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Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:04 am
by 1oldclown
Hey all, not new to printing, but new to creator,and. M2. Several times now my printer has paused during a print. The creator control panel does not show the print as paused, but pushing the pause button and then resuming starts the print back up. Unfortunately you need to be around when this happens or the z axis times out, drops and then resuming is impossible. I am guessing that this is a gcode glitch. I have not watched the preview all of the way through to see if it shows up there. This was a 4 hr print so previewing would be a long process. Any one else had this experience?

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 2:10 pm
by turnrock
This has happened to me twice right around mid print and i have to click "force next" to get it going again.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 8:50 am
by bobginpgh
I've also been having this problem. I'm running the latest Creator build on the latest release of Mac OS X, printing on a Makergear M2. Haven't noticed a pattern. It seems to occur randomly.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 7:47 pm
by mathisyourfriend
I have the same setup as bobin...I wasn't in the room when it happened but it looks like I got a y-axis shift ~ 3hrs 30mins into a 5hr print. I looked for a similar problem but couldn't find the thread (I thought there was one). I've printed this vase >10x but this was the first time with 1.1.3.
Is this a different problem than you've seen?

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 9:16 pm
by bobginpgh
I didn't note any shift. Since I was printing a complex shape, it might not have been obvious. I also wasn't in the room. It looks like the printing paused, the extruder "drooled" a bit, then the Z-axis timed out. It may be occurring when I print previously processed g-code files, rather than proceeding through the tool chain from an .stl file, but I'm not certain of this. Stop point seems random - one time just a few minutes into a short (<20 minute print) or anytime in a 4-5 hour print.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 9:30 pm
by mathisyourfriend
It was a straight y-axis shift toward the back. I'll post a pic when I get a chance. I thought I saw a post about this same issue (mine) but couldn't find it. Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread.
I uninstalled/reinstalled Creator and will try again tomorrow.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:05 am
by 1oldclown
In both cases my m2 simply stopped, as in paused, w no shift, drooled, as PLA is apt to do, and sat. I caught it once before the z timed out and once after. The second time I raised z to see if it had paused or shifted and it had paused. I am running recent OSX and creator 1.1.3. New to the machine, but not to printing.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:31 pm
by mathisyourfriend
I think I found the thread. It was in the Makergear google group not here, sorry for the confusion.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 11:22 am
by slipshine
This has been discussed at length in the attached fourms.

http://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=39
and
http://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=155

There are some ideas in these threads that explain this problem.

Basically print your long prints from the sd card or it may stop.

Hope this helps.

Re: Printer pausing during prints

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2013 5:43 pm
by dalew8abz
Just curious, I wonder if anyone having this problem has modified the value of the "serialCacheSize" parameter on the firmware setup page to increase it from 63.

Also, what does this actually tell the machine control panel? Is it the size of the serial buffer in the firmware? If so, would reducing this number prevent sending too much data to the printer and overflowing the printer's serial buffer? Or, is this the size of the serial buffer in Creator for receiving (or sending?) data from (to) the printer? In this case, would increasing this number help prevent loss of an "OK" response from the printer after a big bunch of data? The "OK" needs to be seen for Creator to issue the next command, right?

Also, I assume the people having issues are printing from Creator and not printing from SDCard. (I seem to do a lot of assuming. Sorry.)

Just trying to learn how it works so I can help find a solution!
Dale