10 seconds power cut, print lost...

[nettoyor767 0]

During a print of 23 days, about halfway there was a 10 seconds power cut.

Lost the print (it was already 11 days printing..) after cleanup restarted the print again...

My question is does the software of a Ultimaker S5 any way capable to communicate with a UPS?

So if there is any power cut, the ups takes over, send a signal to the S5 how will stop/pause the print in a proper way and wait until the power is back again and continu printing ?

[CarloK 205]

It must be very frustrating to have such a long print failing on a short power outage.

 

Even a cheap UPS can cover a 10 second power failure without the need for the S5 to stop the print. In Ultimaker we have discussed UPS features several times, but problem is the heated bed. When the heated bed cools down, then even a few degrees of temperature change can cause the object to detach. The heated bed is the largest power consumer in the printer, so when we want to prevent object detachment, then there is little power we can save by shutting down other parts of the printer. Implementing some intelligent communication between printer and UPS didn't seem to add real advantages, other than a check mark in the list of supported features.

 

Best approach seems to be to investigate the quality of the power system in your country and the duration of power outages. Then multiply your maximum power outage time by the approx. 200W consumed by an active printer to determine the required UPS capacity.

 

A high quality brand like APC sells multiple models covering half an hour outage for less than €100.

[Gero 54]

28 minutes ago, CarloK said:

In Ultimaker we have discussed UPS features several times, but problem is the heated bed. When the heated bed cools down, then even a few degrees of temperature change can cause the object to detach.

 

Just to add a thought of mine to this.

Eventho most users print on the glass bed, I believe most people still use some sort of adhesion solution for it (like glue, magigoo, etc.).

Wouldn't this still be able to resume the print even when cooled down a bit?

 

I never had a power outage, but I am just thinking. To have no "resume print" function results in a failed print EVERYTIME you have a power outage. To have this function would MAYBE (or sometimes) result in a failed print.

 

And another thought:

What if the printer could see how long the power outage was?

For like 10 seconds, the printer wouldn't even need to question the user. Just head up again for the last 5-10°C during initiating the printer and continue. For a longer break, head up the bed again, but ask for the user to confirm to continue in case the object did get loose.

 

(so many thoughts...)

[CarloK 205]

@Gero I agree that we can do more in software to resume a print after a power failure, but it's no trivial task. Given that the requested list of new features and bug fixes is large, we have to make decisions on where to put our priorities. Knowing that a cheap UPS will do a better task than whatever we can come up with in software, made us decide to give this feature a low priority. The resume feature might be implemented in a future release, but an UPS of €80 sounds like a more professional solution for a €3000+ printer than any stop gap we could come up with in software.