Power Outage Disaster

[ShopGeezer 2]

I have printed an enclosure for an Arduino Uno successfully but had to make changes to the access holes for the USB and 12v connectors.  The second print was coming along nicely but when I checked it this morning there was a surprise waiting for me. The top part of the enclosure was offset from the bottom. I cudgeled my brain for reasons. Did Cura reboot the printer for some reason? Did my cad file contain a fatal flaw? Did the printer head or the bed skip on the drive belt?  As I mulled it all over my wife reminded me that the clocks were flashing this morning.  We live in the country and small power outages are common.  So the power went down, the laptop didn't care but when the power came on again the printer started but must have lost its reference to home. I'm impressed that the printer tried to keep going. I wonder if given our power situation a hefty computer UPS battery for the printer would work.  Most power outages here are short. 

[ShopGeezer 2]

Just looking at the photos now I am curious as to how the printer managed to print the top section of the enclosure at all. The whole thing is hanging out in space with no supports.  But the top is mostly there. What would have held up the first layers that were printed out in the open air?

[ShopGeezer 2]

I may have answered my own question.  The top part can stand on its own after I detached it from the main body. There is enough angel hair extruded below the top portion to support it. The first parts of the top piece are pretty rough but the top edge itself is fine. Interesting observation on support. It didn't take much to allow the printer to actually print the top piece. Maybe less support structure would work fine in some cases. 

[Smithy 1,144]

When you print over USB it could happen that Cura don't notice that the printer is away or rebooting. I guess if you print via SDCard then the printer had stopped after the reboot.

 

A UPS battery could work, but depends on the power usage of your printer (which should be not so much) and the capacity of the battery. If you have often such outages you should consider to try an UPS to be on the safe side.