I just wanted to share a very very distressing problem that I found difficult to solve. So just in case others experience this, hopefully this may help. Caveat is that I don't know if I really solved the problem - as it could still be lurking in there.
Basically I'm printing to my USB connected printer (Printrbot Simple Metal) using S3D running on my Windows 10 laptop. Laptop has an Ethernet connection and my STL file is on the network (not local). I noticed that the printer stopped (froze) printing after about 5 layers. Restarting the job would result in "roughly" the same region, but it's seemingly quite random, and seems to coincide with the laptop being "idle" - i.e. mouse not moving. When stopping, the display would go blank (similar to a display timeout), and also my network would be disconnected. I noticed in Event Monitor that Bonjour gave some Errors in there. Running continuous ping in the background (ping /t) showed that a "General Failure" occurs during the fault. I uninstalled Bonjour. I tried bring the STL files to the local drive, disconnected the network and even turned off wireless. The problem still occurred.
When I restarted my laptop, I noticed that Windows 10 had some updates it wanted to perform. Letting it do that, and then restarting the printjob - that seems to fix the problem! I had wasted a pile of filament by this time, so am very relieved that it's at least printing past layer 10 and it's still going. I'm familiar with Win 7, and am learning to hate Win 10. It seems that we can't turn off Auto updates. The best workaround seems to be to set the LAN and Wifi to "Metered Connections" (search the internet if you'd like to know how to do this), which basically prevents Win 10 from downloading any updates until it is connected to a non-metered connection.
So long story short....if S3D seems to be bugging out mid-print, and you're on Win 10, it could be Win 10 trying to force an update. Restarting and completing all updates help, and setting internet connections to metered may also avoid having to scrap a 10-hour printjob.
Best regards!
JB
Re: USB Printing hangs mid print randomly
Not having the STL file local can be a big issue.
Also and especially on a laptop all power saving functions should be disabled.
Also and especially on a laptop all power saving functions should be disabled.
