Printer will run a test program will not print

I recently purchased the REPRAP Guru Prusa i3 with MK8 head from Amazon. My son-in-law and I were finally able to get time to put this together this last weekend. We loaded both versions of the MARLIN that is on the website, but were not able to get any functions from the printer. We did download a test program and everything worked: all axis motors rotated (both directions), all LEDs cycled on and off, etc. When we retried the print program - nothing. The only thing that happened was the amber LED on the board came on for a moment then went off.

Any assistance with this would be appreciated. I did email customer service on Sunday and gave the address for the test program that we used.

Can you connect to the printer?

Does the hotend and heated bed if you have one read room temperature ?

If your send the printer a M119 (end stop status) are only the end stops that are triggered at the time listed as triggered?

If we run the test program, everything works. The test program does not let the carriers reach the endstops, but they do light up when you press on them.

If we try to connect with Repetier, it acts like they are not communicating. We keep getting a buffer time-out error.

test program doesn't look at end stops or temperature, which is why I asked these questions.

The endstop light lighting up does not mean the controller thinks then endstop is working... (this can easily be miss configured so the light is on but the controller thinks it not triggered.)

I would use marlin firmware and pronterface to start with. You can upgrade to a fancier front end, that hides everything you need to debug, later on.

You do have to set the correct serial port and the correct baud rate to be able to connect to the board.
The baud rate should be clearly visible in the firmware setting in configuration.h

I'm presuming you have windows, for the serial port load up your device manager and watch it when you plug in your controller, if it comes up unknown device you have a driver issue or it will come up with a serial port.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2016 07:46PM by Dust.

Thanks. Will try that this weekend. We have a limited amount of time during the week.