How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
I had situation. Almost before end of long time print, printer got out of filament. My bad. Did not properly estimate needed amount of filament.
Since I was not near the printer it happened, it stopped printing and kept beeping until I arrived. I thought just to set new filament and continue but for some reason, printer could not unload old filament and load new one.
I had to move head to position I can open head and check for problem. Something was stuck but after some struggle I finally loaded new filament. but at that time, head was moved printer was not at the interrupted position and I had to get out of continuation mode anyways while trying to load new filament.
Is there some way to make printer "remember" where it stopped, and then after any fiddling with it, let it go to "remembered" state and continue?
I usually run long prints from SD card so printer has control and everything it needs to continue job, just if it has ability to remember where to continue from.
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
One thing I would like to see (maybe it's in there and I have not found/used it) is a function on the front panel that quickly gives you the current X/Y/Z coordinates.
I know (think?) you can do this one axis at a time by using the 'Move Axis' function and recording the values that are displayed without commanding anything to move.
Then it should be possible to re-position the head.
Whether or not this would work under real world conditions for resuming a print is a good question, however.
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
Maybe I misremember (which seems to happen a lot more often as I'm getting older) but…
I've been printing a lot (and I mean, a lot) Sunlu PETG. One of its "features" is that the end of the spool of filament has a "hook", i.e., it's crooked. So when the filament runs out and triggers the filament sensor, on unload it gets stuck. I try to avoid this of course by planning prints accordingly, but it has happened more than just a few time… When the LCD panel asks me if the unload has succeeded, and I say no, it lets me open the idler door and put my needle-nosed plier skills to work to remove the remaining piece of filament. In each case—again, as far as I remember—it then just went back and resumed the print when I confirmed that the problem was fixed.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE:
I've changed filament mid-print many times on both the Prusa and the Ultimaker (in fact, I just did it on the Ultimaker a few minutes ago) but I've always been careful to do a controlled pause and a careful filament change before the spool runs out.
I figure letting it run out is risking any of various foul-ups and complications.
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
I've changed filament mid-print many times on both the Prusa and the Ultimaker (in fact, I just did it on the Ultimaker a few minutes ago) but I've always been careful to do a controlled pause and a careful filament change before the spool runs out.
I figure letting it run out is risking any of various foul-ups and complications.
It worked for me too so far, but now I had situation that I had to fiddle it a lot and I had to get out of pause mode.
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
Got it. To my knowledge there's no way to recover once your out of filament change mode.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
Maybe it is good case for feature proposal?
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
I've never tried this, I only vaguely remembered the post but someone posted this here once.
Good Luck
Swiss_Cheese
The Filament Whisperer
RE: How to preserve head position for emergency interupted print job?
That is exactly what we could avoid if printer is capable to remember where it stopped.