Printing stops

Update: i just got the OctoPrint running on my old R-PI. And now is all fine.

A bit strange that the touch display controller is not working properly.

Thanks for reply Ryan!

I had cases where there was no support material. Instead of printing in the "air" the printer stopped. In most cases the head moves then to Y-end.

But in that case was already all done what might cause trouble.

About overheating, that might be the reason.

But a message in that case at the display would be nice.

I have here most time of the year almost 30°C. Will see if i get an 120mm PC fan running under the board. Bit trouble to connect it direct to the power supply since that have 24V. An step down converter should do the job.

I'll report about the results.

So, one thing I've learned. Check the model you're trying to print and make sure it doesn't have any bad Geometry.

You check that by going to Cura and changing the Layer View from Solid to XRay. If there are any red areas that means there is some bad geometry.

Bad Geometry can cause the print to fail.

Though, I have had a few times (very uncommon for me) where the printer just stops and won't continue. I think for me when that happened it was overheating.

Any news about that?

I got after a series of fails, within the past days, yesterday two prints done without any problem and with a good quality. Both just 30 minutes jobs.

Later happened it again. The printer just stops wihtout any message.

Interesting thing is that the print was not as precise as the two succesful before. So, i have some small bubbles and the support structure looks worst.

My next try will be without cooling fan. I had one succesful print without. But i dont think that is the reason for fails.

I have been having a problem that appears similar to this but I'm beginning to think its somthing different. My printer had been working well but since i had a print that failed and caked the hotend in plastic i have had a series of issue's. The current one is that I am having trouble getting my bed to heat up and when I start a print there is good chance it will stop at some random point. There seems to be no consistent factor that affects wheather the bed will start. I double checked the wiring yesterday when the bed was not heating and it seemed sound, but no heat. A little later I tried again and it worked so i gave all the wires another wiggle and it made absolutely no difference and it's still working now. I am wondering if there is a fault in the bed and that is causing the print failures. As far as I can remember I dont generally get an error message when a print fails midway. I did update the touch screen firmware but it has not make any difference.

I believe the issue is solved. I had a lot of successful prints and the failed ones most got a reason. Please put a date in your updates release page!

I want to use the printer with the octopi, seems that I could have more control. Is the communication between the board and octopi and touchscreen working well now? or should I disconnect the touchscreen to use octopi better?

@Ernie Bausch @Adrián Chacón Ordóñez We believe this issue to now be solved, updated touch screen firmware can be found here:

https://www.makertech3d.com/pages/downloads

So apparently my prints are failing for some other reason. I'm using makertech cura (the last update provided) for all the slicing, and even with benchy I'm getting strange errors. I've tried multiple SD cards, so I don't know what the problem is. These are the errors reported by pronterface when my prints stall...

echo:Unknown command: "M101&Fvƒf“F†-f–æ†6F–­æ&–F¦†¦N224 G0 F2400 X169.834 Y51.294"

Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 223

[ERROR] Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 223

Resend: 224

Error:No Checksum with line number, Last Line: 223

[ERROR] Error:No Checksum with line number, Last Line: 223

Resend: 224

Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 223

[ERROR] Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 223

Resend: 224

Looks like some sort of corruption, but like I've said, it always happens at a random point during prints, not the same spot and with different SD cards. Is there a problem with one of the boards in the printer?

We're looking into the freezing issue but it's very likely that it's being caused by serial conflicts between the raspberry Pi (octprint) and the touchscreen display both trying to control the printer at the same time.

Currently the best advice we can give is to disconnect the touchscreen when using octoprint and vice versa.

I got an idea of what is happening, at-least when almost all your prints fails. Its gonna sound stupid at first but bear with me and comment about it; Did you make a tower temperature test? using the extension -> post-processing menu. And did you erase this configuration after?

For me this (almost) fixed the constant failures in the prints. I have made like 10 prints with only one failure(obviously the longest print, after 9h) after cleaning this configurations. Maybe leaving this configuration after changing the model and/or closing the program causes weird behaviors. Hope this help!

I also added some damper to the motors, did some necessary adjustments to the z axes and installed a raspberry zero for debugging. I was getting the same error as @Robert Steele in octoprint, it was necessary to select an option in advance settings because octoprint gets disconnected and a pop-up window won't let you copy the error in the terminal, and remember to click auto-scroll to get the latest messages in case you wanna debug the errors. The errors in the octoprint terminal gave me a hint of what was happening because of this line:

Recv: ok
Recv:  T:235.44 /245.00 B:75.13 /75.00 @:85 B@:127
Recv: ok

The first value was "235.~ /235.00" at the beginning of the print but changed to "235.44 /245.00". This indicated that my extruder was at 235 but expected to be at 245, so that made me remember the temperature tower tests I did.

I think that there are other things that are causing the stops, maybe I will make some threads about the touchscreen errors that seem related. I will also try to connect cura, octoprint and my PC to the printer in order to debug the problems. Maybe separating the freezing problems in other threads with more information will help us run this printer nice and smooth! =)

Update - replaced my bed with the new one... on my 6th failure. Heated bed every time. It's winter and the room is probably ~6ºC but it just struggles to reach 110ºC. It's sticking like glue at 80-90ºC, but still keeps failing due to the bed.

I've set an offset of 5ºC in OctoPrint and monitoring - it's slightly more reliable.

My 6th print with ABS+ hotend at 240ºC offset 5ºC and bed at 80ºC offset 5ºC failed due to the new bed being super slippery and the hotend knocked it (0.12 layer height), everything ended off by 1-2mm.

Signing off at 10:50pm - 7th/8th attempt, same temps as 6th attempt - bed held with mini-bulldog clips, layer height at 0.2mm will update with success / failure.

