Re picking up.Job After hard stop bump
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basecircle
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:59 am
Re picking up.Job After hard stop bump
Hi I will get to the point.I was running a job on my i3pro. Had only 20 min run time.When the program runs the Head and rapids the feet.It's moving pretty good.(It's a front half of a penguin) 2hr run time.After it moved I sent it to home.Looked at The program As too what line it stopped at.I figured I could Start at that line. No It will not work.What is the best way to pick up.And can I save it? Or do I half to start over?One more question.Let's say I have a job that lasts for 10hrs.How does everybody handle this?If you run let's say 6hrs how you pick up for the extra 4hrs? Any help will be great Thanks Sharkhead
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hodgepodgerama2
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Thu Nov 12, 2015 7:03 am
Re: Re picking up.Job After hard stop bump
Hi,
In general, if a job fails midway through the job, the part is lost. I have lost more 10 hour robotics parts on overnight jobs than I care to think about because of bad filament, a failed pulley bearing, a loose wire, whatever. There's nothing worse then looking at the printer in the morning and seeing half a part or a part that is off-axis half way through.
That said, I've always wondered if it would be possible to recover a job by editing the G-code. You can't just chop off the first half of the code, though. You need to know what layer the failure occurred on. You can't do that with an unattended job, but if it was a table bump or something else that you noticed, you could pause the job and note the layer it is on. Theoretically, you would have to remove all of the code from the start of the actual job (after wait until heaters are at temp and check end-stops) to the code beginning at the layer your part failed on. Very, very tricky, not guaranteed to work and, probably, not going to work. At best, it will leave a funny layer mark in your part. I'd give it a 10% chance of success. Otherwise, it would be common practice! If anybody has successfully done this, please chime in.
As for stopping a job and restarting it, you can probably do this given a couple of conditions. First, you can't be running your job of an SD card. It needs to be from a computer that you can keep running, or, possibly...maybe....you can put it into sleep or hibernate mode. Not sure. Anyway, you can pause the job with the program, power down the printer and leave the program thinking it is just paused. Then later you can power up the printer and resume (not restart) the job. I am not completely sure what affect disconnecting and reconnecting the printer will have, but I'd give 60-40 odds that your job will start up where it left off. You can try this with a tiny job to see if it works. Let us know if it does!
I don't know your situation but I'll give you a third, kind of convoluted option. Let your job run and finish, but have the system shut-off when it is done. Two ways to do this that I can think of.
First and potentially simplest way is to use the "external command when done" option in Pronterface/Printrun and possibly other control programs. Buy one of those master/slave power strips and plug your computer into the control outlet and the printer into one of the slave ones. Then program "shutdown" as the "when done" command for your Windows computer or the similar command if using a Mac. When the command is run, the computer will shutdown and the power strip will power off anything else attached including the printer. I use that external command to run a sound when the job is done. Works OK most of the time.
The other option is way out there and involves some wiring, some coding, an Arduino and a relay shield. It's late, so this is waaay out there. If your printer returns to a home position, add an extra relay switch to your printer at that home. (they stack nicely). Wire that to the Arduino and the relay shield to printer power. Write or borrow some simple code that let's you push a trigger button and then the next time the home relay switch is triggered, trip the relay and power down the printer. Stupid and complicated perhaps, but not that tough if you know your way around an Arduino. tchnically, you could do this WITHOUT the Arduino, just two relay switches....one to arm and one to trigger. OK, never mind, just ignore this part.
OK, I hope this helps....at least the first part.
In general, if a job fails midway through the job, the part is lost. I have lost more 10 hour robotics parts on overnight jobs than I care to think about because of bad filament, a failed pulley bearing, a loose wire, whatever. There's nothing worse then looking at the printer in the morning and seeing half a part or a part that is off-axis half way through.
That said, I've always wondered if it would be possible to recover a job by editing the G-code. You can't just chop off the first half of the code, though. You need to know what layer the failure occurred on. You can't do that with an unattended job, but if it was a table bump or something else that you noticed, you could pause the job and note the layer it is on. Theoretically, you would have to remove all of the code from the start of the actual job (after wait until heaters are at temp and check end-stops) to the code beginning at the layer your part failed on. Very, very tricky, not guaranteed to work and, probably, not going to work. At best, it will leave a funny layer mark in your part. I'd give it a 10% chance of success. Otherwise, it would be common practice! If anybody has successfully done this, please chime in.
As for stopping a job and restarting it, you can probably do this given a couple of conditions. First, you can't be running your job of an SD card. It needs to be from a computer that you can keep running, or, possibly...maybe....you can put it into sleep or hibernate mode. Not sure. Anyway, you can pause the job with the program, power down the printer and leave the program thinking it is just paused. Then later you can power up the printer and resume (not restart) the job. I am not completely sure what affect disconnecting and reconnecting the printer will have, but I'd give 60-40 odds that your job will start up where it left off. You can try this with a tiny job to see if it works. Let us know if it does!
I don't know your situation but I'll give you a third, kind of convoluted option. Let your job run and finish, but have the system shut-off when it is done. Two ways to do this that I can think of.
First and potentially simplest way is to use the "external command when done" option in Pronterface/Printrun and possibly other control programs. Buy one of those master/slave power strips and plug your computer into the control outlet and the printer into one of the slave ones. Then program "shutdown" as the "when done" command for your Windows computer or the similar command if using a Mac. When the command is run, the computer will shutdown and the power strip will power off anything else attached including the printer. I use that external command to run a sound when the job is done. Works OK most of the time.
The other option is way out there and involves some wiring, some coding, an Arduino and a relay shield. It's late, so this is waaay out there. If your printer returns to a home position, add an extra relay switch to your printer at that home. (they stack nicely). Wire that to the Arduino and the relay shield to printer power. Write or borrow some simple code that let's you push a trigger button and then the next time the home relay switch is triggered, trip the relay and power down the printer. Stupid and complicated perhaps, but not that tough if you know your way around an Arduino. tchnically, you could do this WITHOUT the Arduino, just two relay switches....one to arm and one to trigger. OK, never mind, just ignore this part.
OK, I hope this helps....at least the first part.