Hi all,

I did build my own delta 3d printer and am currently finetuning and I continuously bump into a problem.
When I try to print something the extruder sometimes stops moving completely. It won’t continue after waiting.
Remarkable is that the printer stops multiple times at the same place. I tried switching out the USB for 3 different SD-cards, this didn’t solve the problem but changed it. With the first sd card it did stop at a different place and with the 3rd it stopped at the same place as the USB again.
I looked into the G-Code but can’t find anything that could cause this problem.
I tried reslicing before and this can fix the problem (not always).
When I try to print directly from my slicer to the printer I didn’t encounter this problem so far.


Does anybody know what can cause the printer to stop mid print? I think it is caused by one of the following but feel free to give other suggestions.
The hotend cools down. The display however is not updating this change in temperature when the printer stopped I quickly turned off the printer and switched it back on again. The hotend was only 169 degrees when the printer was on again. When I do the same thing when the printer is still printing I do read out a temperature of around 195 degrees. (I print on 205)
Communication between the LCD display and the controller. As said above the display does not update the hotend temperature. Can this be possible because of losing connection between the display and the controller? If this happens it can explain why the printer stops printing because it can not reach it’s SD card anymore.

Both suggestions don’t explain why the printer stops on the same spot multiple times in a row, so feel free to suggest other problems.

Kind regards,
Rik

PS. I use Smoothieware and Simplify3d

How about a buffer problem in the communication system. SD cards could have different speeds, host programs have a hand shake. Might be baud rate related.
Not an area i have any knowledge on.

Have you tried re-slicing it?

I had a problem where my printer would report some sort of thermal protection shutdown while printing. I tried it again, and got the same shutdown at exactly the same point in the project.

Went back to Slic3r, re sliced the project, with the exact same settings, and it printed no problem.

I could identify the exact line of gcode that it was executing when the problem happened, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. The replacement file WAS slightly different (I have random positions for seams, which might affect it, I guess.) For whatever reason, one file works, the other does not.

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MBot3D Printer
MakerBot clone Kit from Amazon
Added heated bed.

Leadscrew self-built printer (in progress)
Duet Wifi, Precision Piezo parts

I tried increasing the baud rate, without succes unfortunately.

Reslicing does work (most of the times) indeed. This is fine if this happens 1 in 20 prints but so far it happens every 1 in 2 prints. And of course this is very frustrating for 10+ hour prints wich I turn on in the evening, hoping to find a finished print in the morning.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2018 03:01AM by Rik.

Thank you for the help! I managed to fix the problem.

I sliced it in a way that the heated bed would slowly cool down a bit. After a few layers the temperature was dropped by 10 degrees.
The printer gave an error because it was not able to reach this temperature in time (it wasn't cooling down fast enough).

Thanks MCarmen and SupraGuy once again for thinking with me to fix the problem!