1 Topic by scubahunter00

  • scubahunter00
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Topic: Heaters turn off during long prints

OK, so my SD3 works amazing and I've been making some really great small prints. Therefore I decided to make some large scale stuff. I sliced my first big print a few days ago. 10 hours to print so I started it and went to bed.

When I woke up I found that the whole thing had gone terrible and left quite a mess. My initial thought was I needed to recalibrate the printer. Long story short, everthing has checked out but I've found that after about 4 hours my extruder heater and heatbed just turn themselves off. I'm assuming this is some safety feature but I can't find anything pointing me to why or how to turn it off.

Any thoughts?

2 Reply by adrian

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

they only just 'turn off' if there was a Mintemp or Maxtemp error - which should be in your retpier-host log. This means either your thermistor shorted against the heater block, or it momentarily disconnected in the loom.

There is no intrinsic 'shut the heaters off after x time' setting.

3 Reply by ronsii

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

When you say it 'left quite a mess" do you mean there was filament spaghetti all over or something else? if this is the case then X or Y probably lost steps or the print became detached, Like Adrian says there is no off time setting.... unless you have some sort of power saving set on in your host computer.

Got any pics of the mess? could help diagnose the problem.

4 Reply by scubahunter00 (edited by scubahunter00 2013-11-07 23:14:42)

  • scubahunter00
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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

There was filament spaghetti all over and a couple of the pieces had actually been drug off the print surface. I've already cleaned the mess. One possibility I hadn't considered, I did have to repair the wire going to the thermistor when I unpacked the printer. I checked the wire and it's still in place but it could be shorting.

I'll try again tonight and if it repeats I'll post Pics and Logs.

Thanks for your help of this guys!

5 Reply by ronsii

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

Just the fact that the spaghetti was all over confirms that the extruder was still working and therefore probably not a problem with the thermistor, more likely that part of the print warped up and caught the printhead knocking it loose or something along those lines.

6 Reply by adrian

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

ronsii wrote:

Just the fact that the spaghetti was all over confirms that the extruder was still working and therefore probably not a problem with the thermistor, more likely that part of the print warped up and caught the printhead knocking it loose or something along those lines.

/me was leaning towards this, but it doesn't explain the mid-print heater shutoff which usually means a min/max temp error or some other "M999" scenario....

Unless they just tripped past the SD 225°C limit given the build up for plastic...

7 Reply by ronsii

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

Yeah, I was kinda curious about that myself??? wondering if there was an error indicating the heaters shutdown or just 'print done'...

8 Reply by scubahunter00

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

Yeah, tat is the thing, the print doesn't finish, it stops mid print with the M999 error. Also, repeated this error last night but there was no spaghetti this time. The log in the software is so full of these errors I can't see what happened initially. It stops mid print and blows M99 messages for hours till it eventually gives up.

9 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

M999 is a temperature based error. The temperature sensor or cabling has failed. Look at the temperature plot, you'll see a spike or a dip. It is usually the wiring, replace the appropriate wires from the control board to the sensor, job done.

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10 Reply by scubahunter00

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

Elmoret,

Thanks a ton. Re-soldiered the temp sensor wiring and she is working like a charm!

11 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Heaters turn off during long prints

No problem. For future reference, usually a search goes a long way. Here's the second link in google for "m999 error":

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/3077/m999-error/

Filastruder - the robust, inexpensive filament extruder
E3Dv6 All Metal Hotend - the premier 3D printing hotend