Hadron locking up

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Hadron locking up

Postby tmccafferty » Sat Jul 06, 2013 2:26 am

I have been using the hadron for a few months now. It has been very stable. I have done 20 hour prints with no problem. A few weeks back, I upgraded to a newer version of Marlin and added a reprap smart LCD. The LCD would get weird nonsense on it after a while. From posts on the forum, it appears o be noise getting in the cables. Since these upgrades, it tends to lock up after several hours. When it does this, it appears to quit communicating with the laptop. The only cure is to power down the printer and restart Pronterface.

To try to get back to where I was, I have re-installed the previous version of Marlin and removed the LCD. Still locks up. I have also swapped over to another laptop and insured its power settings are such that it does not sleep during a pint. No improvement.

About the only thing I haven't done is replace the mega or ramps. Any ideas? Should I replace the boards.

Very frustrating to stop 6 hours int a 7 hour print repeatably.
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby cvoinescu » Sat Jul 06, 2013 9:26 am

Does it stop at the same point in the print? If it's exactly the same point, then it's probably not a coincidence, but something to do with the G-code itself. (And there's been at least one other report like this that turned out to be a power saving mode mysteriously activated on the computer.)

However, most problems are related to USB and and caused by electrical noise and ground loops causing the USB to disconnect momentarily -- and it doesn't recover on its own. If you have changed, or even moved, the USB cable, that could be it. Also, power supply, or even having plugged the laptop or the printer in a different outlet. I've had problems with a new fridge killing my USB connection every time the compressor cycled off. I suspect A/C units can do the same thing, and, if you're in the northern hemisphere, it could be that you've just started using your A/C.

I've tried various combinations of grounding the printer, a floating power supply, RF suppressor ferrite cores on the USB cable, a better quality USB cable... The floating power supply made no difference. Everything else made interruptions less likely: connecting the signal ground (supply V-) to earth ground; USB cable coiled through the ferrite core several times; shorter USB cable; better screened USB cable; moving the fridge to a different circuit. However, even doing all of them did not solve the problem completely, at least not for me. The only two solutions that worked are: printing off SD card (no USB connected at all), and optoisolators on the USB. You can read more about the latter here and here. Several other people have done it, and it seems to have helped.

Of course, there's the possibility that installing that LCD broke something on the Mega. The RAMPS is practically indestructible, electrically speaking, but it could have a flaky connection that's been made worse -- but that's unlikely, given the symptoms.
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby fma » Sat Jul 06, 2013 9:37 am

+1 for air compressor start! I have a little aquarium air pump, and as soon as I plug in, the printer crashes!

Did you try to print from the SD card?
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby REdington » Sat Jul 06, 2013 12:35 pm

I had some trouble when I first got the first one of mine up and printing with it stopping midprint. Come to find out that it was plugged into the same circuit as our freezer and when it came on, it would do something to the printer or computer to stop the printer.
Now I use a 12 volt battery to power the Arduino and the motor, hotend side of the RAMPS and run it off the SD card. In order to get the LCD to work right, I shortened the cables to about 10".

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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby tmccafferty » Sat Jul 06, 2013 2:50 pm

Thanks for the prompt responses. It happens on different objects at different points. I have also tried sd card with no improvement but I do know there are issues there as the display gets in a mode that's illegible. It's plugged into the same circuit it's always been on and nothing has changed. We've been on AC for months. I have a fluorescent light next to it and any time it's turned on or off it locks up but it has always done that.

Other than that, it has been rock solid.

I wonder why the USB circuit or firmware is so unstable. There are never problems with printer and other USB interfaces.

Can't one of you whiz bang rocket scientist circuit guys figure out the root cause :D
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby awesomenesser » Sun Jul 07, 2013 4:09 pm

tmccafferty wrote:Thanks for the prompt responses. It happens on different objects at different points. I have also tried sd card with no improvement but I do know there are issues there as the display gets in a mode that's illegible. It's plugged into the same circuit it's always been on and nothing has changed. We've been on AC for months. I have a fluorescent light next to it and any time it's turned on or off it locks up but it has always done that.

Other than that, it has been rock solid.

I wonder why the USB circuit or firmware is so unstable. There are never problems with printer and other USB interfaces.

Can't one of you whiz bang rocket scientist circuit guys figure out the root cause :D


At first I had a lot of issues with the usb connectivity and had many print that would just stop because of current draw on the AC line. I was able to "solve" it by placing multiple ferrite beads on the usb cable, which means it has to be some kind of electrical noise.
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby tmccafferty » Tue Jul 09, 2013 2:29 am

I saw on another forum where someone had trouble when the mega was being powered by the USB cable. I can't recall the details, but the cut or jumper end something so it was powered from the main supply.

Could it be a power fluctuation on the USB?
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A UPS?

Postby flickerfly » Thu Jul 11, 2013 4:04 pm

If it is an issue with the cleanliness of the power, perhaps a simple UPS would be good. Besides providing a source in a power glitch, they also tend to clean things up. If the computer and the printer are both plugged into the UPS, I'd expect it to resolve issues with air compressors or refrigerators or whatever. At least it would remove some factors.
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby cvoinescu » Thu Jul 11, 2013 7:10 pm

Yes, but an external HDD (or, indeed, a "2-D" printer) is also powered from its own power supply and connected to the computer with a USB cable of similar length and quality, and they almost never disconnect randomly. I can think of:
  1. the Arduino USB is flawed,
  2. our power supplies are bad,
  3. our power supplies are good but we don't know how to wire them,
  4. the HDD and the conventional printer actually disconnect occasionally, but the driver or OS reconnects transparently.
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Re: Hadron locking up

Postby TLHarrell » Thu Jul 11, 2013 10:03 pm

Or maybe the USB connection is saturated with other devices? I'd at least try unplugging the HDD and printer for an hour just to be sure.
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