Hello guys (and gals). I just bought a Taz 5 a few weeks back and I’m having a little bit of an issue with the prints. I would say about 50% of the time the print fails. The screen stays on, bed and nozzle heated, but no movement from any stepper. LCD readout says printing still.
I’m printing from an SD card (the one that came with the unit) and have the Taz connected to a voltage stabilized UPS. I’ve used both slic3r and cura to generate the gcodes. Usually it is longer prints that fail, but I have had it fail on the second layer of a small print. Usually I reslice the model and it runs successfully, however on the small print I reran the same gcode and it failed in the exact same location. This leads me to believe that the gcode was bad. Resliced it after that and it completed. I have also had models fail 5 times in a row at different points each time (each time I resliced it and generated new gcode).
The models are all made in FreeCAD and none of them showed any manifold errors. It appears to be an issue with the gcode being generated, but it is intermittent and happens with two different slicers. I never know if the code is good or bad until hours into a very long print, sometimes 90% through. This makes it incredibly frustrating and difficult to diagnose. We use this machine to print plugs for FRP molds, so when a 40 hour print fails at hour 32, it sets us back an entire day or more on each project.
It sounds like you’ve covered the standard causes of issues. I have had my TAZ hooked up to a UPS since the day I received it; however, I accidentally plugged it in to a surge protector port, not a battery back up port. That caused me some strange failures until I caught that.
Did you notice the thread about CFLs? Is the printer near any CFLs?
I note that you use the SD card. Do you have the USB cable attached?
No CFLs within probably a 20’ radius. I have not seen that thread. I will check it out.
USB cable is unplugged from the computer before I print from the SD. I don’t recall if the issue ever happened while bringing from the usb cable, so I am running a 36 hour print from my Mac now (same print that has failed twice now). If that works, I picked up a new SD card today to try next. Maybe the SD has bad sectors or reads errors?
I find it hard to believe that two different slicers are generating bad gcode. I’m thinking there is some sort of issue with either the SD card or the Taz itself.
Would these errors not show up in the Slic3r manifold check? How would I determine if the model has an error? I Can export them to step and open in Fusion fine as well.
not necessarily. Slicer checks for a manifold outer surface, but a small internal error might not get caught by the quick check it does. Netfabb will find pretty much any error though, so if it opens fine in that and doesn’t throw the “repair model” sign at you, you should be fine.
So the good news is that the print completed through the USB cable. The bad news is that the print failed because of heat creep (printing PLA). I thought the electrical tape to direct the flow over the nozzle had solved this problem. Guess not. Is there an official solution to this issue? I tried the lancewood development files and that had worse nozzle cooling with the 40mm fan. So I went back to the original cage fan with the tape and it was working up until about 30 hours in.
Just wanted to update this incase anyone else has a similar issue and finds this thread. It appears that the SD card was to blame. 3 long prints now on the USB cable and new SD card and not a single error.
Also, found the PLA I was using varied from 2.83 to 3.15 Garbage. Using Orb Polymer filament now and not having any jams (haven’t gone over 30 hours yet, which is where they usually happen).
Garbage. Using Orb Polymer filament now and not having any jams (haven’t gone over 30 hours yet, which is where they usually happen).