Crashing/Freezing mid print, no explanation

I woke up this morning pissed off, I had my printer make a part overnight. The machine was stopped, but not where it should have been.. This problem has occurred before too, and I think I've narrowed down some potential explanations.. I have my reprap running off a power strip on my desk. In this same power strip is my laptop, small rope light, and a fan. At one point, I intentionally tried to cause a failure by turning my fan on and off repeatedly. This action did cause this type of failure, just a dead stop with no other error messages in pronterface. Unfortunately this problem also occurs when I touch NOTHING!

A few months ago I changed my baudrate to 250,000, before I was at 19,000 and the movements were jerky as hell. When the failure occurs, it appears that my machine is being bogged down, jerky. The movements slow, then stop, and SOMETIMES resume. I tried to eliminate as many variables as possible, I only had pronterface running on my computer, closed all other programs and windows.

My computer isn't going to sleep either (I learned that early on haha) and sometimes this specific failure has occurred right before my eyes. It should be noted I don't have any cooling, I just run my machine very slow (15-20 mm/sec). Clear PLA @ 185C. I am thinking there must be an issue with a drop in power due to other devices plugged in. If I turn my fan off and on repeatedly, this will kill it. Last night I did have a small space heater for my room, but it was plugged into a completely different outlet 10 ft away. This heater has a temp sensor so it will kick on and off automatically. The only other remedy I can think of is to put a fan aimed at my Gen6 board, perhaps its overheating and crashing that way.. Either way, I'm wasting way too much filament! I was printing the prusa x end motor mount and it crashed at 47% Actually.. that was just when the geometry of that part starts to get more complicated, I have no idea if thats related at all.

So anyways, if anyone has any advice it would be GREATLY appreciated! Ruined, wasted parts make me sad

Sounds like you are trying to print directly from a PC.

I have had mixed success with that. I can get away with it for short prints but never trust it for long prints.

SD card will solve the vast majority of the problem, but I have had SD card stop a couple times.

There was some discussion of this a while back. I think that line conditioners/filters or UPS resolved the problem. Another possibility is the usb cable. Some people have reported that using a shielded cable helpsed.

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- akhlut

Just remember - Iterate, Iterate, Iterate!

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I agree with Spk64: Print from SD card. Upgrade your electronics to one of the newer more reliable designs that support an SD card. As a bonus, you'll get microstepping which will not only improve your print quality, but it will also quiet your printer down.

I had similar issues for a while. I couldn't get the firmware to upload to the Arduino successfully either. Replacing the cable didn't help. Finally I tried something stupid. I pressed the reset button on the RAMPS board before attempting a new firmware upload. And oddly enough it worked. I haven't had a single problem since. It's probably a total post-hoc fallacy, but hey, anything is worth a try!

As a side-note, I also had better luck when I disconnected the SmartLCD / SDRAMPS board, so perhaps it was related to electrical noise at some point as the following message suggests. In the meantime I now have a new power supply (30A LED strip) and I replaced a bad D2 diode on the RAMPS board as well. It continues to work really well.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2013 09:52AM by Thinkyhead.

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I had the same issue and it was finally resolved by plugging my Prusa power supply into an extension cord which ran to an outlet on a different breaker. Its not so much which outlet you plug into but what other things are running off of the same electric circuit as your outlet. Some appliances and things cause alot of electric noise in their circuits.