Yet another "Printer Disconnects Mid-Print" post

What is the problem?

My printer is stopping all my test prints approximately at the same height.

My printer is in the middle of a rebuild and all the cables are lying around, I've even terminated some new ones (like the 3DTouch to remove the Dupont connectors and use proper JST-XH) and made extensions (Z stepper and Y endstop).

This is how the insanity is looking like:


I also compiled a new bugfix-2.1.x Marlin to update my 4 year old firmware. Board is a SKR Mini E3 v1.2.

What did you already try to solve it?

  • I tried moving all the cables in a way that they don't cross with the USB cable.
  • I tried several USB cables.
  • I even dug out an OLD cable from a portable HDD that had a ferrite core.
  • Tried with and without my shoddy "USB filter" that only has D+ D- wired. (it's the blue box between the Pi and the cable shown in my pictures).
  • Did my tests late at night when no other electronics in the house are functioning to rule out EMI.
  • I read through Printer disconnect mid print and all the linked threads, that's why I tried many things to rule out EMI.
  • My new pancake stepper motor came with a heatsink so I attached it since it was getting kinda hot.

Have you tried running in safe mode? Did running in safe mode solve the problem?

Yes / No.


The one at the back is the one printed in safe mode.

Systeminfo Bundle

octoprint-systeminfo-20240703113226.zip (868.9 KB)

Additional information about your setup

Additional thoughs:

I honestly think it's the Marlin firmware "bugfix-2.1.x". I should probably try compiling the stable 2.1.x version or even 2.0.x and see what happens.

Contrary to what the name bugfix might imply, that's actually a development branch and build you have running there. So yes, I strongly suggest trying a stable release version instead.

FAQ for that:

From your logs:

2024-07-03 11:26:03,437 - octoprint.util.comm - INFO - Communication timeout while printing, trying to trigger response from printer.
2024-07-03 11:26:04,518 - octoprint.util.comm - ERROR - Unexpected error while reading from serial port
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pi/oprint/lib/python3.9/site-packages/octoprint/util/comm.py", line 4172, in _readline
    ret = self._serial.readline()
  File "/home/pi/oprint/lib/python3.9/site-packages/octoprint/util/comm.py", line 6931, in readline
    c = self.read(1)
  File "/home/pi/oprint/lib/python3.9/site-packages/serial/serialposix.py", line 595, in read
    raise SerialException(
serial.serialutil.SerialException: device reports readiness to read but returned no data (device disconnected or multiple access on port?)
2024-07-03 11:26:04,630 - octoprint.util.comm - ERROR - Please see https://faq.octoprint.org/serialerror for possible reasons of this.

FAQ for that:

Yeah... I think I'll just go ahead and make a new stable firmware, since I know none of the points in the "SerialException" list applies to me.

Thank you Gina for taking the time to answer! :slight_smile:

So an update on this.

I did go back to 2.0.x and also had a serial disconnection. In the logs I saw that it was related to MeatPack so I disabled it. Did some dry runs first and some actual test prints later and everything turned out fine. The quality was pretty good too! :smiley:

So I'm positive this can be resolved. Maybe in the future I'll try 2.1.x again now that I know what to look for.

Thank you!