I got a CTC Dual Extruder printer a few weeks ago and I got one issue with it. Sometimes it will just start displaying garbage (or nothing at all) during the print. The prints have all finished even with the display in garbage mode. But this still is quite annoying as it will prevent pauses and temperature changes from beeing made. Switching the power off and on again will resolve the issue and the printer displays normal again.

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Apr '15
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Dec '16
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That’s pretty normal. These bots are very susceptible to EMI, and that is a symptom. If you are running Sailfish, you can press the right button, which will reload the screen properly.

If it concerns you, you can re route all the wiring away from your LCD ribbon cable under your bot.

This is a picture of the bottom of my bot.

muckychris

this is pretty common.it’s something to do with shielding the cables and display i’ve heard.

it is resolved with a restart once print is done. happens to my machines about once a week randomly.

adamcooks

I just re-read your OP, you say you can change temps from the menu? It has been a while since I ran non sailfish firmware, but I don’t think that that is a stock feature. Some of the cloner’s pull more bits of sailfish into their code, mainly the larger then 2G SD card. You should be able to press right to refresh the screen.

bardiir

I’m running sailfish. Actually, it has done this in the first print I did which originally caused me to upgrade the firmware in the first place as I was wondering if something on the rom might be corrupted.

Pressing right fixed it, thanks, didn’t know that

bardiir

adamcooks

I’ll look into that, thanks. I’m considering some ESD shielding anyway to make sure the bot doesn’t fry down suddenly due to me touching something. It’s attracting a LOT of dust anyway to I figure the process of printing itself seems to cause a lot of static buildup by itself too.

Eduardo_Garcia

I have been lucky enough to not have this issue with the original firmware. I have heard of this from various users. My only recommendation would be to update to sailfish, I have heard it gets rid of this issue.

Does it display properly if you’re not printing?

you could try to reset the motherboard from factory.

Good luck

Chris_Donovan

Ive heard of this with large prints, and dual extruding.

You are printing from USB on this?

Try the memory card slot with your model in .x3g format.

Chris_Donovan

bardiir

You can use wire magnets to loop the stepper motor wires to protect for ESD.

I also use magnets for the ribbon cables.

All metal CTC printers have this ESD shielding but not the Wood Bizer (Replicator) printers.

bardiir

Eduardo_Garcia

I’m on sailfish already. see the other answers, pressing right solves it

bardiir

Chris_Donovan

No I’m printing a single extrusion model from SD currently and this happened 4 times during the print already. But pressing right solves it, see the other comments.

enablebudapest

If you upgraded to Sailfish - that’s your problem. I did the same and it fried my board. Bottom line - Sailfish kills these machines.

muckychris

I can’t agree with you. I have 4 machines without sailfish and get more instances of the “garbled lcd screen” on those vs 8 machines with sailfish. Unless I misunderstood you.

INVENTion

Have you checked the connections on the LCD or from LCD to PC board? I did not have this issue at all but sometimes things get loose from all the vibration that is going on as the printer is working. Once I had a loose extruder motor connector that was only coming loose while printing, jamming the filament inside and I thought it was just bad filament…

bardiir

enablebudapest

The printer did the garbled LCD even before upgrading to sailfish, constantly. Sometimes even with broken prints when it did it (maybe unrelated but seemes to correlate). Now it only garbles the screen but prints perfectly.

I’ll check

I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad to hear that it happens to non-Sailfish machines. My machine with original firmware works perfectly. The one with Sailfish died within 1 day of upgrade. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.

adamcooks

So, just for your knowledge. Original firmware, is Sailfish(ish). MBI pulled sailfish’s motion planner and other items into its firmware around 7.0 The only difference is the amount of maintenance that each has received. MBI firmware is long abandoned, Sailfish 7.7 is still maintained and has addressed many bugs, both trivial and the very serious ones that could lead to disaster. did you know that original firmware wont report higher then 260C on the extruder, even in a runaway heater situation. USB printing is never recommended.

To blame sailfish on borking your board is silly and pure non-sense, Not meaning any offense( and also not being involved with your installation or troubleshooting), but 99.99% of sailfish installation problems are user generated. Myself included, I failed to follow the directions and had issue with printing in the center.

The garbled screen is a pure and simple hardware issue, neither firmware will cause or prevent it. Sailfish allows you to deal with it, by pressing the right button. Wanhao has started to insulate the ribbon cable with some sort of shielding. I have posted pics of how I have dealt with it.

4 months later

Suggy

Done this to me too, all I do is press the left arrow key and it returns to normal

1 year later

Giulio_Ladu

Hi I have a problem with this screen appearing half way thorough a print, however when my screen gets garbage, my X motor starts to grind very loudly. Would this also be do to interference?

3 months later