OctoPrint first layer issues among other print oddities

Apologies on any poor descriptions, I am really new to 3D printing.

One thing that I would like to note is that OctoPrint seemed to be doing perfectly fine since I got my printer a few months ago. It seems like this started happening since the last OctoPrint update, not sure if that is coincidental but that is something that I would like to note right off the bat.

What is the problem?

OctoPrint seems to be causing random initial layer height and other printing artifacts. See the image below in the next section to see, the print on the left is the one from OctoPrint, both the initial layer and the support structures seem to be printed significantly worse, the actual object seems fine.

What did you already try to solve it?

Tried looking at the gcode to see if I could find any anomalies between gcode that seemed to print fine and that which didn't (nothing jumped out at me), I tried different slicer settings and manually re-leveling bed (this caused my hot end to push into my print bed and drag around the surface :frowning: ). The reason I tried re-leveling the bed was because it seemed that the initial starting height was almost doubled. The thing that is really confusing me is that it seems almost random when I get the poor results from OctoPrint.

Finally I took gcode that was consistently printing poorly from OctoPrint and loaded the gcode to the SD card and printed directly from that (with my raspberry pi disconnected from the printer) and it printed perfectly (relative to my results from OctoPrint). So I am at the point where I think it has something to do with OctoPrint, but I am not certain.

In the image below is the EXACT same gcode for both prints, the print on the left was from OctoPrint the one on the right was from the SD card.

I want to emphasize, depending on the gcode, OctoPrint sometimes gives me comparable results to printing from the SD card. The above image does not represent all my prints from OctoPrint.

Have you tried running in safe mode?

Yes, at first this seemed to work, but then eventually (randomly) the started printing strangely again (with the same gcode).

Did running in safe mode solve the problem?

No.

Systeminfo Bundle

octoprint-systeminfo-20210629040053.zip (19.9 KB)

Additional information about your setup

OctoPrint version -1.6.1
OctoPi version - Version 0.18.0, running on Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.1 (Wifi connection)
Printer - Ender 3 Max (no automatic bed leveler), Stock minus Raspberry Pi
Board - V 4.2.2
Firmware (I was have not changed this since I got the printer) - 1.0.1.8
Browser (that I am using to interface with OctoPrint) - Brave
Operating System (that I am using to interface with OctoPrint) - Win 10 21H1 (19043.1052)

Hello @TTfG !

It seems, you have a bit messy USB connection to the printer:

2021-06-27 19:54:33,839 - octoprint.util.comm - INFO - Got a resend request from the printer: requested line = 636, current line = 641
| Last lines in terminal:
| Recv: ok
| Send: N634 G1 X149.977 Y158.896 E8.84461*106
| Recv: ok
| Send: N635 G1 X149.565 Y158.69 E8.85725*94
| Recv: ok
| Send: N636 G1 X149.318 Y158.541 E8.86516*111
| Recv: echo:Unknown command: "€ÍøT•¿ÿ¾ÿ®ÿܽ·Ví¿ø=‚À	"
| Recv: ok
| Send: N637 G1 X148.886 Y158.66 E8.87746*85
| Recv: ok
| Send: N638 G1 X148.376 Y158.717 E8.89154*100
| Recv: ok
| Recv: echo:Unknown command: ""
| Recv: ok
| Send: N639 G1 X147.863 Y158.695 E8.90563*102
| Recv: echo:Unknown command: "¡øe€Ï÷)	"
| Recv: ok
| Send: N640 G1 X147.486 Y158.618 E8.91619*101
| Recv: Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 635
| Recv: Resend: 636
2021-06-27 19:54:33,853 - octoprint.util.comm - INFO - Ignoring resend request for line 636, that still originates from lines we sent before we got the first resend request
2021-06-27 19:54:34,242 - octoprint.util.comm - INFO - Got a resend request from the printer: requested line = 646, current line = 654
| Last lines in terminal:
| Send: N646 G1 X146.294 Y159.984 E8.97349*106
| Recv: ok
| Send: N647 G1 X146.322 Y160.099 E8.97673*100
| Recv: ok
| Send: N648 G1 X146.363 Y160.611 E8.99083*111
| Recv: ok
| Send: N649 G1 X146.324 Y161.123 E9.00492*111
| Recv: ok
| Send: N650 G1 X146.202 Y161.638 E9.01944*104
| Recv: echo:Unknown command: "šßÎéÿ/ÌE"
| Recv: ok
| Send: N651 G1 X145.912 Y162.531 E9.0452*82
| Recv: echo:Unknown command: "4 Y159.984 E8.97349"
| Recv: ok
| Send: N652 G1 X145.716 Y163.006 E9.0593*87
| Recv: echo:Unknown command: "/ýÅʼn@…"
| Recv: ok
| Send: N653 G1 X145.448 Y163.444 E9.07339*109
| Recv: Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 645
| Recv: Resend: 646

Check for the USB cable: as short and thick as possible with ferrite beads on it.
Also check the cables on your printer:

2 Likes

@Ewald_Ikemann Thank you for the suggestions! I will try these out and report back.

@Ewald_Ikemann So far things are looking a lot more consistent, I am going to do a bit more testing and will swing back around after that.

2 Likes