SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — Printer Pauses multiple times during prints

Re: Printer Pauses multiple times during prints

2014-03-31T00:58:31Z

Hi Antron007, thanks for the idea, I went through them and I don't think they are my issue. I've watched my prints, I think I have a dodgy cable on the thermistor or heater element, temps can drop 30'c, it doesn't stop when this happens but I am familiar with the pre-start wait for temp to get up.

I've also considered the computer, it's still a potiential, yes I've seen the computer interupt it, but I was actually doing something to do it, it's just sending serial commands so I wouldn't expect that to be a problem. This computer is also dedicated to the printer, slicing etc...

I don't have an issue with the display, it works perfectly fine.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Andrew

Re: Printer Pauses multiple times during prints

2014-03-30T16:47:59Z

Maybe you already know this but If there are temperatures set in your filament settings in slic3r, it will pause to get to those temperatures. So if your extruder setting is 210 and for some reason your temp gets to 220 or 225., it will pause until it drops back down to 210. It seems to be more forgiving to the bed temperatures.

There are a few reasons this could happen.
1. Environment, I've only had my SD2 for not quite 4 weeks now and I can tell you it matters. I live in Ohio and was using PLA. I had to have my temps a little high to get good prints, then we get 1 really warm day and it was enough to get my filament to char and hot end to clog.

2. Loose, bad, failing or poor connections on the heater core and/or thermastor. This will cause inaccurate readings and therefore cause the pause for temperature control.

Or it could be something completely not related to any of this. I only put this up here because I have watched my printer pause for temperature adjustments twice. I'm not sure if it will be in the log or not but next time you print and it happens see if there's something in the log that looks like it may be related to temperature.

Since mentioned the board freezing during circles, it's probably not the board on the printer but your computer resources that are causing this. I also have experienced this a couple of times. Too many programs open. Too many tabs open in the browser. One time I specifically remember was it pausing for a sec while I had a bunch of stuff open and started to load a you-tube video. The more I think about it, since circles require both motors at once resources are probably the real issue. I no longer do anything on my desktop while printing now. I just prep stuff on my laptop and copy it over when I'm done printing.

When you print, do you have the dynamic display going where it draws out the part on the computer as it's printing it? That's a good way to tell if you are having a resource issue. It's on by default. Also by default, if you start to have resource issues Repetier will automatically disable that. So if it stops drawing but is still printing you had a resource issue. I say resource but memory is probably the correct term.

One more thing, not sure if it applies to your situation but, turn off your screen saver. They appear to cause a spike in memory draw when they kick on for some reason and will cause a pause. I switched to just turn the screen off after 20 min and it doesn't happened.

I'm using a 5 year old WalMart Emachines as my printer station, it's no power house by any means. So, none of this may apply to you either but I just figured I'd share my experiences with odd pauses.

I hope some of this info leads you in the right direction.

Printer Pauses multiple times during prints

2014-03-30T15:57:03Z

My Solidoodle 3 whether running the standard code or Adrian's code pauses while printing, causing blobbing where it paused. Pauses last from 0.5 seconds to up to 4 seconds. Most of the pauses seem to occur during circular movements, at least seems to be with the one's I've caught first hand.

I'm using Replieter host 0.95F, Slic3r (1.0.0RC2, 1.0.0RC3, 1.0.0 ) on Windows 7. I had been using the default serial driver that win7 installs, but recently installed the proper Teensy driver (for Printrboard) and it did not improve things either.

I also tried the ping pong setting on the printer to wait for ack's... no luck, decreased the buffer, no luck... I am at a loss, it's like the board just freezes and then carries on.

Other than the blobs, no harm to the end print.

Any ideas appreciated. Thanks
Adnrew