Talk me off the ledge, this is probably a bad idea...

[curious aardvark]

cool - you should also find that different brands of pla produce different quality prints.

But at least you're off the ledge :-)

[FLSUNNOTFUN]

I did it anyways. I updated from Marlin 1.1.6 to 2.0.x. I did so because I could not get the bed to level correctly. Whenever I would run the auto bed level it would never compensate for the bed being higher on one side than the other. Running some test prints now, seems to be working better.

[curious aardvark]

not a fan of marlin but picking up a amchine tomorrow that has version 2 and - apparently - will need some formware settings changed to make it run without ctahcing fire.
So that's my first priority lol

[FLSUNNOTFUN]

I've loaded and tried Marlin 2.0.x, 1.1.9 and 1.1.6 (what it originally had) Printing from an SD card, not connected to Octoprint or anything else it starts off great, with a very level and equally distributed first layer. After about 5 - 20 minutes it just stops in place and usually does not resume but sometimes it does. It does this with all three of the firmware versions I have tried. What causes this?

If it is something in the firmware, what is it usually attributed to? My firmware code has 0 errors and uploads just fine. I'm printing at 40 mm/s, nothing to fast that would outrun a 8 bit board. It also did stuff like this before I updated the firmware.

Is this why you're not a fan of Marlin? Is there a different firmware compatible with a Makerbase MKS GEN L V1 that you recommend?

If not the firmware could this be caused by some kind of EMI emanating from the power supply, motors...etc?

UPDATE:
I'm running 2.0.5.3 now. When printing from an SD card it runs fine without stopping or pausing (yet) but if I try using OctoPrint it stops early on in the print. The only thing I did different when editing the config file this time was I did not change the string names of the printer and person who edited it. I can't imagine this having anything to do with the problem I'm having since it's just a string that gets printed in the EEPROM outputs, but it's worth mentioning. Also, I spoke a little soon on the good bed level, when I tried printing something a little bigger I noticed an uneven first layer/skirt. No matter what firmware I use (even when it came from the factory before I tried any of this) the auto-leveling does not appear to compensate in the Z direction for the surface of the bed.