[SOLVED] Having trouble with a Printrbot Simple Pro

AstroBox Troubleshooting
#1

I’m trying to set up a Printrbot Simple Pro to print with Astroprint. I’ve set up a Raspberry Pi with the latest Astrobox Image, v0.11(24). I also went through installed the firmware described here on the Printrbot and input the settings they provided for Cura into an Astroprint printer profile: https://printrbot.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000151583-Printing-via-USB-on-Cura-2-with-Your-Printrbot-Simple-Pro?mobile_site=true

The Astrobox is able to connect to astroprint.com. It’s also able to connect to the printer initially, but after sending a print and running through the initial bed leveling steps, the Printrbot seems to disconnect. Has anyone else had these problems with the Printbot Simple Pro (https://printrbot.com/shop/simple-pro-base-model/)?

#2

In order to see what might be going on, do this:

  1. Go to Settings -> Software -> Advanced in the Web UI
  2. Clear Logs
  3. Enable Serial Log
  4. Make the problem happen
  5. Take a look at logs at /var/log/astrobox/serial.log & /var/log/astrobox/astrobox.log

Alternatively you can send logs to us via that same screen and we can analyze.

#3

Thanks Daniel! After looking at the serial logs I think I found the problem. Looks like the start gcode that printrbot specifies for Cura uses the variable, material_print_temperature. Looking at the other Astroprint profiles, it looks like you guys use print_temperature. It looks like the calibration is still off, but the print started no problem. I’ll keep you posted with how the rest goes.

#4

It looks like it doesn’t understand what to do with M100.1 ({{g55z: -1.4}}). In the Gcode on the Astrobox I see that it was generated with Cura_SteamEngine 15.04.6. In the tutorial linked in the original post, it specifies needing the latest version of Cura 2. Any plans to update your slicer to a newer version of Cura?

#5

It’s replacing the the outer brackets, {}, with question marks. I manually removed the question marks and it works fine. It looks like the newer version of Cura allows you to escape brackets with an extra pair, but the current version that Astroprint is using gets confused and makes them question marks.

#6

I ended up writing a python script that monitors the /AstroBoxFiles/uploads folder for gcode with an M100 line with question marks in it and removes those question marks if it finds them. The script is setup as a service. It’s definitely a hack, but seems to be the only option until Astroprint adds a newer version of Cura for slicing. The script and service that I set up are here: https://github.com/AllwineDesigns/FixAstroprintGCode

#7

Thanks for this @CMBSTEAMlab, we are skipping Cura 2 and integrating Cura 3