Print freezes half way, stepper motors then suddenly speeds

[Ascensi]

Anyone know what's causing this? The printer suddenly stops 30+ minutes into the print..stepper motors spin quickly.. I press reset on the LCD nothing happens.. I push emergency stop in Repetier-Host and then it stops. The print job is basically destroyed.. the hot end melts the print adding a plastic mess. Using Repetier Host V 1.0.6

[Mac The Knife]

I'm guessing that you are printing from your compute, not an SD card. Furthermore, I'd bet you are using a laptop. It sounds like the power saving options in windows is interfering with your print job.

[Earthbound]

Reset button on Max's control panel does nothing, as far as I can tell. Maybe it was enabled in an earlier version of firmware, or maybe there are a large number of defective switches.

[geneb]

The reset button DOES work, but because of how the little arm of plastic moves, you need to press pretty firmly for it to actually actuate the switch.

g.

[Ascensi]

The reset button DOES work, but because of how the little arm of plastic moves, you need to press pretty firmly for it to actually actuate the switch.

g.

Yes the reset does work but not when this freeze/error occurs. I am using a gaming laptop Asus G75V, able to run Maya 2014, Oculus Rift etc it's powerful enough. I also don't allow any power saving or auto updating to function, no screen savers etc. I am just about to run a few a prints in Matter Control to see if the problem can be avoided there and see what happens.

[Mac The Knife]

If it still does, Try printing off the SD card,,,,, with the USB cable disconnected. And I'm using a workstation with win 7 64 pro, solidstate drive, and a xeon processor and 12 Gb of memory. It has interfered with my printer during a print, so for my longer prints, I'll print off a SD card.

[Ascensi]

Ok tested it: SD card does not make a difference. I'm thinking maybe it's Slic3r I'm currently using V 1.1.7 that was bundled with Repetier-Host.. I'm going to try the separate Slic3r program.. my os & hardware is 64 bit as well.. not too sure if that makes a difference except for slicing speed but maybe either the 64 bit or 32 Bit version might have been compiled properly/without error over the other one. So far I'm using Slic3r 1.2.0 and no errors.. finished a 1 1/2 hr job. The only thing that doesn't make sense is that even if the print job is working from the SD card, that the emergency button should work but again it didn't work.. pressed multiple times and without that error the button normally works -so I can't imagine the gcode interfering/bypassing the emergency switch.

I will add that when I first installed the firmware it did upload "successful" although there was an error:

"Binary sketch size: 127,964 bytes (of a 258,048 byte maximum)
avrdude: verification error, first mismatch at byte 0x1458
0xec != 0x6c
avrdude: verification error; content mismatch"

I've asked a few people on this so far and they have kind of shrugged it off - that is shouldn't be an issue.. but.. I have one. Can anyone here confirm if this error is responsible? I have tried re-uploading the firmware and the error still remains.

I have searched recently about this error code and others write it's about "a sparse HEX file" : http://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/avrdude- ... yte-0x0080

I don't know enough about the programming language or order of the firmware to temper with it.. - if it's indeed the problem.

update: Nov 4th: So far so good.. slic3r update 1.2.0 may have fixed the problem.. I've had 3 successful prints in a row since the update - no errors but they have been very short print jobs spanning under 45 min.

Update: Nov 4th evening -error.. froze again. Just to be clear these are not from the same model.

[Ascensi]

Today I tried a different slicer (CuraEngine) and everything was going very well -THEN.. approximately 30 minutes into the print it froze.. I am starting to think it might be a hardware problem.. I will try Matter control again.. I keep having problems with it (tears through the prints) -I probably ave to enable hopping in there somewhere if it even exists.. So maybe Repetier Host might be the problem.. if Matter Control fails I'd be definitely thinking the hardware is defective.. particularly because the firmware upload although successful, it also gave me an error.

[rpress]

At least on my LCD, the reset button was somewhat broken. I had to push quite hard to make it work, I think it went through the board wash without being sealed. I replaced the microswitch and it's all good now.

When your printer freezes, is the LCD responsive? What version of firmware are you using, SeeMeCNC's 0.91?

[Eaglezsoar]

I would try clearing the eeprom data and installing the .91 repetier software found on the seemecnc github.

[Ascensi]

I would try clearing the eeprom data and installing the .91 repetier software found on the seemecnc github.

Thanks Eaglezsoar, this is what I've been running since first firmware upload/install. I'm using the Rostock Max Rev 7 which uses a Rambo V3. The power supply is a nice 600 Watts .

Since the very first upload of the firmware and other tries.. I would get the same error :vrdude: verification error, first mismatch at byte 0x1458
0xec != 0x6c
avrdude: verification error; content mismatch

I haven't heard from anyone yet what that error means from SeeMeCNC or Ultimaker if it matters or not. I've read on other forums that it might be the formatting/syntax of the firmware.. some had said this was their solution to preventing that error from showing at least.

Now I've tried two host programs and two different slicers.. initialized the print from SD card.. no changes. I've read that I should try opening up the Acrylic sides to allow the printer to breath/cool down better. I'm gona try this but I do't believe airflow is the issue. (update:opening up the sides to increase cooling didn't help)

[Earthbound]

That error message means that the firmware failed to upload properly. Did you have any problems when you loaded the example sketch to purge the EEPROM?

[Ascensi]

That error message means that the firmware failed to upload properly. Did you have any problems when you loaded the example sketch to purge the EEPROM?

Yes it was the same error message as I recall.

[Earthbound]

Is there another computer you could use to try loading firmware? The problem seems to most likely be a defect in the Rambo, but it wouldn't hurt to eliminate the computer as the cause.

[Ascensi]

Is there another computer you could use to try loading firmware? The problem seems to most likely be a defect in the Rambo, but it wouldn't hurt to eliminate the computer as the cause.

I just caught something last night after "more frequent breaks" of ABS being fed into the Ezstruder (motor grinding it in the same place) then realizing it wasn't moving smoothly down the tube and out the hotend. The hotend had to be cleaned, filament seemed to be getting jammed becase the PTFE tube I think wasn't put back in its place deep enough in the hotend. I'll have to test this theory tonight but I'm thinking that there may have been too much resistance on the Ezstruder motor of the filament not passing through that maybe it created some kind of electrical build-up/resistance in the wire and created some kind of short/feedback within Rambo? Is this possible? It may also explain why the Ezstruder starts spinning very fast during a freeze.


I may give your "alternate" computer idea a try if it hasn't been resolved after this. Update: Thought everything was working perfectly after fixing the issue, got one successful print in.. then froze on the next. Likely getting the card swapped.