ABS printing- just went wrong after a while

Hi all -

Configuration:
Mendel90/Repetier/Slic3r
ABS 3mm
230 C extruder
110 C heated bed

As you can see, the print started out great, very consistent. Around 5-6 layers down, something went wonky. Has anyone had a situation like this before?
What should I be looking for?

Thanks,
Rob

Almost looks like your Z-axis skipped a layer or two, and it wasn't being smashed down. Too small of a picture to tell.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

Or you had an extruder jam for a layer or so and it then cleared up.

Where you watching? If so did it look like the X,Y axis were moving right?

I wasn't watching, but repeated the print with the exact same results - about fifth layer in it had this failure again.

Just to make the the printer works above the fifth layer with ABS, I printed a narrower object with 130 layers. No problem - finished successfully.
It must have something to do with the footprint of the object. As you can see, this is an x-carriage for a Mendel90 and is quite broad in X and Y dimensions.

I will be trying another broad print to see if the same behavior persists.

Quote
MrDoctorDIV
Almost looks like your Z-axis skipped a layer or two, and it wasn't being smashed down. Too small of a picture to tell.

Really? What kind of idiot suggests a Z jump? Like, is that even possible?

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

Hi all -
I think I figured it out. I am still printing by sending gcode across USB from my PC to the Sanguinololu, and the PC has a bunch of other stuff running on it. Figuring a case of "PC interruptus", I turned off all other apps, revised power management on the PC, and reran the print. No problems at all!

I think I am going to start looking into an SD card add-on for my printer to avoid this kind of thing in the future.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Rob