nfriend/3d-printer-time-lapse

https://youtube.com/@print_lapse

3D Printer Time-Lapse

All files and configuration used to generate the time-lapse videos of my 3D prints: https://youtube.com/@print_lapse

Equipment/software

Here's the equipment/sofware I use:

• An Artillery Sidewinder X2 3D printer
• A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B running OctoPrint
• A Nikon D3000 DLSR camera
• Ultimaker Cura for slicing

Setup

I based my setup on this YouTube tutorial: https://youtu.be/bP0CX42dy3Y

1. Install OctoPrint on the Raspberry Pi, and connect the Pi to your printer via USB

2. Install pghoto2 on the Pi

   • https://askubuntu.com/a/1130666

3. Install ffmpeg on the Pi

4. Install node (version >= 18) on the Pi

5. Plug in your DSLR via USB to the Pi

6. Turn on your DSLR and test gphoto2 by running gphoto2 --capture-image at the command line of the Pi. Your camera should take a picture!

7. Install the GCODE System Commands OctoPrint plugin and configure a new GCODE command - OCTO1 - to run gphoto2 --capture-image

8. Test the setup so far by navigating the Terminal tab in OctoPrint and send OCTO1. Your camera should take another picture.

9. In Cura, navigate to Extensions > Post Processing > Modify GCode. Add a new "Insert at layer change" script for each of the lines below:

   G60 S01    ; This stores the current location of the hot end to memory
   G0 X0 Y300 ; This moves the hot end to X0 and Y300
   M400       ; Wait for previous commands to finish before continuing
   G4 P0500   ; This pauses the hotend for half a second
   OCTO1      ; This tells OctoPrint to send a command to gphoto2 to take a picture
   G61 S01    ; This moves the hot end back to the location that was stored in memory

   The end result should be six separate post-processing scripts, each of which contains one of the lines from the GCode above: