Anycubic printer not starting a print?

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

Hi folks,

I went to fire up my Anycubic Mega S to print off a couple of small items for Mrs Doe. The printer fired up and sang its welcome song as usual and ran the fans. It displayed all the files on the SD card, but when I select any and press print, it does not start warming the bed or the nozzle as it normally does – it just sits there and does nothing. I can move the print head manually via the XYZ skew controls

I reloaded the SD card, then I wiped and reloaded the SD card several times.

I tried it about 10 times; switching off then on again, but it will not start a print.

The printer was very cold, having been in the garage – at +5°C. At one point it said “TO sensor unrealistic” or something. I cannot find out what the TO sensor is. I’ve put the printer indoors, but even when up to 14°C, it still isn’t playing.

 

Any thoughts?

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

condensation on the pcb or one of the connectors. Just moving it might have loosened a wire in a connector that is just pretending to be connected.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Starting with your words, John … a couple of iterations got me to a Google search for:

to sensor abnormal anycubic

… which found several videos on the subject

MichaelG.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

I remember this problem with my first 3D printer, which at that time lived in the garage. One day, I had exactly your symptoms – everything seemed ok but it would not print. When I read the code, I found that if the print head temperature was below some threshold, it treated that as a sensor error and would not print. Fix was to take the printer indoors!

[Engine BuilderParticipant @enginebuilder]

My Creality CR10 I had in the garage would not start if the temperature was below 6C. The screen displayed a screen wiht the info.

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

Well, I brought the printer indoors where it “heated” up to 13°C, but still no joy.

So I opened it up and disconnected and reconnected all the electrical multi connectors, one by one, as well as spraying contact cleaner into them.

This made the machine work again but only on one SD card, not the other. The other card I had erased a number of times, in case that was the problem, and I suspect that it is now formatted incorrectly for the printer. I can save a file from Cura onto it and read the G code in that file on the computer, but the printer cannot read the card.

Anybody know what format the Anycubic i3 Mega S printer expects the SD card to be in ? Cannot find that info yet in my searches.

 

 

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

I think I heard of a problem with Creality printers that if you deleted an early file on a card it thought all later files had also been deleted or some thing like that. Might be similar problem.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

Don’t know for sure, but I’d guess it needs to be formatted in FAT32.

Unless the printer itself has a formatting option, then use that.

Rob

[HowiParticipant @howi]

two basic formats for SD cards, FAT32 and exFAT depends on size of SD card.

A lot of 3d printers can’t use bigger than 32gb.

 

[Howi]

On Howi Said:

two basic formats for SD cards, FAT32 and exFAT depends on size of SD card.

 

Also NTFS and EXT4 but FAT32 is compatible with any system you are likely to come across so reformat it FAT32 and try again.

Russell

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

Hooray !! finally cracked it. It’s all working again. Thanks for the suggestions and help.

 

This all came about because although my Printer fired up and I could slew the print head and heat the bed and nozzle, the printer refused to start a print.

So I started fault finding, but I had no info. The printer was cold, and threw up a TO sensor error. Brought printer to a warmer place but still no joy, even after 24 hours.

So I went through all the internal electrical multi connectors, and disconnected and cleaned each one with contact cleaner. Now it recognised an old SD card. But not the new one……

In the meantime, I had erased the new SD card several times and recopied the Cura file onto it several times. The printer still would not read the new SD card. Very confusingly, if I put the SD card back into the MAC, it WOULD read the SD card, and I could see the file and all the G code, but the printer obviously couldn’t see it.

Then I learned that when you erase an SD card with Apple MAC disk utilities, it gets reformatted as well – didn’t know that. But what I also didn’t know is that the default MAC SD format is, unsurprisingly, an Apple MAC format. This was not recognised by the printer – it knew an SD card was in the slot, but would not read anything on it.

Once I realised about the formatting, I tried several formats for the SD card – there are five available in the MAC. The one called by Apple “MS-DOS FAT”, is the one that speaks the same language as the AnyCubic.

So now all is well, printer is behaving very well – all those multi connectors I took apart and cleaned has obviously helped as well, (I did them all, not only the SD reader multicore cable, but all the fans, extruder and stepper motor connectors as well, and it has made the machine much more responsive. It seems turbo-charged now compared to how it was. Clearly a bit of resistance had built up in the stepper motor drive connections).

Normally of course, one should only change one thing at a time when fault-finding, but I didn’t really have the luxury or the time for that, especially with no information to go on. Unfortunately, I created another problem by unknowingly reformatting the SD card into a format not recognised by the printer !!!

And, finally, what was so urgent that needed printing ?………..Ermmm, well…..it was some replacement plastic doll’s dummies for two of Mrs Doe’s old dolls that she wants to sell on eBay………………..Ho hum.

 

But I have learnt a lot, and rejuvenated my printer, so not entirely wasted time.

 

Oh, and the printer bottom plate had been fitted 180° the wrong way round, so underneath where there should have been vent slots for the fan which cools the stepper motor drivers; there was sold metal, starving the fan of air. I had to drill two new holes to fit the plate the right way round – the makers had obviously put the plate in the hole punch press the wrong way round.

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