[glitch13]

If all Octoprint provided was the ability to print directly from Cura it would be worth it. Luckily it does much more than that.

The only downside I've found is I've lost the Ender 3 Pro's resume ability if the power goes out.

[blisterpeanuts]

I put my Prusa on a UPS, and was delighted to watch it just keep right on printing during a 10 minute power outage a week ago.

[walrus01]

Out of curiosity, did you measure the prusa's load on a kill-a-watt or similar while printing, before you put it on the UPS? I wonder what the load during printing is.

[abstract_put]

IIRC it's around 120W printing something like PLA. Obviously higher when heating (pretty much maxes out the PSU), and higher steady state when printing other polymers.

[justinclift]

Is that a measured amount, or a guess based upon the heating element?

Asking because if it's a guess, then the electronics + stepper motors need to be factored in too. :)

[abstract_put]

It was a measured amount at the outlet with a Kill a Watt style device, so including electronics, stepper motors, and PSU inefficiency. That said, I did it a year ago so I could easily be misremembering. I'm pretty confident it was < 150W printing PLA ~215°C with a 60°C bed.

[a254613e]

Yup, that's pretty consistent with my measurements. 210/60 temperatures: https://i.imgur.com/i1L5rwo.png Prusa MK3S, with enclosure.

[justinclift]

Cool, that's good info then. :)

[sgtnoodle]

Can't you just look at the power supply ratings? For example, 20A*12V would be 240W. Assume 80% efficiency, so 300W on the 120V side. Seems reasonable for an UPS designed to power a desktop.

[walrus01]

You can if you want an absolute maximum of what the thing can draw as a load, it'll be labeled, but very often the real world use of a thing with an AC to DC power supply is a very different wattage figure from what the power supply is theoretically capable of.

Such as having an ATX midtower size 'gaming' desktop PC with an 850W power supply, that might be measured at 350W at the wall under full CPU+GPU benchmark load.

[abstract_put]

There's a dramatic difference between max draw and how much energy it takes to keep everything at a given temperature. Particularly so if heating the bed to a high temperature for ABS or PC or whatever. Looking at the power supply rating you could easily be 2-3 times the average real power consumption, which is a big deal if you're trying to use battery back up.

[mdorazio]

I measured this previously on a Kill-a-Watt with a Prusa clona (Monoprice Maker Select v2). Heat-up sequence draws between 120-130W (heating both bed and hotend at the same time). Once at temp for PLA, it only draws around 80-90 average depending how many steppers are moving.

[jcims]

I tried it with the Ender 3 V2 and there is some kind of bandwidth issue that kept it from printing successfully. Exact same gcode worked great from sdcard, failed miserably via octoprint. I’m guessing it has to do with the available ports?

[luminiferous]

It might have to do with the USB buffer on the Ender. If the buffer is too small (e.g. 4 gcode commands or so) then when the buffer is filled with commands that execute very quickly, its possible for the printer to empty the buffer before new commands come down the pipeline from Octoprint. This causes the printer to stop the printhead sharply, which can cause quality issues on prints, or maybe even print failure if the sudden stop causes the print to detach from the bed.

[You can fix this if you're using Marlin](https://www.reddit.com/r/ender3/comments/btjk22/octoprint_is...), since Marlin allows you to configure the buffer size. Generally more buffer is better, but do be aware that increasing the buffer size will cause the printer to be less responsive to the "stop print" command on octoprint (since the printer will continue executing the commands that have been buffered).

[jcims]

Will give this a try thank you!!!

[alias_neo]

I've been using octoprint on my Ender3v2 from a Raspberry Pi 3B and I've never had such an issue in almost a year.

I use Marlin 2.0.1-bugfix branch for firmware because stock creality lacks some useful GCodes (such as for print pausing) but otherwise I did nothing special.

I'm also using OctoDash (https://github.com/UnchartedBull/OctoDash) on the Pi which is mounted onto the printer with the Raspberry Pi 7" touch screen (https://i.imgur.com/p8Mf5Em.jpg) and removed the stock screen.

[jcims]

Per comment from luminiferous sounds like i need to try the Merlin firmware as well. Thanks for the tip on octodash!

[alias_neo]

No problem, happy printing!

[sokoloff]

You might be having too many very small moves, which will hurt print quality as well from micro start/stops.

Watch 30-ish seconds starting at 2:57 here: https://youtu.be/Hvw3DrVAeTA

[xuki]

I’m using the same exact setup, works fine for me. My OctoPrint is running on an old Mac mini.

[willis936]

I have prints fail over serial on my CR-10S Pro (both stock and TM3D firmware). Maybe it’s a Creality design flaw, maybe it’s a Marlin firmware issue.

Also, the micro SD card slot has never worked well. For a while I had to be very gentle when inserting micro SD cards to have them stay in after the click. Now micro SD cards never stay in. I haven’t found any references to this issue with 3D printers online, but from what I can gather it is an issue seen on faulty micro SD card slots in other equipment. My fix has been to buy a micro SD card extender (flexible PCB), duct tape it in place, and pray it doesn’t come loose. It survived a 3 day print so far.