Oddly enough, my printers temps have glitched / frozen around 10 mins in and are not updating. Below is a refresh after it froze - touchscreen is just frozen at the Actual T and Actual Bed temps. Probably means it will finish !! :D

Hotbed feels like it's still the same temperature and hotend's printing good. Prints about 6mm now.

Using OctoPrint for my prints. My touchscreen didn't like me printing via SD card... OctoPrint did my benchy perfectly.

Firmware may need to state that the bed should get up to temperature before the print starts or it could be my heated bed's a dud.

In this scenario, I manually set the ABS temps and hit print without the bed at 110ºC. It carried on to auto-level then crashed:

Error reported by printer
Your printer's firmware reported an error. Due to that OctoPrint will disconnect. Reported error: Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed - Printer halted. kill() called! 

Attempt #2 failed also, didn't even send a print job, just heating bed and hotend:

Recv: Error:Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bedRecv: Error:Printer halted. kill() called!Changing monitoring state from "Operational" to "Error: Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed - Printer halted. kill() called!"Changing monitoring state from "Error: Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed - Printer halted. kill() called!" to "Offline (Error: Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed - Printer halted. kill() called!)"Connection closed, closing down monitor

Screen from OctoPrint:

My new all-in-one bed arrived, so some maintenance and it'll be ready to try again. Bit miffed that I have to switch it out though.

@Ernie Bausch, do you have OctoPrint installed? Can you check the error that's thrown up when it fails? It should retain it in the terminal.

@Makertech, I've yet to get a single successful print as I'm still having random freezes. Most of the time I can't even make it a solid 5 minutes into a print before the whole thing stops. I'm running the latest marlin and touchscreen firmware. I've reset the touchscreen and re-updated a couple times and my prints all fail at random points. The closest I've got to finishing even a benchy print is about 60% and that was one of the first prints I tried months ago. I'm getting a little upset about this. I've got another printer that I built forever ago from scratch which was much cheaper than this and so far works much better, which is disappointing. Can you please weigh in more on this issue?

I need to do more testing but I think i got some info. After changing the printer to a corner and making an improvised enclosure I'm no longer having freezes that stops the print and that turn off bed and heater temperatures. However, I still got freezes where the temperature stays the same and I get a hot blob of melted plastic at freeze point, in this case in particular I can stop the printer without needing a reset. So maybe we got two kind of freezes:

1. Change in temperature freezes. Printer unresponsive, temperature descend to ambient.

2. Error in gcode maybe? Printer responds, temperatures stays high. Happens almost finishing the print?

Touchscreen freezes I was experiencing were because I had a movie in the sdcard that I didn't erase well (linux), make sure to use a clean card if you are experience troubles; but has anyone had other problems like this with sdcards?

I have experienced this behavior several times, I will even say that the frequency increased after last firmware update. Some notes about the behavior:

• Extruder stops moving ,usually inside the print area, and temperature descends to ambient, no way to continue.

• Touch screen responds to touch but printers doesn't move (cant pause neither stop print). Printer needs restarting and after it boots print shows at 0 % progress.

• Can happen( or not) 20 minutes or 5 hours! in the first print of the day. (Maybe is not related to overheat)

• Could be related to gcode, or no. (Got a case of printing freezing at the same point)

• Happened since the first version of makertech software

This is really hard to debug. Someone knows a way to get more information when this happens? Anyone have experienced similar behavior? or have you not experienced a single freeze in several prints?

I will be testing with a different sdcard and writer, almost always my touchscreen freezes when inserting an sdcard when the printer is on. Also will look into what @Dataris Remiel said, seems that it could be a cause.

i guessing here. but if i remember right before the firmware update. the issue they found was an overheating range issue. again i'm guessing here, but possible the power supply is overheating on certain circuits causing the shutdowns(stops). i would loosen all the eccentric nuts and slowly tighten till they just engage as needed, then make sure the servo isn't continually actuating. it should not be making any sound pr vibrate at all. i replaced my servo with an aftermarket one. i did several modifications to the mounting bracket and the servo to make the servo fit. But it was continually actuating. i slightly bent out the stop with a pair of pliers. just till the the servo quit trying to push against it i'm sure the modifications and bending this would void a warranty but its what i did. and as i've stated above i've had great success with my printing since.

still getting the occasional stops but i've been able to print 2 prints that were over 24 hours each. and a few at 18+ hours. theres no rhyme or reason for the stops as i started an 18 hour print. it stopped about 5% in. i reloaded the print started it and it printed fine full 18+ hours. little more than cancelling the stopped print and just starting it again. i did that to see if there was a file issue but it seems that wasn't the case.

i will say it seems to happen more often from a cold start. meaning if i turn on the printer and start the print quickly. but if i turn the printer on and let it sit for a while before i start the print. it seems to not happen as often. maybe just a coincidence, idk. i've also had success with preheating everything before i start the print. again may just be coincidence.

I still experience the random freezes (not at the exact same spot and trying different SD Cards) - specially when printing on hotend 2 only (no nozzle switching within the print, Temp 210). No PC connected, no Octoprint connected. Happend twice now on a 27 minute print between 80 and 92%. Any suggestions what to do?

Things to try:

Printing with the filament sensors disconnected.

Printing with a different SD card or copying the gcode to the sd card with a different reader/writer, especially likely to be the cause if printing stops again at the same place.

Also:

Was a PC connected to the printer whilst printing?

Was octoprint connected?

I started experiencing the same issues (print stopped after approx 2h at 92%) no reaction and no resume possible. Firmware was just updated yesterday (touchsceen, marlin as well as cura). Any hints?