New printer stopped printing + serial error
Hi,
I've sent a message to support but thought I'd ask here as well to see if anyone has any insight.
I received my fully assembled printer about 5 days ago. Its been printing very nicely and obviously getting some heavy use during this initial period (as I'm sure everyone's new printer does). At first, I printed from the SD card and later I connected via USB to a Windows PC, upgraded the firmware to the most recent 3.0.10, and successfully printed many prints using Pronterface.
Last night, I was attempting an ABS print over USB that was failing to adhere properly. My computer is headless (monitor/keyboard in another room), and as I wanted to cancel the print and restart I decided I'd just turn off the power on the printer. I guess that was a bad idea. After cleaning the bed and attempting to restart the print, I could no longer get Pronterface to connect to the printer. Pronterface would give me a Serial Error, can't connect on Com4. I checked device manager and printer is still on Com4. I powered both computer and printer off, and even let printer sit overnight to cool (it was rather hot from use). Next morning, I tried again and same problem. Printer is on Com 4 and can't connect. I tried re-flashing the firmware using the firmware flasher but that's giving an error too ("avrdude.exe ser_open(): can't open device "\\.\COM4": Access is denied..."). I have yet to try another computer.
Perhaps more troublesome, I can't print from the SD card either now. After the above happened, it worked perhaps once or twice from the SD running a test print that I stopped midway using the interface. Then I tried again and nozzle started moving for about 10 seconds and then just stopped. Now when I try to print from SD, it does not start at all. The bed/nozzle do not try to heat up, although it does show the timer and % complete and the gcode file on the LCD info screen. I can preheat. Preheating works. But after preheating if I try to start a print, again it shows the timer/%/name but calibration/print does not start.
Strangely too, when I try to connect via USB, LCD screen briefly goes blank before re-appearing.
This was working great for days out of the box. After waiting about 8 weeks I'm obviously anxious to get this fixed!
Any ideas what I should try? Is something fried?
Thanks,
Marc
Re: New printer stopped printing + serial error
My computer is headless (monitor/keyboard in another room), and as I wanted to cancel the print and restart I decided I'd just turn off the power on the printer.
That's a bad idea because it turns off the fan that cools down the cool end of the extruder, which means that filament can melt inside it and clog it; it's a pain to fix. In your case, I assume you either turned the printer back on soon enough, or, it being ABS, it never got hot enough to melt the filament, so you were lucky.
Not sure why this would damage the electronics though - it could be unrelated or it could be a weird coincidence of things happening at the same time. (Or maybe the power supply kicks back in some weird way when switched off while the printer is drawing quite a bit of current?)
I don't have any suggestions for things to try at this moment...
- Gab
Re: New printer stopped printing + serial error
Thanks for your replay. Yes I don't plan to power off in the middle of a print ever again.
I have made some good progress though. I don't really understand why but this evening I was able to print from the SD card again. The machine seems to be mostly back to normal. I still can't connect to it from my computer though. The good news is that my laptop does connect to it without issue and I'm up and running again printing from the laptop. Something on my fullsize PC is conflicting suddenly with the printer. It worked for days and then yesterday after the power-off episode, I can't get the PC to connect to the printer anymore. When I plug in the USB cable, the printer's LCD screen goes blank and resets. This does not happen on my laptop. I've tried re-installing the software, disconnecting all other USB devices, rebooting.. I don't know what else to try. I'm quite happy its not the printer though! Well we'll see after tonight's prints if my success holds.