Read this if your MakerBot/Sailfish prints stop occasionally

[Simplify3D]

Just wanted to make everyone aware of a recent bug that was found in the current version of GPX that ships with Simplify3D. This is only a bug with the GPX plugin, but it has the potential to cause builds on MakerBot or Sailfish printers to halt if the conditions are right.

The bug is related to buffer overflows for long filenames or extremely long comments in the .gcode file. If you are printing over USB, you might notice an extremely long command sent to the printer with no response. For an example of this communication, see below:

READ: d50181d2
SENT: d50688000302dc0099
READ: d50181d2
SENT: d50688010302c300a0
READ: d50181d2
SENT: d50289085f
READ: d50181d2
SENT: d52c99000000004c4544207374726970206c69676874206d6f756e74696e6720627261636b65742e67636f646500fc <----- this is the problematic command


If this happens to you, there are 2 simple things you can do. First, make sure you are using a filename that is less than 30 characters long. If that still doesn't work, you can try removing the header section from the top of your .gcode file and then convert the modified file to .x3g using GPX. For example, here is the command you could run after removing the semicolon header lines from the top of your .gcode file.

"C:\Program Files\Simplify3D-2.0.1\gpx.exe" -p -m r2 "C:\path\to\test.gcode"

The GPX authors are already working on a fix, so we will be sure to implement it ASAP!