Blobs in your 3D Prints? “Power-loss Recovery” can be the problem!

Blobs in your 3D Prints? “Power-loss Recovery” can be the problem!

Most new 3D Printers (in 2022) implement “Power-loss Recovery” in a way that makes heavy use of the SD-Card, periodically writing “check-points” to the card – and that competes against the normal printing operation, causing blobs depending on the model you print.

I made a super “visual” explanation of the problem, in my recent video:

How to Disable “Power-loss Recovery” in your printer?

On most printers you won’t have an easy menu option to enable or disable this feature on the User Interface / LCD / Touchscreen.

To make it easy, I prepared 2 GCODE files: one to enable and another one to disable Power-loss Recovery:

To use them, you just need to:

  1. Dowload the Zip file (contains a ‘settings’ folder with the 2 Gcode files inside)
  2. Save them to the SD Card you regularly use to print your sliced files
  3. “Print” the file you want on your 3D Printer as if it was a model. The only difference is that it will finish instantly.

The files I prepared will save your choice to the EEPROM of your printer. You can turn it off – next time you turn-on your printer, the change will still be valid. You can enable or disable as many times as you want (you can change your mind a few thousand times before the EEPROM gives up).

To better organise my printer’s SD Card, I created a folder called “Settings” to put my 2 files inside. Keep the name of this folder short, 8 characters. Some printers won’t print files from folders with long names. I initially named my folder as ‘GCODE Settings’, but my Neptune 3 (in its factory firmware) couldn’t list the files inside. So, ‘Settings’ it was.

Support my work making a small donation:

I really appreciate it!

Test your printer with my High-Poly model:

For a quick test, slice the model using Vase-Mode (Spiralize Outter Contour, in Cura) and 50mm/s for speed. If you have no blobs, great! Now try printing with 80mm/s or 100mm/s.

Aren’t you curious to see if your printer can print it without Blobs, from an SDCard, having “Power-loss Recover” enabled?

Here is the STL:

What is on the GCode files:

Power-Loss Recovery Disable.gcode

;
;  Disable Power-loss Recovery
;  by Everson Siqueira
;  https://www.youtube.com/GeekDetour
;  https://youtu.be/ZM1MYbsC5Aw
;
M501;    Load Saved Settings from EEPROM
M413 S0; Disable power-loss recovery
M500;    Save Settings on EEPROM
M117 Power-loss Recovery DISABLED
M118 Power-loss Recovery DISABLED
G4 P1000 S1; 1 second pause to read

Power-Loss Recovery Enable.gcode

;
;  Enable Power-loss Recovery
;  by Everson Siqueira
;  https://www.youtube.com/GeekDetour
;  https://youtu.be/ZM1MYbsC5Aw
;
M501;    Load Settings from EEPROM
M413 S1; Enable power-loss recovery
M500;    Save Settings on EEPROM
M117 Power-loss Recovery ENABLED
M118 Power-loss Recovery ENABLED
G4 P1000 S1; 1 second pause to read

If you are used to typing GCODE commands like M503, M501 and M500 on Pronterface, you can read more about it here: M413 – Power-loss Recovery on Marlin.