Need serious help connecting printer to computer

Good Morning all, i recently bought a repap i3 3D printer off of craigslist and i am unable to connect it to my computer. I feel like i have done everything and am out of ideas. It's a COM3 Port with 9600br. I have tried ponterface, cura, and repetier on both my PC and macbook. All help is appreciated, thank you.

Hi try all the different baud rates. So I presume your seeing it as COM3 in device manager (or equivalent)?

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Thanks for responding,

yes i see the COM3 inside of the device manager. The printer is plugged into the wall and is plugged into my computer via microUSB to USB. not really sure what i'm doing wrong but it's really frustrating

i have tried all of the baud rates and all of them give me the error as follows:

The connection failed with the following error; access to the port 'COM3' is denied..
Make sure your printer is connected, enabled and connection data is set correct. open printer settings?

baudrate looks low you tried 152000

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2017 03:21PM by chris33.

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Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

If access is denied, that means some other program is already connected to the port, or perhaps that you need to start Pronterface in administrative mode.

If the printer is using typical 8-bit electronics then the correct baud rate will be 115200 or 250000. If it's using 32-bit electronics (which is unlikely for an i3) then the baud rate setting probably won't matter.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

just started pronterface in administrator mode, and tried all of the baud rates again. gives me this error.

Connecting...
[ERROR] Could not connect to COM3 at baudrate 115200:
Serial error: could not open port COM3: [Error 5] Access is denied.

Connecting...
[ERROR] Could not connect to COM3 at baudrate 250000:
Serial error: could not open port COM3: [Error 5] Access is denied.

stupid question... is there like a power button on the printer itself? because there is no screen on it, and the only way that i can indicate that it is on is a green light in the power supply after i plug it in, and the face that i can find it in the device manager panel. I tried plugging in a microSD card into it with the file loaded with the correct "save as" name to try to have it start automatically that way, but no luck.

Thanks all, again for the help.

It's possible your controller board doesn't have any firmware installed on it. Or is faulty in some way.

I started with a secondhand i3. Had to download marlin, work out how to configure it for my machine, upload it to the controller, then tune it and figure out the things that didn't work and fix them but it taught me 3d printing and it was pretty sweet when it made a decent object (after 20 total f*ck ups).

The difficulty with buying a secondhand printer like this is that you rarely get the configured firmware provided, so you can flash it back to the controller or replace the controller with known configured firmware.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2017 04:09PM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Yeah it has been pretty difficult and frustrating trying to get this thing going. I'm treading into waters where i have no idea where the hell i'm going or what i'm doing. i'm currently downloading marlin 3d printer firmware and trying to see what i can do with that

It's a steep learning curve but that's not necessarily a bad thing. When it really annoys you take a good long break.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

look at the controller post up the details name of it surely we can get it going does sound to me it could not have any firmware, plus i also previous situations for some reasons i downloaded ftdi driver may help but start being knowing what controller your using

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Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

I believe the controller on the 3d printer is "MELZI 1.0 with ATMEGA1284P 3D PRINTER MAINBOARD" made by RP3D.com (at least that's what it says on the board)

@DjDemonD I have been working for 6 hours straight on this trying to figure it out hahahah.

Expect a marathon not a sprint.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

I am trying to communicate to the board using the auduino program. i cant find the melzi board, how do i add a new board to auduino?

if you cant access the serial port normally, you wont be able to access it to upload new firmware... and uploading new firmware is a job for a week off. (its a nightmare on these boards)

"Access is denied." is a os error

reboot your computer and try again.

open up your device manager and take a screen shot of the device and post it here (making sure there are no device driver errors) Will also show us if its a ftdi232 or ch340 or what ever device this board has

Are you 100% sure its com3, ie it goes away when you remove the controller and comes back when you plug it back in?

open up the ardunio serial monitor, try various baud rates, is it telling you anything eg "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!" is a well known issue

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2017 11:29PM by Dust.

Hey dust, if uploading new firmware is what i have to do then i am all game for it. this is a screenshot of all of the connections that i have plugged into my computer from the 3d printer. How can i get started uploading new firmware onto it if you're sure that's what it is?

I have never had an issue with the "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!" error that you were talking about, and as for fixing my "access is denied" error, i have rebooted my computer many times.

Thanks all.

Step 1

Do you know if you're connected to board?

if you unsure of what's occurring, look up how to output USB devices for example, (https://github.com/todbot/usbSearch/blob/master/usbSearch.vbs)

If there is no change between plugin device in and not, it means your USB device is fried on the Arduino board. If you have a multi-meter and time it's easy to fix. In my case I just buy another board as they are 5 bucks.

If you really want to see what might be occurring, but I do not suggest, get a UART cable connect and watch serial output.

If you're having this much trouble, from a distance it sounds like a blown USB port on board.

I has problem getting mine to connect. When I started a host application the board would reset but didn't respond to commands. I tried several ways to fix. I found a driver on the supplied SD card. I installed and the issue was gone.

Did you ever get this running?

In the past when I have seen access denied to a serial port its been one of two reasons, that port is in use to something else or your have been blocked from accessing it administratively.

So to that,
Are you the system administrator with admin rights? If not ask your administrator to open access.

Make sure nothing else is using that port. You might try reassigning a new port to it.
If you are using a windows os you can access your Printers and Devices. Check the properties and make sure that the device is indicated as installed properly and that there are no conflicts.

I could stating the obvious here but did you install the USB driver? Mine was on the memory card in the software focus. If not Google 3d printer USB driver.