SD Card Read and Printing Errors

[inventabuild]

I've been printing from the SD Card to achieve best quality prints and I've been getting SD Card Read errors:

and prints are terminating early before they are completed:

Any ideas on how to remedy these printing issues that arise when I print from the SD Card?

[Flateric]

I found my errors to be related to the length of the ribbon cables and or their routing through the machine. You really want to keep them away from AC lines of course and tucked as neatly away from the steppers as well. I know I know, we are a bit cramped for space and all.

Oh, lastly what also helped was to put some noise chockes on each of the ribbons. You know the ferrit (sp?) bead dealios.

[inventabuild]

Thanks for the suggestions. Can you please tell me how you hooked a ferrite bead in line w/ the sd card ribbon? Also, do you know of any shielded ribbon?

[Flateric]

I didn't hook a ribbon to the sdcard reader itself of course.

The ferrit beads I got from my local electronics parts shop are like clam shells, they snap over the cable and clip shut.

But it would be the same effect to simply buy round or donut shaped ones that have a large enough interior hole for the connector of the ribbong to be fed sideways through.

Try to pass each of the ribbons through each bead atleast twice.

The ribbons I am speaking of are the ones that connect to the LCD panel and the Rambo.

I am not aware of shielded 10 pin ribbon cables. Not to say that they do not exist, I have not myself ever tried to track any down is all.

I think we should also explore the possibilities that you have incorrectly configured your firmware. If you have made changes to it that is.

**Another thought I came up with here is perhaps your SD card is faulty, worn out, defective in certain memory locations. Before doing any of the above suggestions, let's eliminate this as a factor. Try printing from an entirely different SD card and see if the problems persist, ok?

[geneb]

This is the type of component that Flateric is referring to:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/e ... PLA_571938

g.

[Eaglezsoar]

This filter would work best on flat cables: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/e ... ND/2465452

This is a link to all of the flat cable type of ferrite, not sure which one would work the best: http://www.digikey.com/product-search/e ... ageSize=25

[inventabuild]

OK, thanks. Got it.

[inventabuild]

wondering if this stuff (which sounds like it can be flattened due to the Flat Wd. column) would be good to shield my SD Card ribbon (search for "EMI/RFI-Shield Polyurethane" on the page): http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-cable ... ng/=oigvlt

[geneb]

It just occurred to me that the reason I've never seen this noise issue is how I route my wiring. When I route my stepper cabling, I do it by tying it to the "floor" of the electronics area using a little stick-on plate that I can use to hold wires down using wire ties. The stepper motor wiring is all tied down this way and kept against the back wall of the enclosure so they're no where near the LCD cabling even when the door is closed...

g.

[lordbinky]

wondering if this stuff (which sounds like it can be flattened due to the Flat Wd. column) would be good to shield my SD Card ribbon (search for "EMI/RFI-Shield Polyurethane" on the page): http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-cable ... ng/=oigvlt

There's all kinds of sleeving options that will block EMI, the important part to making them work is the need to ground the shielding which is what the typically pre attached lead coming out of the sleeve is for.

The most flexible option (besides avoiding the issue like gene ) is make your own shielding with conductive adhesive copper tape (solder a lead wire near the tip of the next piece before you wrap it on a cable so you have an easy grounding wire ready) then cover the copper with some kind of insulation (kapton, heat shrink, another sleeve, or even electrical tape). I posted in one thread about my spur of the moment shielding job (just used aluminum foil... ) on the LCD cables.

[Eaglezsoar]

wondering if this stuff (which sounds like it can be flattened due to the Flat Wd. column) would be good to shield my SD Card ribbon (search for "EMI/RFI-Shield Polyurethane" on the page): http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-cable ... ng/=oigvlt

There's all kinds of sleeving options that will block EMI, the important part to making them work is the need to ground the shielding which is what the typically pre attached lead coming out of the sleeve is for.

