Qidi Tech 1 Freezes Mid Print

I've been troubleshooting this for a little while. My Qidi Tech 1 will stop mid print with a screen indicating the print completed but with the extruder frozen in place somewhere on the print and the heaters still on. It will stop moving and stop extruding, but just sit there. This problem usually only appears on my longer prints (6-8 hrs into a print). Short prints complete just fine.


Steps I've taken so far:
1. Originally was using the FlashPrint software for slicing. I tried using S3D but still have the same results indicating its a hardware problem rather than a code problem.
2. I checked the integrity of the SD card and tried a different SD card with the same results. I also removed the SD card mid test print to see what the signature was in case there was a loss of connection with it causing this. The printer gives an error "SD card not present. Print terminated." which points to it not being related to an SD card problem.
2. I've replaced the motherboard thinking that was most likely, but it's continued with the new mother board.


My next thought is to try replacing some motor cables to see if there may be an inadvertent issue with a cable but I figured I see if anyone else has encountered this and how they resolved it? Any thoughts?


Thanks!

that is a weird one.

I'd have gone for the sd card - but if you've re-formatted it and tried a different one - not that.

The other obvious one would be the motherboard overheating - but doubtful it'd happen on 2 boards.

Check the cards are formatted with fat32 and NOT exfat.
Could still be that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

that is a weird one.

I'd have gone for the sd card - but if you've re-formatted it and tried a different one - not that.

The other obvious one would be the motherboard overheating - but doubtful it'd happen on 2 boards.

Check the cards are formatted with fat32 and NOT exfat.
Could still be that.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I went ahead and gave it a try and reformatted an 8GB SD Card as a FAT32 (it was before). I then re-attempted the print and got the same issue.

I had read about a similar issue on other printers where thye would freeze like this and some users had determined the problem was due to the board getting insufficient voltage and browning out. I double checked the voltage output from the power supply and unfortunately it's rock solid at 24V which is what the board is expecting.

have you contacted qidi ?
by all accounts their tech support is pretty good.

To follow up, I fixed the issue. It turns out that the Qidi will stop mid print on a corrupted file. I had done all the work to clear the Printer and SD card, but it didn't occur to me that the files I was copying to the SD card were somehow corrupted. I discovered about half the print was missing when I examined the actual lines of code. I re-sliced all of the files and re-attempted with the newly sliced files and did not have issues. That would explain why some prints worked and some did not (some were recently sliced compared to older files).


It was a simple fix, a bit embarrassing but wanted to follow up in case someone else encounters the issue. I appreciate the help!

yep, that would do it alright :-)