Ultimaker 3 suddenly no display and unresponsive button

[peteruithoven 4]

Out of nowhere the display remains black when turning on my Ultimaker 3. The rotary button does not light up. Even after 4 minutes nothing happens. Clicking the rotary button does not trigger a sound.
I do notice when I turn it on a fan briefly spins and a red light turns on on the bottom near the LAN port.

I can't find it on my local network (It's connected over ethernet).

Nothing special happened before this happened. I've used the machine a few days before without any issues.

 

I didn't find any related topics on this forum.

 

I've never done this before, but I've removed the panels on the bottom too see whether there was something weird going on.

I notice that on the bigger PCB there is also a green light on, next to "NC".

 

 

I'm in contact with UltiMaker support, who advised reinstalling the firmware following Firmware recovery: Ultimaker 3.
I've tried this, but the leds don't respond as expected, not like the 3 possible states described in the manual.
At the beginning I'm turning on the Ultimaker, after ±9 seconds Led 1 blinks (but not really slowly). Led 2 and 3 just stay on, even after many more minutes. See video:

 

The display indicates that it's installing firmware, and that there are 2 minutes remaining, but even after 15 minutes there is no change. The display stills shows this message, led 1 is off, led 2 and 3 remain on. At least we know the display itself still works.

 

I tried redownloading the .img file, using a different micro SD card writer, I used a different micro SD card.
I'm running a Linux distro (Ubuntu derivative), so I couldn't use Win32 disk imager tool or the ApplePi-Baker app. I used Balena Etcher, which is a super common way to flash SD cards.

 

it's like it's stating with the firmware install, but doesn't finish and without going into an error mode where the leds would blink fast.

 

I have some software development and some electronics experience so I'm happy to do some more digging.

Edited February 19, 2023 by peteruithoven

[jordyR 2]

hi, i have just the same issue today. i contacted ultimaker support and i wil try this firmware recovery. did you find the problem yet on your printer? i wil update my progress later on

[gr5 2,271]

Are there any lights on under there?  It could be:

1) The power cable isn't fully plugged in - it's a little tricky and sometimes it feels like it's plugged in but it isn't

2) The power brick may have failed

 

Another common thing is that the flash memory gets corrupted on the olimex board (red board) and it won't fully boot.  This indeed can often be fixed with a firmware recovery if you use a new enough firmware (which repartitions the flash memory).

 

If you don't mind spending some time fixing this, look on the red board for 3 connections - 3 pins sticking up labelled something like I,O,G  (for in, out ground - or maybe SRG for send, receive, ground - I forget exactly).  If your red board has those then you can get the olimex "serial cable F", hook it up and see diagnostics, see the boot, and even log into the root account if boot fails and repartition the internal flash memory yourself. Much more info here:

 

http://gr5.org/unbricking/

 

 

[jordyR 2]

50 minutes ago, gr5 said:

Are there any lights on under there?  It could be:

1) The power cable isn't fully plugged in - it's a little tricky and sometimes it feels like it's plugged in but it isn't

2) The power brick may have failed

 

Another common thing is that the flash memory gets corrupted on the olimex board (red board) and it won't fully boot.  This indeed can often be fixed with a firmware recovery if you use a new enough firmware (which repartitions the flash memory).

 

If you don't mind spending some time fixing this, look on the red board for 3 connections - 3 pins sticking up labelled something like I,O,G  (for in, out ground - or maybe SRG for send, receive, ground - I forget exactly).  If your red board has those then you can get the olimex "serial cable F", hook it up and see diagnostics, see the boot, and even log into the root account if boot fails and repartition the internal flash memory yourself. Much more info here:

 

http://gr5.org/unbricking/

 

 

Your suggestion is good but i already checked the power supply this is ok. You don't see lights on my photo but they are present 👍. On mainboard is green led and on olimex board is one Red light not far from lan port. Just like the post of Peteruithoven

[gr5 2,271]

Did you see the 3 posts/pins on or near the red board?  I think there is a photo on my web page.

