I know this is a controversial topic for Zortrax but I think it is important and can temporarily solve many of the issues people are having with advanced printing options.
I know that zcode is proprietary and Z-Suite is a wonderful slicer and works very well. On the other hand most people who are familiar with 3D printing are experienced in using gcode and have a preferred slicer and maybe some of their own scripts to perform certain fills or support structures. Many of the complaints/features that people have mentioned on these forums are customizations that exist in many gcode generators but have not been added to the Z-Suite GUI.
To me, it would seem logical to add an advanced option in Z-Suite for importing *.gcode. This gcode would then get translated and any settings that don't exist for the Zortrax printer would be overridden by defaults or removed while keeping the structure of the individual layers. If the individual layers in the gcode can't be printed, give a helpful error message to the user so they can generate compatible gcode.
This feature would allow users to develop and customize their actual prints down to the temperatures and structures of the infill in an open environment while still allowing them to be printed on the Zortrax printer (and not have them searching for other printers that can satisfy their requirements). Without going into any crazy detail as to the implementation of this feature, is this something that the Zortrax team might be interested in adding?
If you need more specific examples as to the use case for this feature I would be happy to add some.
I think the simple answer is that it won’t happen. If we think about the reasons why the z-suite/zcode is like it is now it would back this up:
The printer is closed source so Zortrax can control the quality of the prints with software that is known to produce the best results with the hardware.
Zortrax don’t have the resource available to do any work whatsoever on integrating 3rd party slicer output code - to date they haven’t had the resource to produce what they promised in their own brochures let alone 3rd party features.
Zortrax (even if they had the resource) don’t want you to have access to some of the functions you want to access. It would open up parameters such as temperature control which they state is “dangerous” - I believe they think it’s actually more dangerous to the impact of sales of z-materials rather than any hidden concern for health and safety.
That all being said, there are benefits to closed source and specifically the quality that the M200 is able to produce vs reprap and open source machines. We just need some more functions and flexibility in z-suite to make it more useable whilst keeping the output quality we get on some of the current prints.
Thanks for the input. I understand Zortrax is overloaded right now, I was just thinking it might be easier to convert gcode to zcode than implement all the features that people want; this could make customers happy while they sort out all their details with the Z-Suit software (I've only used it on a Mac, and it's got a LONG way to go before it's in good working order).
To your #3 point; I don't want to see 3-D printers go down the same road as 2-D ones where printer companies make all their money off of the materials used to print, that would be a shame. I would rather see more work go into improving the printer and printer software to allow for a wide verity in materials, this is a 3-D printer, anything should be possible! If Zortrax just wants to do what other 2-D printer companies have done then that's unfortunate, I was hoping to see some innovation and not just sticking with "what works".
Anyhow, I just wanted to keep the discussion open. I'm still printing some amazing things with the Z-Suite software, prints always come out better then other peoples :D