I have a robo 3d r1 and when I try and print a large part with a raft the printer freezes up on the first layer after a few minutes with a "firmware failed to respond ...". Anyone else seen this behavior before? If so how do I solve it?
The "failed to respond" messages mean that the printer is literally failing to communicate. This is usually due to a crummy power support or a bad USB cable. If the power supply is bad, the voltage fluctuations cause it to stop responding temporarily. Bad USB cables can also corrupt the back-and-forth communication.
Oddly enough, I've only seen this message while printing rafts. I'll change out the usb cable as well as try a print straight from the sd card. Thanks for the input.
I had the same exact problem and found out why it was doing this. In simplify 3D there is a connection timeout delay in the software that check for the printer response with every command. Doing a raft does long simple command that takes more than the timeout delay by default in the software which is 10sec. You can increase that delay in tools / firmware configuration / communication / communication timeout.
After increasing that time to 15sec my problem was solved for me