[jordyR 2]

i installed the image firmware on a SD, insirt it in ultimaker and now the display showing mesage on photo. only it does remain 2 minures. not realy knowing what to do now? maybe an other SD?

[SCA_B 10]

I have the same issue - I'll try tomorrow the recovery route- anyone of you guys got it working again?

[jordyR 2]

3 hours ago, SCA_B said:

I have the same issue - I'll try tomorrow the recovery route- anyone of you guys got it working again?

Stil stuck on the 2 min remaining screen to try and recover the firmware 

[gr5 2,271]

I got my S5 working again after it had bad blocks on the flash memory aka the "hard drive".  I had to manually repartition and reformat it but the newer recovery images do that for you.

 

The bad blocks are noticed.  They are mapped.  So they are locked away to never be seen again but you have to recreate any damaged files or partitions.  So this is a good process to make your printer last for years longer.

[gr5 2,271]

If stuck on the 2 minute remaining for more than 5 minutes power cycle the printer.

[jordyR 2]

6 minutes ago, gr5 said:

If stuck on the 2 minute remaining for more than 5 minutes power cycle the printer.

Power cyceling the printer means? Turning off and on again? Because i tried that like 3 times

[gr5 2,271]

Yeah I'd try to look at the boot log meaning I would try to figure out how to get a serial cable hooked up so I could watch it boot.  But I'm cheap.  If the printer is under warranty you can get them to send you a new linux board.  If the printer is not under warranty but it's a company printer you can have the company pay for a new linux board.

[jordyR 2]

46 minutes ago, gr5 said:

Yeah I'd try to look at the boot log meaning I would try to figure out how to get a serial cable hooked up so I could watch it boot.  But I'm cheap.  If the printer is under warranty you can get them to send you a new linux board.  If the printer is not under warranty but it's a company printer you can have the company pay for a new linux board.

It's my personal printer and its not in warranty. So this recovery firmware need to work!

[SCA_B 10]

I'm also stuck at the 2 minute mark...Ultimaker really needs to help here

[gr5 2,271]

You can contact various support people including the people at fbrc8 who assemble the USA printers or the people in The Netherlands who are also experts.  They will most likely all tell you the same thing: you need a new Olimex board  - the smaller assembly of red boards.

 

I can see that fbrc8 sells them for $371 (USA sales only).  Buying these outside of USA will be a similar price:

https://fbrc8.com/collections/ultimaker-3-spare-parts/products/olimex-board-um3

 

I'm just trying to give you a cheaper solution.  Anyway it doesn't hurt to open a ticket with fbrc8 if you are in USA or directly with Ultimaker if you are outside USA but I think they will just tell you to replace that board which I'm sure will indeed fix the problem.

 

If you have hundreds of hours of time and are good with software you could deconstruct the image that goes on the SD card and look at all the code.  You can see the part where it says "2 minutes left" which I'm 90% sure is a static message and isn't the actual time but a guess of how much time is left.  You can see what operations are going on at that point.  I strongly suspect at that point it is trying to copy all the firmware from the uSD card onto the "hard drive" of the Olimex and it's getting fatal errors.  I could be wrong - it might be doing other things like initializing the wifi card or something.

 

My suspicions are based on experience with other UM3 and S5 printers which also have Olimex computers with SSDs that seem to fail a few blocks after some time and which usually can be restored by repartitioning and reformatting.   But there are many other possible failure modes.

[gr5 2,271]

3 hours ago, SCA_B said:

I'm also stuck at the 2 minute mark...Ultimaker really needs to help here

From their perspective, you have bad blocks on your Olimex and it needs replacing.  End of story.  My perspective is different.

[gr5 2,271]

Looking at the photo of the olimex board on the fbrc8 website I see next to the ethernet connector it says "UART0".  Next tot he writing I see 3 black things that look like connectors or something.  Maybe they face the other direction or maybe they are female connectors and you need the "serial cable M"  (F is female, M is male).

 

UART is another way to say "serial port".

 

Somewhere on here there is likely a way to access the serial port as this is helpful for Ultimaker firmware engineers.

