S3 Calibration Issue (nozzle offset probe failed)

[mkentisaacs 0]

My place of work has 3 Ultimaker S3s, often running simultaneously on different projects. However, routinely at least 1 of the machines will consistently fail to calibrate, most often "nozzle offset probe failed". I've run every possible diagnostic, cleaned the plate, bed, and nozzles, to no avail. This happens just about every day, to the point where I feel that our rate of failure is outside of the norm for such expensive machines.

My question is: is it possible that the machines are interfering in some way with each other? I have read that the printers have inbuilt measures to account for capitative sensor interference, but at this point I can't think of anything else that may be causing these problems.

Thanks for any and all replies.

[gr5 2,172]

So the difference in nozzle height of the left core versus the right core (when down) should be 1.5mm+/- 0.7mm.  It could be that you are right on the edge.  Or it could be failing by a lot.  I would look at the logs.  If you look in the log file you can see exactly what the printer measured for the left and right cores.  This is from an old log file below - you can get these many ways - one way is to insert a USB flash drive and there is an option (I think in maintenance menu) to dump all the log files to the USB.  These log files on your printer will typically have the last few days (weeks?) of data.  You can very quickly locate just the "active level" portions by searching through the files for the word "peak" and "Preliminary" as shown here:

Quote

geo@geo-Wild-Dog-Pro:~/ultimaker/logs oct28 2020$ grep peak ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c.5.7.2.boot0.log
Oct 29 00:13:45 ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c python3[1166]: 2020-10-29 00:13:45,662 INFO     probingController Found peak @ 8.623
Oct 29 00:13:59 ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c python3[1166]: 2020-10-29 00:13:59,315 INFO     probingController Found peak @ 7.173
geo@geo-Wild-Dog-Pro:~/ultimaker/logs oct28 2020$ grep Preliminary ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c.5.7.2.boot0.log
Oct 29 00:13:59 ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c python3[1166]: 2020-10-29 00:13:59,507 INFO     probeResultValidationStep Preliminary z offset for second nozzle: 1.45

Actually first search for "height difference between nozzles is too large" as that is the message that occurs right when the error happens.  Write down the date and time and *then* search for "peak" and "Preliminary" and look to see if even the passing tests *almost* fail.

 

So if it almost fails everytime and only fails by a tiny bit then your active leveling sensor is probably fine and you have other issues - maybe you need to regrease the core where it fits into the holder or maybe your cores are different heights!

 

If it fails by a huge amount then maybe it is failing the lift switch change (unlikely as you would probably have many other errors if you did 2 filament prints?).

 

First lets narrow the problem down to "only fails a little" to "fails by a lot".

[gr5 2,172]

If they are failing by a LARGE amount then yes, they could definitely be interfering with each other.  But I doubt it as Ultimaker and lots of places have these printers side by side. Interference goes down by the square of distance so if you can move them such that they are just 10% farther apart that might be plenty to make the problem go away.  Again - this is why you want to know if they are only slightly failing (probably one core somewhere is the wrong length) or if they fail by a lot.