I was about 8 hours into a 12 hour print, when my X1C notified me of spaghetti errors. Well, it wasn’t JUST spaghetti; one of the parts had come loose. I suppose next time I’ll use a brim. Regardless, even looking back at the timelapse, I have no way of knowing what ACTUALLY happened. Did it collide with the nozzle? Was my adhesion just that bad? Who can say?
Anyway, if anyone can tell me a way to record normal, full-length videos, I’d be really appreciative, because I can’t seem to find anything.
Then there is a folder on the SD card card called “CAM” where the full length AVI’s reside. Note that these are reduced frames depending on your printer model. So at 5frames/sec for a P1 as an example, the video will appear to be hyper-speed. However, it is the full camera capture feed absent time-lapse frame capture.
All videos in that folder start with the letters “CAM” and are unindexed AVI files, so you will have to index them yourself and save them. If you have experience with time lapse then I’m sure you already know this.
A 12 hour print is going to generate a lot of video. Maybe more than the card has space for. 720p HD at 30FPS consumes about 3.6GB/hour of recording. So 12 hours of printing is 43GB just for the one video. And I don’t think a single file can be this big, so you may end up with many smaller files instead of one big one.
Parts almost always get knocked loose for one reason - you get a blob of filament on the nozzle because you’re over-extruding slightly or because the filament is wet and oozes a bit, the blob gets deposited at random on a top surface someplace and it cools off and hardens before the nozzle gets back to that spot for the next layer. So when the nozzle does get back to that spot, the blob catches on the nozzle and the print is knocked loose. Tends to be more of a problem for prints that have long layer times (like your multi-object print) because the more travel time the more oozing can occur, and the longer the layer time the more time the blob has to cool down and harden.
This scenario gives me fits on PETG prints. PETG likes to string if it’s not perfectly dry and perfectly calibrated. A single large print sticks to the build plate good enough it won’t get knocked loose. But a lot of smaller objects, particularly tall/thin parts can be really challenging.
These four parts were printed at the same time. They are all identical. The leftmost one got knocked loose in spite of the brim. If you zoom in on the area I circled, you will see the blob that was dropped by the printhead, that the nozzle subsequently hit, dislodging the part.
If change your video recording to the setting that pulls the print head out of the way at the start of each layer, you’ll end up with a video showing the condition of each object prior to the start of that layer. If a part gets knocked off, you can zoom in on the frame before the frame where the part was knocked loose, and see.
The FAT file system used on the sdcard restricts a single file to 4 GB. That’s not a problem because the videos of long prints are split into many short segments.
Ironically, what I’m (trying) to print are desiccant pods for the AMS, specifically because I just recently got my first roll of PETG (I’ve only ever used PLA up to this point). I’ve heard about how hydrophilic the stuff can be, and I’m trying to avoid disaster before it starts
Take care with the former PETG Basic. Even when fully dryed, it really loved to curl and stick. When dropping speeds to below 100, accel’s to 25% and using adaptive layers were all neccessary for some of my more complex PETG Basic prints.
The little points of the dessiccant holders also mean that the printer does not neccessarily reach its top speed there. To slow down those for reduced curling, it is actually neccessary to drop down acceleration rather than only speed.
But first, it is worth a try to determine if a problem actually occurs…
So I just finished the 2nd attempt at the print; fortunately there were no issues this time around. I had checked the “auto-record monitoring” before, I just didn’t know about the non-indexed files. When I popped the SD card into my computer, there they were in all their glory:
So, if I’m understanding correctly, turning on timelapse doesn’t prevent it from doing full video recording. It just does timelapse along with standard video, so long as the “Auto-Record Monitoring” is toggled on.
Total file size of the videos for my 12 hour print: 18 GB. Worth it to have something I can look back at if there are issues.
Yeah. There’s a lot of the video image that doesn’t change from frame to frame. Compression loves that kind of video. Not surprising it came in at less than my number, which assumed “general” video… should have thought about compression and the nature of the printer’s video a little harder.
