Printer freezes mid-print

[thegammaray]

My M2 has been freezing mid-print every once in a while. Sometimes if I leave it alone while frozen, it will resume by itself after a few minutes. I usually just restart the print, though, because the print is always imperfect by the time it resumes. I was reading a recent thread in which the OP had the same problem, and it was attributed to Windows 10. I'm skeptical of that diagnosis since the freezing happens for me even when printing from the SD card without a USB cable connected to the computer at all.

It doesn't seem to be a blatant g-code problem, though; the other day I ran the exact same gcode from the SD card twice, and it only froze the first time.

Any ideas?

[Jules]

If it's not Win10, and you've checked the filament drive screw tension out .....

We used to have problems with pauses in the scrapbook cutters when the file size was too large for the cutter software to handle....it would have to "stop and think about it" for a while. Happened a lot with really detailed cuts with thousands of lines of code.

That's obviously a lot smaller than these machines can handle. But is there maybe something in the specific file itself that makes it cause the machine to have to "stop and think"? Maybe the file is corrupted? Or maybe the card is getting too full? Maybe the card itself is failing? Or the reader?

I'd probably start eliminating those next.

[thegammaray]

We used to have problems with pauses in the scrapbook cutters when the file size was too large for the cutter software to handle....it would have to "stop and think about it" for a while. Happened a lot with really detailed cuts with thousands of lines of code.

It's been happening on small, very simple things, so I don't think that would be the problem.

But is there maybe something in the specific file itself that makes it cause the machine to have to "stop and think"? Maybe the file is corrupted? Or maybe the card is getting too full? Maybe the card itself is failing? Or the reader?

The problem was happening over a USB connection as well. I only started using the SD card recently because I assumed my computer was getting overwhelmed by something mid-print. But it still happens. (I didn't find the thread I mentioned until just today.) That would (should?) rule out the SD card and reader.

But it's not reproducible from the gcode file. A couple days ago I ran the exact same print twice. The first time it froze in the middle; the second time it completed without pauses or freezes. For both of these prints, I started the print from the SD card through S3D and unplugged the USB cable as soon as the print started. The freeze didn't happen until about 8 minutes into the print (about halfway through).

Is there a way to activate and retrieve a log file from the printer itself? I.e. not through S3D, but from the M2 directly.

[Jules]

Huh! I'm out of ideas -

[insta]

Get a new SD card? It's a cheap test. Also, make sure you set your slicer's resolution to 0.01mm at most, our machines won't do anything finer justice. In S3D this is done with a "mesh reduction" prior to slicing, and in slic3r it's one of the advanced options.

[PcS]

You could try leaving s3d connected and watch the terminal window. If you don't want to babysit it run Windows Media Player minimized and set on loop. This will keep windows busy enough to not cause a problem during your print. Then when the print hangs you have the point of stoppage in the terminal window.