Simplify3D & Azteeg

[bpopilek]

Just as a FYI to anyone else out there that wants to use the Simplify3D slicing software with an Azteeg based printer, like the Eclips3D. I kept running into problems where a print would stop for no reason. Apparently from what I have read, Simplify3D adds hundreds to thousands of needless minuscule commands to the final gcode. I did find a very cool tool that is web based at THIS website. You upload your final gcode file to it, and it will remove all of the needless lines. I have had some models where it has deleted over 4000+ lines of junk code! Since I started using this, I have not had a single failed print. I have also been in touch with the Simplify3D support team, and I passed this along to them. So, hopefully it will get repaired in a future version of the software. Hope this helps someone else out who shelled out the big bucks for this sweet app!

[carlos]

Yeah I mentioned that on another post. Not sure why Simplify 3d team won't make a slight adjustment on their end. I've sent them an email as well.

[carlos]

Seems the cleaners aren't an exact fix. I've still been having theissue of stuttering/freezing at a certain point, due to this s3d bug. Seems might have to replace the firmware.

groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/smoothieware-support/simplify3d/smoothieware-support/2r0JLV3G5i8/Zu634sE2BwAJ

Arthur Wolf
10/2/15


Hello everybody.

This message is for anyone using S3D ( www.simplify3d.com/ ) in conjunction with a Smoothieware-based controller.

Several months back, a few users of Simplify3D have started reporting their Smoothieboard occasionally "froze" ( movement stops, heaters keep regulating temperature, panel stays responsible to input ).

After some investigation and ruling out other possible problems ( as we always do before to jumping to "it's a bug" ), it was determined that the problem only occurs with S3D ( no other slicer ) and Smoothieware ( no other firmware ), which is why we started referring to it as "the S3D bug" in the Smoothie community.

Debugging the problem was rendered extremely difficult by the fact that the bug is very complex to reproduce reliably ( some bugs are like that ). But with the help of the community, we were relatively quickly able to find out why the bug only occurred with S3D : simplify3D does not simplify high resolution models, resulting in uselessly high levels of detail in the G-code files ( long strings of moves up to 0.0002mm long are commonly found, which is 100 times smaller than some 3D printer resolutions ).
Other more mature slicers on the other hand do simplify the models, and so they are not concerned by this ( Slic3r lets you set the simplification resolution yourself but has a sane default, one user who changed the default reported this problem also ).
While rarely used to our knowledge, Kisslicer also does not simplify models and therefore is probably also subject to this problem.

With a lot of help from Leon Grossman, who had been able to reliably reproduce the problem, and was able to open a debugging session while the bug was occurring, we figured out why the bug only occurs with Smoothieware ( several edge cases related to floating point math and single-step movements, which do not happen unless insanely small movements are sent ).

Jim Morris devised some fixes for this bug in a separate branch ( github.com/wolfmanjm/Smoothie/tree/hack/s3d-fix-hack ). Leon has been testing it for many print-hours successfully, so we think it is time to ask the wider Smoothieware community to test these fixes, and tell us if for them also, they resolve the freezing problems.

I would like to emphasize that we have already proposed a possible fix for the community to test before, and while it did improve ( reduced the frequency of the problem ), it did not fix it completely. This was interpreted by some as claiming the bug was fixed but failing to actually fixing it, which is not what happened, we simply asked for the community's help in finding out if the fix was good or not, we did not claim it was a definitive fix.

This time again, we are not claiming this is 100% certain to fix the problem for everybody, but both our new understanding of the problem, and the testing that has been done so far, gives us very good confidence this could be definitively resolved. And so we ask for your help testing it.

If you want to help us test this fix, and in particular if you have ever experienced the freezing problem, here is the procedure :

1. Download the "firmware.bin" file attached to this message, or here : www.dropbox.com/s/yufuad7qj4e6ig4/firmware.bin?dl=0
2. Drop it onto your SD card
3. Reset the Smoothieboard. The file should be renamed to "FIRMWARE.CUR" automatically.
4. Use everything as normal
5. If the printer freezes, report here

Thanks a lot to all of you for all the help and support so far, thanks to all those who will test this.

We sincerely hope this is the end of the problems some of you have been experiencing. Hopefully S3D also fixes the problem on their end at some point, which would make things doubly nice.

A few more comments :

While this ( probably ) fixes the Smoothie "freezes" with S3D on high-resolution models, please note S3D still generates way too many tiny movements ( up to 100 times too many ), meaning Smoothie will have to slow down as it can't look ahead far enough to compute acceleration correctly. This is also a problem you should experience with other firmwares in this case, and is simply an effect of the uselessly high level of detail.
Please don't hesitate to ask S3D to fix this, a few of you have already but with little effect so far.

