The Alpha Development Team is very proud of their work over the last 5+ months. I do believe at a glance that we have identified and solved more than 200 bugs and counting across 26 Alpha versions. This also included a number of long standing bugs. We also opted to address challenges around purge towers, limitations to organic supports, and tool/filament changing systems.

Does this mean it will be bug free? God no, but we do have people that have been using it, without seeing any challenges. Where we see challenges is with more advanced users that simply do more than slice a bracket to print. We wanted to make sure we did our best for these now more and more common users as well.

We are working to hopefully bring the last Alpha to the Alpha Dev Team for testing this weekend. Once we confirm that all we see is “edge case” challenges, we will move to releasing a Public Beta. Again I am not giving dates, since I will not feel the “you promised and did not deliver” people.

For those that would like to dig into it a little… Here is just a small portion of the accomplishments:

New:

• Can enable/disable settings in modifiers
• Some changes to custom gcode to be able to parse the G1 in it to update our current position.
• Allow lift if the last position isn’t know (and extra_lift ensure a lift)
• New settings: print_bed_temperature, print_first_layer_bed_temperature & some temp rework to make it work.
  • Now uses print_first_layer_bed_temperature for first layer bed, unless it’d deactivated, then it uses the max of first_layer_bed_temperature
  • The now first layer’s computed bed temperature is given to start_gcode by variable ‘start_gcode_bed_temperature’
  • The bed temperature for second layer & higher is now also set the same way. It’s available as ‘gcode_bed_temperature’ in layer_change
  • No more repeat M109 if waiting for temp
• Make the wipe tower works with absolute positioning.

Working On/Investigating For Beta Release:

• As of A23 import of Orca projects is broken. Not confirmed if Bambu Studio broke as well or not.
• Gcode chronology is way off. currently refactoring it.
• Seems like the filament’s slowdown on low layer time is also too inconsistent, also refactoring it to use the more reliable method to compute layer time.

Future:

• “Tree supports” come from Cura and “Organic Supports” are Prusa’s implementation of it. We will be reviewing if the Cura implementation fit better for us.
  • Optionally Organic/Tree supports needs to be completely re-coded from the ground up.
• We are looking into possibly completely re-writing how overhangs are implemented.

Fixed:

