CTC Printer randomly stops printing

etang858 · 2015-10-20T06:34:42.000Z

Hello all,

I was 45 minutes into a print and it randomly stopped. Everything goes fine and the extruder just suddenly freezes. All the fans and electronics are still one. I scroll thru the menus, hit pause, and resume. Pausing and resuming does nothing. At this point I have to cancel the job.

I flipped the printer over and nothing on the main board feels warm.

Has anyone experienced this before?

jaspernp · 2015-10-20T08:27:47.000Z

I will share with you my similar experience with the CTC 3D printer.

After a few weeks of operation I found my printer would randomly stop during prints and SOMETIMES you would see the screen/system reboot.

I eventually traced it back to the Y axis cables which connect from the mainboard to the Y axis stepper motor. They had fatigued from the movement although you could not tell visually. I identified this by using the prints Jog Axis option. I could reproduce the freezing and rebooting after jogging the Y axis all the way across to each corner a few times.

I bought new wires and soldered the existing connectors onto them as I could not locally get the right connectors. Its has since been working perfectly for about 4 months. Actually after mentioning this the ebay seller he was kind enough to credit me $10 back for my efforts.

Suggestion: Jog all axis a few times to see if there is and SLIGHT STUTTER , FREEZE or REBOOT of the printer. IF you find any of those symptoms replace that axis wires with new ones.

Let me know how it goes and feel free to PM me for further help. (If 3D hubs has PM?)

Jasper.

iCloud · 2015-10-20T08:51:35.000Z

Extant are you printing over use as this is what I do sometimes when I’m to lazy to print from the sad card and you should NEVER sprint from maker ware software as it does not work !

MasterFX · 2015-10-20T19:41:19.000Z

Never had that problem. But it also could be a slicer problem (bad gcode generation). Try Makerware oder something else to verify that you slicer is not the problem.

iCloud · 2015-10-20T19:49:09.000Z

It’s to do with USB latency, despite what the packet says printing over sub has never been a good idea as if the computer slows the usb connection it will crash the print by stopping code flow to the printer switch to sd printing I had the same problem

jaspernp · 2015-10-21T01:01:40.000Z

I have never had any issues printing over USB even when playing demanding games, 3D rendering and uploading firmware files to Arduino boards over multiple other USB ports while printing. Not a single hickup.

I have a feeling all this information about USB being a poor choice for 3D printing only applies to slow computer and or motherboards with certain USB Chipsets or drivers as I find no evidence of instability.

intel quad core @ 4.4ghz

8gb ram

z77 chipset

Fayaz_Choudhary · 2015-10-22T02:49:28.000Z

lone of the baddest 3d printer is CTC dual extruder that is my experience is telling.

CTC have very bad extruder design and also they have USB key so you can not use generic filament after every filament roll they are forcing you to buy another USB key and often during the print it will stop false error will come up Roll INv. means change USB key. more then half the jobs dissenter extruder need major update

jaspernp · 2015-10-22T03:11:44.000Z

I can assure you my ctc 3D Printer has no “USB key” style security but that sounds as bad as the divinchi range of printers.

With a few cheap upgrade parts you can greatly increase the reliability of the print head, same as makerbot.

Also I removed one of the extenders to reduce head weight, highly recommended.

etang858 · 2015-10-22T04:45:22.000Z

Thanks for all the input guys. I’ll let you know how my tests go on debugging this. Unfortunately I won’t have access to my printer for a few days.

Fayaz_Choudhary · 2015-10-22T13:01:14.000Z

My CTC printer is not working any more its showing on display ROLL INV. that is because of USB key before dying it already had lot of issues with extruder. as “adamcooks” said USB key can be programmed at home can you or any body tell me how?

Man I dont like this CTC dual head printer it gives me lot of troubles from the beginning instead i found ver nice with prusa i3.

jaspernp · 2015-10-30T17:22:05.000Z

Hello etang858; did you managed to resolve this issue and if so please share your findings with us !

gaehl · 2015-11-02T01:20:59.000Z

Are you printing from SD or over USB if over USB the serial connection could of had issues which is why some people only print from the SD card.

Edit: whoops it showed no replies so I replied then it showed all the others please ignore me

etang858 · 2015-11-02T01:45:45.000Z

I always print over SD. Never USB.

I think it may be EMI or SD card related.

I was able to do a 12 hour job successfully but just today it crashed after 4 hours.

I will need to try a new SD card and try to clean up wires. I will attempt to clean up wires according to this thread: Redirecting to Google Groups

I will get around to this in a few weeks.

jaspernp · 2015-11-02T03:41:39.000Z

I always printed over USB while using replicatorG without any issue for over 6months.

Iv since bought simplify3D and have not managed a single USB print, coms errors keep occuri for so Iv had to switch to SD card. Small price to pay for the features this software has.

This goes to show not all printer softwares use the same USB serial implementations and are not all made equal.

JDDIGITAL · 2015-11-08T13:49:04.000Z

Windows 10 has a known serial driver bug. Not sure if this is your OS or not.

etang858 · 2015-11-08T15:45:15.000Z

Thanks. I’m on windows7

Feier_Florin · 2015-12-28T19:55:31.000Z

Well? did you found anything? It seems I have the same problem. I’ve just finished calibrating the nozzle (the right oane:) ) and now my CTC 3d printer just freezes randomly. It somethimes stops moving completely, other times just X/Y while the Z axis and extrusion keeps on going (it extrudes a strange looking column ). Just now it stopped, I restarted the print using the same file (from SD, I allways print from SD card) and strange enaugh it went thru up to 31% when it stoped printing and desplayed: “Print Finished! , print time 17 min” . Really frustrating !..

I think it might be a problem with the ribbon cable that links the SD card reader to the main board. It is not shielded at all and might interfere with other components (I’ve installed some LED lighting, and the power cable for the LED’s, wich is not tied down, is passing verry close to the suspected ribbon cable). Last night it printed just fine, I’ve moved it to another room and it started to fail… Maybe it doesen’t like to be alone

If I get to the bottom of it I’ll let you know

etang858 · 2015-12-28T20:03:09.000Z

I never had an issue as sever as yours in that only one axis would stop. Mine would just freeze up. I think I have eliminated the issue since I haven’t had any failed prints from freezing since. I basically rewired the entire bottom side of the printer to avoid EMI issues.

You can see my wiring and more detail here: Redirecting to Google Groups

I also bought a brand new SD card.Since I did both changes at once, I cannot say which had more influence but I suspect the re-wiring was more significant.

Hope this helps.

Andres_Santos · 2016-02-26T18:42:15.000Z

hello @jaspernp, I have a dual CTC printer, and it also stops randomly, I saw your post and wanted to ask you if when replacing the wires the machine behaved better?

Sascha_Pulighed · 2016-04-16T08:17:15.000Z

Yes, me, it suddenly stops, I had to check the bolts of the transformer, they were loose. Check every bolt or nut, check that everything is thigh, because every bolt hasn’t been check or thightened up correctly!