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Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.


stolowma

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Posted (edited) · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

Greetings,

I'm pretty new to the 3D printing world and have an Ender 3 Pro. I want to print with another filament at a certain layer. I tried the "filament change" which didn't work but some research showed the firmware doesn't support that command. I've been trying the "pause at layer" command and it works but does some strange, to me anyway, things. It will reach the layer, moves off and parks at the the X and Y coordinates and retracts the filament and pauses but only for about 15 seconds. It then moves back to the print, loads the filament, retracts the filament, reloads the filament and starts printing. This usually leaves a blob on the print. I've attache the portion of the Gcode and the Cura settings.

TIA

(Edit) One more thing, how can I purge the first filament before resuming the print?

 

Cura pause Capture.JPG

Gcode Capture.JPG

Edited by stolowma
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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    I have the same setup but my E3Pro is about 18 months old and has the 1.1.5 board.  M0 works as it should.

    The new Creality firmware seems to be missing quite a bit of the commands that it supported when it was still Marlin.  M0, M1, M117 are no longer supported and now a poster here says that his Ender 6 does not support G4 (which was the main workaround for pausing).

    The first thing to do I think is to make up your own little gcode file.  Use any text editor.  This is just to test if M0, G4, and M117 work.  You can paste it into a new text file and save it as *.gcode and then print it.

     

    G28 ;Auto Home all axes.

    M0 ;Unconditional stop which is supposed to leave a message on the LCD "Click to resume".

    G28 ;Auto Home

    G4 S30 ;Dwell (pause) for 30 seconds.  If it works you cannot manually restart and must wait for the full 30 seconds.

    M300 ;Loud annoying beep

    G28 ;Auto Home

    M117 All Done ;Leave a message on the LCD screen

     

    If the G4 command works, you can enter it in the Pause At Height "gcode after pause" box as G4 S300.  That will stop the printer for 5 minutes at the end of which time it will take off and go back to work.

     

    I don't bother with the Automatic retraction and prime that Pause At Height provides.  When my printer pauses I yank out the filament by hand and then feed the next color in.  Slow constant hand feeding will purge the previous color.  Changing from any color to white takes a bit.  When that is done I push a little more and then pull back about 3mm of filament.  That hand retraction keeps a blob from marring the print at the restart point.  Then it's ready for me to grab the booger with the tweezers and hit the button to resume.

     

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.
    9 hours ago, GregValiant said:

    M0, M1, M117 are no longer supported and now a poster here says that his Ender 6 does not support G4

    Don't you just love when printer manufacturers cripple open source firmware for no apparent reason?

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    Thanks GregValiant,

    I ran the gcode and the printer auto homed twice, paused for 30 sec., beeped annoyingly and said all done. So you were right obviously M0 doesn't work. I'll try your technique on some test prints. 

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    @stolowma it sounds like a plan.

     

    Thank you @ahoeben for the nice lead-in to this weeks "Greg's Sunday Rant".

    I never would have expected Creality would butcher it like that.  Steal it yes, butcher it no.

    It is so dumb that I find it mind boggling.  Mechanically they make decent machines.  Being total bottom-end printers - some of the components are very poor (the 4 fans lead the list followed closely by the hot end) but once adjusted and trued up they print quite well.  Failure rate on the fans is high and they all need to be replaced in a month or two.  The hot end will become unusable shortly after that.  I know they try to hit a price point but for the (mostly) young target-market (many of whom seem to have no mechanical ability) it must be very disheartening.

     

    On a lark, I bought a 32 bit replacement board for my Ender 3 Pro.  I have powered it up via the USB and sent commands to it so I could view the responses.  From what I can easily check - it has the same lack of support for any command that sends a message to the display.  I found that G4 is enabled but G2/G3, M0/M1 and M117 are not.  Without doing the full install into the printer I can't really check any further.  Right now I consider it one step above useless.  Any competent machine designer knows that everything rests on the controls, and Creality has made a decision to emasculate their controls.  Amazing.

     

    The 8 bit board currently in my printer works fine and I have no intention of actually installing the 4.2.7 board until I get around to taking Firmware 101 so I can address all the shortcomings.  My plan is to adjust "real" Marlin into what I currently have on my 8 bit board plus (hopefully) enable G60 and G61.  Maybe by Christmas I'll have "GregWare v1" ready to install.  Maybe it will even work!

     

    As a Windows user my personal Rule #2 is "Never upgrade an operating system".  There is always something that doesn't get the memo and leaves a computer at least crippled and at the worst, dead.  In this case I won't mind violating the rule since I will have a working board to fall back on.

    I can't imagine that HP, Dell, Sony, Asus, etc., would sell a computer that immediately needed a new operating system and maybe even a different mainboard.  Ridiculous.

     

    That's the end of todays Rant.  Time for another cup of coffee.  

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    I swore I wouldn't do any major mods to this thing until I had it tweaked and learned more about the whole process but now this has me thinking of different firmware. The only mods aside from some printed stuff like filament guides the only thing I've replaced is the bed springs and the plastic extruder. After reading the problems people had I replaced them before I even turned it on for the first time. 

    As far as your rant 🙂 I worked in engineering for several years dealing with both our Chinese plant and vendors. Great, intelligent, polite people and I loved working with them but sometimes they would make changes that had us shaking our heads in wonder.

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    I refuse to allow myself to grab anymore Creality firmware.  Until I've gone to school and figured out the basics for myself I'll let it go.  My printer works fine.

     

    If you get the G4 workaround to work and you can pause and change colors then I suggest that before jumping in and changing the firmware, you allow yourself to soak up a greater knowledge of:  Cura (or Prusaslicer, IdeaMaker, or whatever), your choice of design software, and gcode.  Learning to print and getting consistently good results is the end prize.  There are a lot of horror stories over on Reddit put up by people who followed someone else's advice and changed the firmware without a good idea of what they were doing.  I have no intention of adding myself to that list.

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.
    22 hours ago, GregValiant said:

    My printer works fine.

     

    Right - there's no need to rant.
    Creality printers are working great.
    Just replace electronics and firmware (Duet3D), all fans (Noctua), feeder (Bondtech) and hotend (E3D) - and you get a silent and reliable machine!
    😛

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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    Thanks @tinkergnome.  I forgot about the feeders.  Even in this day and age (where everything is a POS) a failure rate of 100% is truly impressive.

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    Posted (edited) · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    Yeah the firmware upgrade was just a flash in the pan along with all the other cool stuff I "have to have" like motherboard, glass bed, dual Z conversion, all metal hot end .......... Every so often I have to slap myself and get back to reality.

     I did easily get the pause to work by putting it in with Cura then editing the gcode by substituting in the G4 command for M0. That lets Cura handle all the stuff needed to properly get everything back what it needs to be to resume properly. Then do your manual retract and feed. Works like a charm. Also added a couple of annoying beeps.  😁

    Edited by stolowma
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    Posted · Ggode modification: Pause command acting strangely.

    I just came across this and had to laugh.

    For those who don't care to chase down other posts - a Creality customer opened up the box of his just delivered Ender printer and the extruder arm was already broken.  A new world record for MTBF of 00:00:00.0

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