The most flexible option (besides avoiding the issue like gene ) is make your own shielding with conductive adhesive copper tape (solder a lead wire near the tip of the next piece before you wrap it on a cable so you have an easy grounding wire ready) then cover the copper with some kind of insulation (kapton, heat shrink, another sleeve, or even electrical tape). I posted in one thread about my spur of the moment shielding job (just used aluminum foil... ) on the LCD cables.

Normally all that is needed is the ferrite at one end of the cables. I posted a link to the flat ferrite.
Going through all this shielding is not normally necessary if you use the ferrite.

[inventabuild]

lordbinky - Great idea, so where would you recommend to attach the ground wire to make it all work?

wondering if this stuff (which sounds like it can be flattened due to the Flat Wd. column) would be good to shield my SD Card ribbon (search for "EMI/RFI-Shield Polyurethane" on the page): http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-cable ... ng/=oigvlt

There's all kinds of sleeving options that will block EMI, the important part to making them work is the need to ground the shielding which is what the typically pre attached lead coming out of the sleeve is for.

The most flexible option (besides avoiding the issue like gene ) is make your own shielding with conductive adhesive copper tape (solder a lead wire near the tip of the next piece before you wrap it on a cable so you have an easy grounding wire ready) then cover the copper with some kind of insulation (kapton, heat shrink, another sleeve, or even electrical tape). I posted in one thread about my spur of the moment shielding job (just used aluminum foil... ) on the LCD cables.

[inventabuild]

Eaglezsoar - Thanks for the link to digikey a few posts ago...will be ordering one of their ferrite clamps and testing that w/ and w/ out shielding on the wire. Will post back my results.

wondering if this stuff (which sounds like it can be flattened due to the Flat Wd. column) would be good to shield my SD Card ribbon (search for "EMI/RFI-Shield Polyurethane" on the page): http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-cable ... ng/=oigvlt

There's all kinds of sleeving options that will block EMI, the important part to making them work is the need to ground the shielding which is what the typically pre attached lead coming out of the sleeve is for.

The most flexible option (besides avoiding the issue like gene ) is make your own shielding with conductive adhesive copper tape (solder a lead wire near the tip of the next piece before you wrap it on a cable so you have an easy grounding wire ready) then cover the copper with some kind of insulation (kapton, heat shrink, another sleeve, or even electrical tape). I posted in one thread about my spur of the moment shielding job (just used aluminum foil... ) on the LCD cables.

Normally all that is needed is the ferrite at one end of the cables. I posted a link to the flat ferrite.
Going through all this shielding is not normally necessary if you use the ferrite.

[lordbinky]

The biggest source of noise is the stepper motors (relatively high current high frequency) and the ferrites will do just fine to attenuate those signals. They add inductance to the wire which resist high frequency changes of current, and is small enough to not negatively affect the signals to/from the LCD. Shielding protects from a wider range of signals (not that those problem signals even exist...) and just happened to be quicker with what I had on hand (with zero forethought).

I attached my the ground wire of my shielding to the ground of the power supply at the easily accessible power switch, that and whatever signal/digital ground the Rambo has is derived from that ground anyways. It wasn't my first choice though since I didn't have any equipment to see how much noise was on it, but that's where I stopped at least. I initially tried a pin of one of the LCD cables, I just assumed it was ground after doing checks with the multimeter and did no further checking (or thought). That failed, it caused serial restarts of the Rambo as long as the Rambo had power (Hey look! A lesson!.....Wait where'd it go?). It's hard to tell if you clear up a sporadic problem completely by waiting for it to happen again. All I can say for now is that it hasn't made things worse.

[inventabuild]

Mission accomplished w/ the ferrite cores. Prints run from beginning to end now without interruption.

Thanks guys for hammering home the point about the ferrite cores eliminating print-stopping noise in the SD Card Ribbon Cables.

I bought 4 ea of these because you have to buy 2 ea to make a complete ferrite clamp set consisting of two halves and two clips:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/e ... -ND/242774

The ribbon cables fit just right so they are snug but can still slide in the slot.

1 set (2 ea halves) cost all of $2.06. The shipping cost more than the parts.

They are so darn cheap and eliminate such a major potential problem I think they s/ be a stock item in the RMAX kits.