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A failure to communicate

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 12:47 pm
by jdurand
This just happened on my Afinia, NOT delta printer but it seems like it could apply universally.

I was running a long print and left the software open on the PC just to track progress (Afinia always prints from the SD card). Several hours into it the print aborted with NOZZLE TOO COOL! I asked Afinia about it and they said sometimes it drops a bit or so reporting temperature and that causes the PC software to freak, as long as the software is closed once the print starts it shouldn't happen.

I'm guessing their hardware works the same as the Rambo where a USB to serial chip is used to drive a serial port. I abandoned those years ago as too slow, there's no error checking on the serial side, and the user has to set the baud correctly. In my products I use the USB to parallel chip so baud rate settings don't matter and there's no serial bits to drop.

Anyway, I don't know if MatterControl would freak or just check the reading again, but letting the machine print from SD card seems the safest for long jobs.

Re: A failure to communicate

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 2:03 pm
by BenTheRighteous
As you said, I don't know if MatterControl would abort a print like that, but I agree that the sd card is definitely safer. If nothing else, it prevents a failure when your computer puts itself to sleep, runs out of battery, or restarts for a windows update... :)