First print won't start

Hey everyone - I apologise in advance if this is answered anywhere else already, but the search function kept rejecting my terms as "too generic or common" or some such.

I have a pre-assembled ABS/PLA printer. Had to do a bit of prep work to get it running right - the bed was slipping (loose belt) and the Z-axis levelling gave me a touch of trouble. But I set it up to the letter of the instructions in the booklet and here in the forums (even when they conflicted. ;-)

Repetier is (evidently) working with the printer just fine - I have full 3-axis motion control, extruder temperature, and fan speed. (Haven't tested the bed temp yet, as my first print is PLA as recommended.) I also tested the extruder (pushed through perhaps 20cm of PLA by hand), so I know it's working.

The problem comes when I try to print. I loaded an STL, pre-heated the bed through the manual controls (as stated in the RoBo3D manual), waited for the extruder to reach 190 degrees, and pressed "Run Job".

It's been sitting now for more than an hour doing nothing. I thought perhaps there was a lot of pre-processing that might need to be done to prep it for printing, but now I'm thinking there's an actual problem. There's a blinking red LED inside the casing near the USB port (data in, I presume?), and I hear a slight clicking from inside that correlates with the flickering of the LED at about 5Hz, but no movement.

Repetier is communicating successfully with the printer, and the printer is responding; here's a snippet of the progress log:

18:54:21.359 : N4374 M105 *51
18:54:21.359 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:24.421 : N4375 M105 *50
18:54:24.421 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:27.484 : N4376 M105 *49
18:54:27.484 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.9 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:30.546 : N4377 M105 *48
18:54:30.546 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:22.0 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:33.609 : N4378 M105 *63
18:54:33.609 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.9 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:36.671 : N4379 M105 *62
18:54:36.671 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:39.734 : N4380 M105 *56
18:54:39.734 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.1 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:42.796 : N4381 M105 *57
18:54:42.796 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.9 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:45.859 : N4382 M105 *58
18:54:45.859 : ok T:190.1 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:40 B@:0
18:54:48.921 : N4383 M105 *59
18:54:48.921 : ok T:190.1 /190.0 B:21.9 /0.0 @:41 B@:0
18:54:51.984 : N4384 M105 *60
18:54:51.984 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:55.046 : N4385 M105 *61
18:54:55.046 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.9 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:54:58.109 : N4386 M105 *62
18:54:58.109 : ok T:189.8 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:47 B@:0
18:55:01.171 : N4387 M105 *63
18:55:01.171 : ok T:189.8 /190.0 B:21.7 /0.0 @:47 B@:0
18:55:04.234 : N4388 M105 *48
18:55:04.234 : ok T:189.9 /190.0 B:21.8 /0.0 @:43 B@:0
18:55:07.296 : N4389 M105 *49
18:55:07.296 : ok T:190.0 /190.0 B:21.9 /0.0 @:42 B@:0
18:55:10.359 : N4390 M105 *57

I still have manual control over the extruder within the program.

So now that you have my entire 3D printing life story in front of you... what am I doing wrong? Did I miss a step?

Thanks very much in advance for your help, and for all the great posts here on the forum.

 

Btb, here's a screen capture of Repetier, just in case there's something relevant I didn't include in my description.

 

This may be a stupid question but you did Slice the stl file, right?


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Not a stupid question at all. And that turned out to be key.

Slic3r apparently didn't like the model I was using at all... It failed completely every time, but the dialog went to the background, so I missed it. I pored over the logs and found this:

20:07:25.140 : No firmware response detected for sd action. Assuming success and continue.
20:07:25.140 : ok
20:07:25.140 : ok
20:07:25.140 : ok
20:07:25.171 : ok
20:07:26.234 : No firmware response detected for sd action. Assuming success and continue.
20:07:26.234 : Printjob finished at 1/14/2014 8:07 PM
20:07:26.234 : Printing Time:2s
20:07:26.234 : Lines Send:6

Repetier was 'assuming' that the print completed successfully, even though Slic3r hadn't sent it any g-code to print. Once I minimised some windows, I found the errors. I loaded a less complex part (an upgrade part for the filament feeder for the RoBo3D), and it printed it without any issue. I was being overly ambitious for my first print, I guess.

Is Skeinforge any more robust than Slic3r? I'm a bit surprised that it failed so completely.

 

It's not necessarily more robust. Slic3r is a newer slicing app than skeinforge. Have you upgraded to the latest version of slic3r? The one that comes with repetier is an older version. You can get the latest at http://slic3r.org/

The stl file may also be bad. You can use Netfabb Cloud service it repair it.


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That's very good to know! I have downloaded and installed the latest version. We'll see how it handles the file now...

I submitted another drawing to Netfabb for processing the other day, but it hasn't come back yet. Does it normally take a while to receive the re-worked file?

Thanks for all your help!

 

Just download the free version of Netfabb and you can view, measure, repair all of your .stl files within seconds. It's painless and quick. Good luck!