[gr5 2,271]

So this first picture is from Olimex - it's their lime2 product line and it's the closest I could find to the one in the ultimaker by far - the other boards are just completely different:

 

And here is the board on the fbrc8.com website:

 

Note that the two white connectors at the bottom of the UM version are over an area that says "USB" and in the olimex lime2 it has 2 metal connectors that look like USB connectors.  In the UM version on the bottom right are 3 holes and a white outline.  On the lime2 there is a power connector mounted there.  On the top of the UM board from left to right is a micro USB, then an hdmi connector.  UM version has the same micro usb and then an empty spot labelled hdmi so they simply never loaded the connector but it has hdmi capability there.

 

So this is a similar board but it has some key differences.  But here's the thing!  On both boards next to the ethernet connector are 3 pins.  On the lime2 board it says "DBG1" (debug 1) and clearly has 3 male pins sticking up.  On the UM board it's harder to see - I don't see pins sticking up.  What do you have there on your boards?  Anyway that is where you connect the serial cable.

 

The serial cable gives you complete control - you can watch it try to boot up, you can see all the messages, once it fails you can log into the computer as root and look at things.  Execute commands.  Reformat, repartion, etc.  most implortantly you can see exactly what it was doing when it crashed and you can see fatal and non fatal errors.

 

[gr5 2,271]

In this image you can see which pin is rx, tx and gnd:

[gr5 2,271]

There's a thriving community of Olimex lime2 users out there with active forums and tons of helpful advice about, well, everything Olimex related.  There are other versions of linux you can install (I've done it) you can install all kinds of software on your olimex.  It won't hurt your printer - the printer just won't do anything.

[SCA_B 10]

I figured out the same thing -I also think it's hidden behind the LAN port



I ordered a serial to USB cable today and hope I can save some 300 Euros that way.
What software do you use for the serial connection - Arduino?

thanks for your page and the time you invested in solving this particular problem 

[jordyR 2]

33 minutes ago, SCA_B said:

I figured out the same thing -I also think it's hidden behind the LAN port



I ordered a serial to USB cable today and hope I can save some 300 Euros that way.
What software do you use for the serial connection - Arduino?

thanks for your page and the time you invested in solving this particular problem 

I wil look into this new information thatgr5 shared. Same as you sca_b i would like to save 379 euro's . This printer is old but gold, not really knowingen that they expence is worth it.

[jordyR 2]

1 hour ago, gr5 said:

In this image you can see which pin is rx, tx and gnd:

I Found the pins on my board, i have to look at this wel i'm done working.

[gr5 2,271]

Okay so there is a LOT of information at gr5.org/unbricking

 

I describe what software I use and the problems I had getting the software working the first time.

 

You can also google "olimex serial cable f" and "software" and "mac" or "windows" or whatever and there are helpful people out there.

 

Please look at my website.  I spent many hours creating it and got feedback from people such as yourselves and updated it many times.  Unfortunately it's a bit of a mess but I have cleaned it up a few times so it's not too too bad.  I explain what to look for when it boots.  How I managed to examine the partitions, discover which partition doesn't mount, reformat, still doesn't mount, repartition, reformat, get things working, finally get the install to work.  Issues other people had.  Comments from Ultimaker experts.  And so on.

[jordyR 2]

Just now, gr5 said:

Okay so there is a LOT of information at gr5.org/unbricking

 

I describe what software I use and the problems I had getting the software working the first time.

 

You can also google "olimex serial cable f" and "software" and "mac" or "windows" or whatever and there are helpful people out there.

 

Please look at my website.  I spent many hours creating it and got feedback from people such as yourselves and updated it many times.  Unfortunately it's a bit of a mess but I have cleaned it up a few times so it's not too too bad.  I explain what to look for when it boots.  How I managed to examine the partitions, discover which partition doesn't mount, reformat, still doesn't mount, repartition, reformat, get things working, finally get the install to work.  Issues other people had.  Comments from Ultimaker experts.  And so on.

Thx we wil try to find a solutions thx for all your feedback already.