Also, we really would like to insist on something : it has been mistakenly claimed by some, presumably due to making assumptions about Smoothie rather than relying on actual experience/understanding, that this bug causes Smoothie to keep heaters fully powered, which would likely result in burning the hotend. We want to re-assure everybody that this is absolutely not the case. Not only was this never reported by users, but it also is completely inconsistent with the other symptoms that were observed. Our current better understanding of the problem also confirms this.
It was also mistakenly claimed by some that the bug was in some way USB-related : this too was completely inconsistent with the user reports, and it is now very clear it is not the case.

Happy printing everybody ! Any feedback, questions or criticism is very welcome.

Cheers.

I'm going to try this out and see if it clears up the issue more so then the cleaners.

[Rick]

Mar 24, 2016 4:04:48 GMT carlos said:

Seems the cleaners aren't an exact fix. I've still been having theissue of stuttering/freezing at a certain point, due to this s3d bug. Seems might have to replace the firmware.

I'm going to try this out and see if it clears up the issue more so then the cleaners.

I've been using S3d and I guess that I've been lucky? I've yet to have the "s3d bug" cause me any problems.. I'm running a December version of the edge branch. (edge-2163ccd Dec 28 2015)


How often do you have this crop up? 

[jjlink]

I was running the August 30th version of S3D-Fix-Hack that bpopilek had posted the link to; and was not having any lockup issues yet. Now I just loaded the October version from the dropbox link; and we will see how that goes.

[carlos]

You know I'm not sure which version I have on my machine. I haven't tried the latest as of yet or this fix. What I've noticed happen is that the extruder starts to click and stops extruding filament. So not sure if this is a stuttering of some sort or something else. It's pretty repeatable with different models. Even with the code cleaners this still happens.

[Rick]

Mar 24, 2016 20:23:43 GMT carlos said:

You know I'm not sure which version I have on my machine. I haven't tried the latest as of yet or this fix. What I've noticed happen is that the extruder starts to click and stops extruding filament. So not sure if this is a stuttering of some sort or something else. It's pretty repeatable with different models. Even with the code cleaners this still happens.

You can tell what version you have by sending the 'version' command in the gcode command window.

In repetier you have to send 'G1000 version' command.

[carlos]

Seems the version was somewhat recent.

Build version: edge-50a6ccf, Build date: Dec 11 2015 14:06:44,

Although I just checked and it seems they updated to a new one about 4 days ago. So I guess I'll try that out first. See if anything clears up. I have a file that I can reproduce this issue consistently.

In case anyone wonders what this issue looks like:

[Rick]

Post a link to that file I would like to give it a try and see what happens.

[carlos]

You can download the file here www.myminifactory.com/object/master-robot-693 

I printed it at a height of 55mm. It's quite small and will be difficult to print due to heating issues. But makes for a good test. If you really want to be successful with the print, duplicate the model so it cools off while the other one is printing.

[carlos]

So a quick and interesting development. I updated to the latest firmware and printed up my file that keeps failing. And it printed out just fine. Granted there was a bit of a heat issue near the hands. I did not get the dreaded clicking noise that was happening before. I'll keep trying out other files, but at this point I think whatever it might have been has been fixed with the latest firmware update.

[jjlink]

I am getting the clicking noise and failed prints. I thought it was because of the new nozzle setup I am using. Seeing your results it tells me it is more likely the S3D bug.

[carlos]

Interesting, I emailed Arthur Wolf who's been on this board before, he's the firmware developer. He wasn't sure, but thinks there has been one incident like this reported before. Seems to have been cleared up quickly.

Update to the latest firmware and give it a go. Still need to do a bit more testing, but it seems to clear up this bug. Which I believe is not related to the S3d bug.

BTW, made videos of what was happening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8PNG90LppM
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct6vRf0YyGE

[jjlink]

With the October 2ed firmware I just experienced a freeze-up during printing. I paused S3D moved the z-axis away, cleaned off the nozzle drip and then resumed the print. This is the first time I have seen this behaviour.

The clicking if your first video looks the same as I have been getting.

[carlos]

I tried another print today and of course got the click of death...  

The one thing that came to mind was that possibly the stepper driver might be overheating. I don't have any cooling on my board and it is hung vertically. I touched the heat sink and it was pretty hot. Also, there was a lot of heat emanating from the board, but not sure if that's within it's range. Going to add a fan pointed towards the heat sink and see what happens from there.