alexrj/Slic3r — pull request #347 by Pietr (2012-05-05 10:22:36+00:00)
Title: Brim feature

Hello Alessandro,

I had some trouble with getting my extruder to properly extrude plastic for the first 10-20 cm when starting a new print. The skirt feature helps with getting the extruder ready in time for the real action, but it has the downside of extruding close to the actual object to print. In my case, this leads to strands of plastic from the skirt ending up right in the area where the actual object to print will be located (because the plastic doesn't always stick to the bed at first...), and other problems.

To avoid these problems, I wanted to be able to extrude some lines of plastic further away from the object at start. For this I create a 'brim' feature: it simply extrudes a square perimeter with given width and height dimensions at start, centered around the object to print. I set the width and height close to the dimensions of my print bed, so a large square brim is printed close to the edges of my print bed before getting started with the actual object to print. This has fixed my issues with the extruder 'warm-up time'.

So, I would be very happy to hear your thoughts about this and you can pull my changes in, if you want...