steve220 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 28, 2018 1:14 pm
the Pi’s used in Octoprint setups can't feed the gcode to the printers fast enough
I'd be unsurprised, as the Pi's USB / network hardware leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, the
network runs over the USB link inside the chip, so I'd expect watching the video camera would have more effect on the results.
In any event, doubling (or whatever) the raw speed will have absolutely no effect on the overall throughput, because the USB link sends the bits in bursty packets at a few megabits/second. It doesn't dribble them one at a time through an actual serial port.
It's possible an error in the Octoprint code (far from the USB handler) slows the overall data transfer, perhaps by introducing long pauses in the handshaking, but that's entirely separate from the raw serial data rate. The blobs look like very long pauses, indeed.
a lot of round shapes and curves
Everybody wants
smoooooth curves, but those zillions of polygon faces don't buy you anything beyond G-Code bloat.
Cut the arc resolution to about 0.1 mm in the XY plane, watch the G-Code file shrivel, and you'll never see any difference in the actual plastic part.
It may be a workaround for the Pi's crappy hardware, but it's also a general rule of thumb: never use more polygons than you absolutely must.