay 11y ago
Well, CUPS does assembly PDFs nowadays.

cmurf 11y ago

OS X's been using CUPS for a long time and, as other OS X users have noted, doesn't have the reliability problems people are reporting here on Linux. So those problems must have to do with things that aren't directly CUPS related, like possibly an application, PPD, Ghostscript, backend, or network or USB problem. Each distro packages this up a bit differently and with different versions so that could also be part of the inconsistency.

fake-name 11y ago

Can we first stop making fucking ANY x support depend on the entire CUPS subsystem? I have a LOT of different computers/VMs that need X in some form, and will never, ever EVER print anything. Why do I need the 10+ CUPS packages to install a minimal desktop environment? This is also true for audio bullcrap.