Unresolved Printer doesn't cancel or pause when I tell it to

I've been noticing that when I tell my printer to pause mid-print it will pause in MatterControl, but the printer will not physically stop printing. This also happens when I try to cancel the print, it will take a good minute or two to actually stop printing, even if I close out of the software. Then after it stops printing, it doesn't return to its' home axis, it just stops right where it was. Any ideas?

 

Has to do with command buffering. The software sends commands, the board receives it, then this command is interpreted as movement. Usually there is quite a few commands in the buffer at any given moment.

Once you hit the Pause button the command is injected into the command stream and as soon as the board finishes all the other movement commands it will pause the print. This is normal operation for any printer.

For the cancel command, that's kinda strange, though it could be MatterControls way of handling cancels, similar to Pauses. Other software treats the cancel command more like a Kill command and shuts off.

The homing after a print is actually G-code. You can view this in the Ending Gcode in the slicer settings. Using the Stop command will not initiate any more G-code, thus it won't home.

 

Same with me, there is a few seconds of delay or longer when requesting a pause or cancel of a print. It seems to finish the layer it is on before stopping and returning home. But I am doing my prints currently from the computer without a sdcard.

I do have a question though. If you were to do an upgrade adding a LCD screen with a sdcard or using Octoprint with a raspberry pie as the "computer" allowing you to stop and start the prints and do everything without a computer plugged in from the start, would stopping and pausing still be delayed? I've used other brands of 3d printers that had a screen and never needed a computer to be plugged in to do anything after an sdcard was plugged in with the files it needed, , but for those when you hit pause or cancel they stopped almost instantaneously.

Is something different between how commands are handled between the different printers? Do take note that the other printers I used were Makerbot and FlashForge which do handle things a tad differently especially when exporting g-code to the printer. Does the conversion of g-code to .x3g file have anything to do with how fast the code can be interrupted and canceled?

 

Canceling with any software besides MatterControl has no delay. Pausing will, even while printing from SD. Though as mark says it's faster because there's less of a communication delay.

I'm pretty sure even on the replicator there's a moment before the pause is initiated, but as you said that's a totally different board and firmware so it's hard to compare. x3g is just a way to bundle G-code and add extra fluff like songs. It still operates on g-code

 

That is true. Thank you for the response. I may look into setting up my printer to run off a sdcard then, because like you guys said and from experience running off sdcards are much more smooth, more consistent and have quicker response time or no lag. I do like not having to convert the G-code though every time I want to print, it is way more efficient.

 

on repetier/ matter control, pause/cancel... both take their time to empty the buffer. Sometimes a ridiculously long time if you have a mechanical fault you're trying to abate. ... emergency stop.. that kills it instantly.. even from an sd card.

 

That's good to know. I'll keep that in mind when setting that up. Thank you for the reply and info defendermd!