TOM stopped printing

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Eric Palmer

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Feb 12, 2012, 6:14:17 PM2/12/12
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MK7 TOM
Rep G 29_r2
Mac osx

Was printing some of the parts for the Turtle shell racer and the printing just stopped. No error messages in Reg G.  Plus the prints look less than typical.  the bottoms look like the lines are spaces apart some and some are missing.  Yesterday I printing the kien gear set and other items and they were fine. 

I'm going to reboot everything and see what happens.

I do have a pretty long USB cable (like 12 feet) and it was plugged into a hub.  I've plugged it directly into the mac.  I was using working with an arduino earlier in the day and I had problems with that usb connection. But I had removed the arduino and rebooted the mac.

What should I check for?

thanks

Eric

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Dan Newman

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Feb 12, 2012, 6:23:09 PM2/12/12
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On 12 Feb 2012 , at 3:14 PM, Eric Palmer wrote:

> MK7 TOM
> Rep G 29_r2
> Mac osx
>
> Was printing some of the parts for the Turtle shell racer and the printing
> just stopped. No error messages in Reg G. Plus the prints look less than
> typical. the bottoms look like the lines are spaces apart some and some
> are missing. Yesterday I printing the kien gear set and other items and
> they were fine.
>
> I'm going to reboot everything and see what happens.
>
> I do have a pretty long USB cable (like 12 feet) and it was plugged into a
> hub. I've plugged it directly into the mac. I was using working with an
> arduino earlier in the day and I had problems with that usb connection. But
> I had removed the arduino and rebooted the mac.
>
> What should I check for?

Issues like this is why I started printing for SD card…. That was after
I eliminated

1. Suspect power supply (replaced)
2. Checked the safety cutoff LED (extruder stops extruding, but print continues
unless you have the firmware fix to make the estop stop everything)

It was like the bot just froze but still had power. After seeing that a
few times, I went to SD card and never looked back. Having a Gen4 Interface
that does everything RepG can (and then some) thanks to Jetty's hard
work has meant I've never looked back. I only use RepG to drive
skeinforge and write the gcode to SD. I'm hoping Jetty will make a
stand-a-lone Gen4 Interface with an ARM chip or something that runs
native mode Python or Java and then I can do everything from it :)

Dan

Eric Palmer

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Feb 12, 2012, 6:27:18 PM2/12/12
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Today it is like the USB connection just stopped working. A reboot and now I can't connect to the TOM.  I don't have the money for a gen 4 right now.

I'm going to go with a shorted usb cable and see what happens.




Dan

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Dan Newman

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Feb 12, 2012, 6:33:43 PM2/12/12
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On 12 Feb 2012 , at 3:27 PM, Eric Palmer wrote:

> Today it is like the USB connection just stopped working. A reboot and now
> I can't connect to the TOM. I don't have the money for a gen 4 right now.

Reboot of which? The Mac or the ToM? When I had this happening and I would
force quit RepG, a couple of times I found an orphaned process running which had
the USB port in use. Obviously, if you reboot the Mac, you shouldn't see any
orphaned process from before the reboot. (Unless you use a LiveScribe pen --
their Mac app has a really bad habit of latching on to a certain class of USB
devices of which include Arduinos and USB-equipped PICs. Have seen that on a
couple of friend's laptops.)

Note that you don't need a Gen4 interface to print from SD. You can write
the SD card from RepG and then, over USB, have RepG tell the ToM which file
from the SD card to print from. Once the ToM starts printing, you can leave
RepG connected or you can disconnect RepG.

Dan

Eric Palmer

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Feb 12, 2012, 6:36:55 PM2/12/12
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Reboot everything. I went with a shorter usb cable and it connected. But I'm regenerating the gcode because I moved the z offset a little.

So I just move the gcode to the sd card, plug the card into the slot on the tom and then use Rep G to tell it to print from SD. Awesome.    I amy try that this print.  I'll report back tomorrow.




Dan

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joe...@gmail.com

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Feb 12, 2012, 6:43:16 PM2/12/12
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On a couple of occasions, I have turned disconnected the ToM USB without exiting ReplicatorS and found that I could not reestablish connections to it until I first successfully closed RepG and disconnect and reconnect the ToM.  It seems that when RepG has an open file handle on the USB link and the link ISO disconnected and reconnected, the driver cannot correctly set up the port.

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad

Eric Palmer

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Feb 12, 2012, 7:06:07 PM2/12/12
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So I've saved the gcode to the sd card. Moved the card to the TOM and then told RepG to print that item (20mmx20mmcube) and nothing is happening. RepG says Building....
And the status area went from green to yellow. The toolhead temp and paltform temp are not rising.  And it is showing commands: 0/0 (0.00%). 

What could be wrong?

thanks

Eric

Eric Palmer

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Feb 12, 2012, 7:10:25 PM2/12/12
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Dud.  Okay I get it. Build to file and then move the sd card.

Seems to be working now. At least it is heating up.

Thanks for everyone's support. 


Eric

Robert Hunt

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Feb 13, 2012, 8:34:20 AM2/13/12
to MakerBot Operators
MakerBot's firmware can only understand code in the 'S3G' binary
format on the SD card so copying a G-Code file to the SD card directly
won't work. As you've discovered, you need to "build to file" from
ReplicatorG to get it in the correct format. The SD card really is a
better solution if you can use it.

On Feb 13, 12:06 am, Eric Palmer <e...@ericfpalmer.com> wrote:
> So I've saved the gcode to the sd card. Moved the card to the TOM and then
> told RepG to print that item (20mmx20mmcube) and nothing is happening. RepG
> says Building....
> And the status area went from green to yellow. The toolhead temp and
> paltform temp are not rising.  And it is showing commands: 0/0 (0.00%).
>
> What could be wrong?
>
> thanks
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 6:43 PM, <joec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On a couple of occasions, I have turned disconnected the ToM USB without
> > exiting ReplicatorS and found that I could not reestablish connections to
> > it until I first successfully closed RepG and disconnect and reconnect the
> > ToM.  It seems that when RepG has an open file handle on the USB link and
> > the link ISO disconnected and reconnected, the driver cannot correctly set
> > up the port.
>
> > -- Sent from my HP TouchPad
> > ------------------------------
> > On Feb 12, 2012 3:27 PM, Eric Palmer <e...@ericfpalmer.com> wrote:
> > Today it is like the USB connection just stopped working. A reboot and now
> > I can't connect to the TOM.  I don't have the money for a gen 4 right now.
>
> > I'm going to go with a shorted usb cable and see what happens.
>
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