MK3 sleep during the night  

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

Hi Frans

the Einsy doesn't know what the time is, so this may be a little difficult

regards Joan

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

It's a great idea but I think Joan has called it. The Einsy has no real time clock or access to a time server so is blind as far as time of day goes. Also to consider is many prints will loosen from the bed while cooled and / or shrink.

But I am with you Frans. It would be a great feature! 🙂

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

Hi all.

I am aware that the einsy has no RTC clock.
That is why i included a starting time like 16:00 h.
This is a manual setting.
The start time is the time you must provide for yourself.
Sleep hours must have the option on or off.

If you slice a model, you mostly insert the SD to the printer and start your job.
If the time you start your job is arround 10 o'clock in the morning, provide the time 10:00.
It can be also the time of your computer.

At that moment the board knows the time between "starttime" and the sleeptime of 23:00
The math is to calculate the time in seconds (or miliseconds) and insert a pause or wait command in the gcode.

(But what if your MK3 has a Pi Zero on board?
He can read the time from a timeserver on the internet :o))
I think someone at Prusa Research is clever enough to implement this.

And as Olef says, many prints will lossen from the buildplate.
Well, use 3Dlac or something else 🙂
i tested with 3Dlac and it is rock solid on the board.
But if you print with PLA and the buildplate temperature is zero, No problem.

Frans

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

How long does power panic store the last position? If it holds the last position in memory for 7 hours plus you could simply set a plug in timer to turn the printer off at your desired time. Free feature with no precious memory used up in the Einsy.

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

How long does power panic store the last position? If it holds the last position in memory for 7 hours plus you could simply set a plug in timer to turn the printer off at your desired time. Free feature with no precious memory used up in the Einsy.

AFAIK, the power panic stores the last position (and what ever other information that is needed for recovery) in the AVR chip's EEPROM. So it should last until EEPROMs decay. So, practically forever. The part on the bed is more likely to become dislodged rather than the restart information will be lost.

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

You can't completely switch off the printer as the is a high risk the part will come loose from the bed.
If you pause the print, switch off the hot end, leave the bed on, it should be quieter, but then there is still risk of fire......
Texy

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

And as Olef says, many prints will lossen from the buildplate.
Well, use 3Dlac or something else 🙂
i tested with 3Dlac and it is rock solid on the board.
But if you print with PLA and the buildplate temperature is zero, No problem.

Frans

OP already covered the parts loosening, either use what I assume is a type of adhesive or bed preperation or print PLA with a cold bed. I've never printed PLA with a cold bed personally but each to thier own. I've also never felt the need to turn the printer off overnight as its in a fire safe location and the conjunction of the speeds I use in slic3r and having the printer placed on a slab of granite don't produce noise that is audible outside of the room, but again, each to their own.

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

The sleeping scenario will only work in very special cases:
1. Build plate and plastic doesn't come loose when cooled (with standard Prusa sheets it will come loose or pop off)
2. Used plastic doesn't shrink much while cooled down (so far only PLA)

Most of the time you want to have even environment temperature throughout the whole print to get the best print quality. Otherwise you will get more pronounced layer.

Right now you could achieve the "hard sleep" function by using Octoprint plugin for pausing/unpausing a print at specific time and a network enabled power switch. The power panic function will do the rest

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

I'd be a little nervous using the power panic feature to do what you want? When the power cuts off, the extruder cooling fan quits running also. Seems like that would be a recipe for heat creep up into the extruder and a trip to Clog City?

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

I'd be a little nervous using the power panic feature to do what you want? When the power cuts off, the extruder cooling fan quits running also. Seems like that would be a recipe for heat creep up into the extruder and a trip to Clog City?

not sure if this is relevant but:

when i first got my printer, after i was done printing for the day i was switching off via an external switch instead of the power supply switch.

i did this for about a week and then one time when i powered it off externally after a print was completed, the power supply let out a very loud beep. when i powered it on again it said "recovering print" even though there wasn't a print running. there was nothing i could do other than a full reset and recalibration to get it out of this state. so i no longer cut external power and use the power supply switch exclusively. i guess i hit some corner case in the firmware? either way now i am worried about getting stuck in that bad state again so i never cut power intentionally.

Re: MK3 sleep during the night

Turning off the power supply switch is downstream from the power panic board. Thus, no power panic is triggered by the power supply switch, but there is a power panic if external power loss occurs.

External power cutoff at your power strip sends a power panic signal.