Print Stopped... Cura problem?

Hi there,

New to the community, picked up a Taz 6 and looking to get moving
Going to be using the printer for R&D work and some fun side projects.
I purchased the PrintedSolid enclosure, as I intend to print in ABS and Ploycarb too.
Running Cura-Lulzbot on a Macbook Pro and printing from USB so far.

I printed my Rocktopus out of the box, using the sample nGEN filament, zero issues.

I then switched to my roll of PolyLite PLA (black) and began the print for the Printedsolid enclosure brackets (4).
Running a 20% infill, 4 layers of shell, mostly pre-set settings, etc. as recommended by PrintedSolid and Polylite.

I started the print and it began chugging along smoothly.
Estimated print time was 11 hours, so I left the printer running and checked back periodically.
I went to bed, the print was about 50% completed. It was set to be done at 5am so I set an alarm to wake up when the print was complete so I could remove it from the bed and shut down the printer.

When I woke up, the print was 10hrs into the print, around 90% completed, and the printer head was in printing position but stopped. The nozzle and bed were still at operating temp and the fans were running too.
The printer said “printing” as if it was still going, and didn’t seem frozen (the display was still active and the readouts were refreshing normally), but the print head was not moving.

When I checked my computer, the Cura software was closed… as if it had quit by itself, but no warnings of software crash.

I don’t think the printer froze, I think the Cura software closed itself and the print paused cause no more information was feeding to the printer… I re-opened Cura and the software had forgotten the previous print had started so all was lost… I re-connected to the printer, moved the print head, cooled the machine and shut it off.

My question is, is this a common risk of printing from USB?
Am I safer to move my g-code to an SD card for printing, for reliability sake?

Kinda bummed I’m going to have to start the print over again, but it’s a learning process!

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Thank you,
Austin

Printing overnight from a Windows PC can suffer the wrath of Microsoft updates (and reboots) usually around 3am. For those really long prints, moving to the SD card and printing from there might be safer. For prints that will finish before midnight, I’d still print from USB because its more convenient.

I went a different route, I spent $50-60 and purchased a Raspberry Pi 3B, power supply, and case. I installed OctoPi / OctoPrint, connected the printer to the Pi, and control the printer from my favorite browser on my Windows desktop. I couldn’t be happier

Add another $20-30 and you can add a camera to the Pi and take pictures and timelapse movies of your printer in action. OctoPrint can be viewed and controlled from any browser including your cell phone or tablet. A little more effort (minding security, etc.) and you can keep an eye on your printer from anywhere.

Note that the Raspberry Pi 3B+ is now available. OctoPi / OctoPrint support is in the release candidate phase.

Occasionally, I was moving the printer’s USB cable back to my desktop PC to upgrade the firmware. I now have a plugin for OctoPrint that will let me upgrade the firmware through the browser, so the USB cable doesn’t move back and forth as much anymore.

Welcome to 3D Printing and the education it is going to give you (whether you want it or not)

Sorry to hear about the issues, and thank you for the report!

We have not had this one reported before. When printing from USB be sure that you have your power settings correct. You are going to want to turn off power saving to the USB hubs to ensure communication. As you made it 10 hours into the print, this is probably not the issue. Did your computer by chance get an update last night that would cause a reboot?

Checking the Cura logs will be a good place to start, on Mac this file can be found here: /Users//Library/Application Support/cura-lulzbot/3.2/cura-lulzbot.log This will log any critical errors that would cause a crash without notification.

For long prints, this would be the recommended procedure. By eliminating the USB cord and Cura program you help secure a few factors. Automatic updates, power saving features, faulty USB ports, the cat/dog/child tripping over the USB cord, etc.

If you do have this one happen again, we would greatly appreciate it if you log a ticket on our code board for further investigation. https://code.alephobjects.com/project/board/10/

I hope this helps, and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions!

Hey guys, thanks for the prompt replies.

Interesting regarding the Raspberry Pi. I have seen it mentioned before but I haven’t looked much into it yet.
Once I get prints running on the regular, I will definitely give this some consideration.

My plan is to run my next print off the SD card and see how that goes.
Now that I know about the reliability concerns, I’ll eliminate that from the equation.

I was sure to adjust my energy saving settings so the computer would not sleep, but it was running on screensaver with the backlight turned off. This didn’t seem to have any effect on the print for the first 10 hours of printing

I also have my computer set to manually accept updates, so this wouldn’t be it either…

@Brent.I I checked to see if I could investigate the log file for Cura, but once I get into my application support file, there is no folder for cura-lulzbot. Not sure if this is because it hasn’t been made yet (due to no log?) or there is an issue with the install… I’m running Cura version 2.6.69 on my mac, and the firmware on the printer was updated before I printed my rocktopus. Is there a chance the file was made in a different path?

I’ll give another print a go tomorrow and report back if there are any issues.

Thanks again!

Sorry about that! Here are some more precise directions, thanks @ScottW

That will get you there for Windows, but I think @AustinSedz is using a Mac. Can someone point to the correct location for the Cura log file on Mac?

Correct, I am running Cura on a Mac.

Late 2013 Model running OS Sierra 10.12.6 if that matters.

Based on another thread, I think for MAC the log is here:

~/Library/Application Support/cura-lulzbot/2.6/cura-lulzbot.log

…But I have no experience with MAC, so hopefully someone will chime in to confirm or help further!

Sorry ScottW, for some reason I thought you were on mac!

Double checking with our win/mac tester the log file should be in: User/Library/application support/cura-lulzbot/2.6/cura-lulzbot.log