• Don’t force to install new profiles even if old ones are viewed as incompatible.
• Fix crash for clicking edit button for filament start/end gcode
• Fixed help/details on width tab (by legend069)
• Pressure adv unsupported calibration updates (by legend069)
• Solid fill’s gapfill: reuse the perimeter’s gapfill parameter for min, max, min_length, min_area and extension
• Fixed support blocker
• Fixed prusa’s configuration (unknown gcode variable)
• Fixed lightning segfault
• Fixed bed temperature from unused extruders
• Fixed crashing pressure advance calibration on not-klipper printer
• Fixed weird layer time computation (can impact speed)
• Added scrollbar to wizard left panel
• Fixed gcode preview’s chronology computation
• Some profile fixes
• Gcode view shouldn’t show only the layer 0 after switching from another view. It should show the full object or the correct layers.
• Fix wrong lift reset when moving to a new object while lifted.
• Vendor profiles: all (but for caribou, meltingplot, vertex) are converted from PrusaSlicer, so they should be more up-to-date. I looked at some, and wil print with some but I can’t test most of them. Please be careful and report any issues with them so we can ensure they are okay.
• Removed the resize when opening the collapsible “help” in the width setting tab. Tell me if it still display correctly on linux and mac.
• Fix void instead of sparse infill on top if solid deactivated.
• Fix ramping travel while lifted.
• PA calibration: merged with latest version (thanks legend)
• Fix tree support crash
• Fix a seam issue with the new code.
• Fix max_filament_speed for wipe tower (wrong unit)
• Fix MacOS embedded libzzstd
• Fixed preferences items available for the standalone gcode viewer
• Add preference entry for side panel width
• Fix standby_temperature_delta / filament_idle_temp interaction & reprap temperature init for single_extruder_mmu.
• Fix seams
• Fix missing MacOS libzstd (you can try with uninstalling it if you installed it)
• Restore 2.5 “max gcode per second/gcode min length” (no more buggy moving window)
• Overhangs: remove lower layer if too thin, so it’s more easily detected. Still a quick fix, I need to redesign the way perimeter is generated so the external ones can be routed in advance to really understand where the limit is (big work)
• Fix crash on restore
• Wipe tower: don’t deactivate pressure advance if it’s deactivated for the previous filament.
• Fix thin wall detection by gcode viewer
• No seams inside thin walls if merged into the perimeter loop
• Fixed some internal issues I encountered in debug mode.
  • Polygon direction issue on very small sections (small artifacts to be deleted)
  • Fix thin wall crash (do not try to check for circle-ness if you have three points or less)
  • And some others
• Only_retract_when_crossing_perimeters: when printing support, use the object’s perimeters.
• Use perimeter direction for skirt, brim, spiral vase. But:
  • Brim can only use the global setting (to simplify things)
  • Object setting can work for skirt if printed sequentially
  • Spiral vase work as expected now.
• Fix kickstart fan not reset before layer change (with fan_speedup_time)
• Fix extra gapfill between external and internal perimeter (when the internal perimeter is much thicker).
• Fix regression crash with loading a project with wipe tower.
• Fix flow calibration z
• Fix crash when perimeter hole != contour count and a hole merge with a contour
• Fix arc (split)
• Fix organic support:
  • A note about it: the organic layers are synchronized in height & z with the object’s layer. And only one layer height for the whole thing is enforced. It’s because the organic support algorithm only work with one layer height. I can’t ‘fix it’ unless i rewrite the whole thing.
  • Fix ‘from filament’: now correctly use the bottom of the bridge filament as start point. As with ‘from plane’, the z position of the interface is discretized by the fixed layers z, so if you have a 0.2mm layer height, then you’ll see a jump from no-gap to one-layer-gap when changing the z gap from 0.099mm to 0.101mm.
  • Correctly deactivate support fields that are ignored by organic support when selected.
• Don’t write temperature comment if not in verbose mode
• Some gcode temperature reorganization. Shouldn’t change anything, but you should check just in case.
• Internal bridge infill in place of top/solid infill in nearby areas if another area need internal bridge. (areas need to be disconnected by perimeters but still near each other) (bug from 2.7 merge, more than 6 months ago)
• Fix gapfill extruded in reverse and by a little chunk at a time
• Wipe tower: preview before first slice now update from better data.
• Fix gcode preview tool color going black when saving the gcode.
• Move “Move to first z, for wipe tower” at the end of the start gcode.
• Fix flow_speed calibration
• Shouldn’t do the accel/decel from (0,0) at gcode start
• Fix colors (dark mode, gizmos, some menus)
• Perimeter overlap is now default to 80%
• Calibrations should now not bug and handle the dark mode better.
• Fix gcode_min_length (was doing yo-yo with gapfill)
• Fix arrange (should now have a safe distance, still need some warning for some special cases)
• Ironing pattern
• Dynamic pattern if not selected at the first slice
• Color print
• Fix (some) typos
• Windows dark mode (html still in white in windows because it’s too complicated).
• Windows dark mode: the colors for setting’s label is now separate.
• Fixing some glaring calibration issues
• Some colors still in orange in the platter
• Fix thin walls
• Fix auto_switch_preview
• Fix “small area compensation” conversion from old version
• Fix fuzzy (and some infill) randomization (need more testing, but in theory it should be really random now)
• A12&A11 had a bug/crash with extra overhangs enabled, fixed in A13
• Finish fixing preference, shouldn’t have any crash now.
• New extruder flow calibration (work with weight), allow to calibration the filament flow, overlap and the extruder flow per speed.
• Fix calibration arrange
• Fix red ok button
• Improve graph widget: graph mini in the button, point freely movable, you can select a point & modify it via the keyboard, fix zoom.
• Fix slowdown_below_layer_time
• Fix Prusa wifi button
• Show “disabled:0” instead of !0 when comparing preset
• Changed the enable/disable switch for small area compensation. Forgot to add the auto-Convert code, so there is a warning message for this version
• Fix can_disable settings without side text on one line. (fix pressure advance checkbox hidden behind the widget)
• Fix Preference ui_layout switch, and use the layout version to ask to reset to default layout
• Fix Preference crash when changing the splashscreen picture. (still working on other ones)
• Extra overhang: only where bridge can’t fit, and preserve ordering (before normal perimeters, from inside to outside).
• Top & bottom surface: don’t collapse unless extremely thin or too thin with too small anchor
• New setting: internal_bridge_min_width: Allow to select the threshold where the internal bridge collapse to solid infill when it’s too thin. Works per region, even in box modifiers.
• Fix missing date in title bar
• Fix top area taggued as solid and not top
• Don’t show the warnings on slice by default (they are not fixed, just hidden)
• Fix sparse infill (cubi, star, triangle) missing some shorts segments on very sparse.
• Mainly fixes for dense infill and internal bridges.
• Also the red overlay & scroll bar should be blue now.
• Some more various little fixes
• Better sorting of extrusion while creating gcode
• Fix some convex/concave errors for brim ears, notch detectiona and overlap max slope.
• Fix the seam notch error
• Fix crash from dense infill (again)
• Fix crash from z offset. this one is reworked. now it’s done last, and there is only the “position” placeholder that has the offset in its coordinates.
• Update a bit the gcode writer now shouldn’t write again a move if it’s not moving. I still ahve to double-check it does the thing very correctly.
• Fix some others internal stuff alongside.
• Remove the hard crash on assert fail for the alpha (most of these are harmless, it’s just to help me sanitize the process, to only work on nice not-epsilon segments).
• Re-add ensure_vertical_shell_thickness.
  • Re-enabled the 2.5 disabled & enabled option, with the 2.5 codepath
  • Kept the 2.7 (enabled) codepath. In this one, prusa has swap two call because “it’s better, as you don’t need the ensure_vertical_shell_thickness” but this broke the external_infill_margin. I’m noit sure what’s the issue it tries to fix. If someone has an exemple, i gladly get it.
  • Added the 2.9 “partial”. Same issue as the 2.7. Maybe I should try to create a 2.5 partial. Again, i’m not sure what the issue it tries to solve.
• Fix crash when using dense infill
• Fix issue with holes ccw
• Fix fillPlanePath (hilbert, etc)
• Disabled max_gcode_per_second, as it’s not fixed yet.
• Fix re-slice with arcs.