CURA 2.5 and third party 3D printer with FTDI USB Chip
(In my case Tronxy X3)
Some of you might use Ultimakers slicing software CURA and want to use that for USB printing instead of changig SD cards or using OctoPi. In some cases this does not work with third party printers!
If it does not work for you the problem is in most cases, that the automatic USB Manager of CURA2.x only searches for Windows virtual COM ports with the name “USBSER” in it (the standard Ultimaker uses that). But the FTDI USB Chip Driver names that ports “VCP” (Virtual Communication Port) so cura does not find the printer port
Solution: Install CURA 2.5 and take the file “USBPrinterOutputDeviceManager.py” from https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/tree/master/plugins/USBPrinting and replace in the /plugins/USBPrinting directory of your installation…and enjoy USB printing.
Alternatively: Replace the code that should be around line 239 (this should not be an important change)
pass # no output device by this device_id found in connection list.
with
Logger.log(“w”, “Connection state of %s changed, but it was not found in the list”)
and line 263 (this change is essential)
if not only_list_usb or “USBSER” in values[0]:
with
if not only_list_usb or “USBSER” or “VCP” in values[0]:
Also if your printer uses other USB Serial drivers which identfy in other ways you can add that to line 263 after “VCP”.
These problems might be solved for many printers with standard FTDI USB Chips in CURA 2.6