Finally figured out why my prints kept failing halfway through

I had almost the same mystery with my Adventurer 4 a while back. Prints kept dying around the hour mark, always mid-wall, no pattern I could find. I did the whole ritual too, tram the bed, check the extruder, dry the filament, nothing changed. Then one morning I found a paw print in the dust on the top cover and it clicked. My tabby had been climbing up while I was at work and kneading the cover like it was a pillow. The rocking was enough to throw off the layers near the top of tall prints.

What ended up working for me was moving the printer off the wobbly side table and onto a solid bench against the wall. That alone fixed half the problem, then I laid a folded fleece blanket on the shelf right beside it and she claimed that spot instead. Cats really do pick the warmest flat thing in the room, and the print bed area stays toasty for hours.

One extra thing that helped was checking the spool side too. She used to bat the filament while it was feeding and I got a couple of partial under-extrusion prints before I figured that out. A cheap enclosure panel on the open side solved it. Two months since and I have not had a single unexplained failure.

Funny reading this because I chased a similar ghost on my Guider 2S for a month and the answer had nothing to do with pets. My prints kept dying around the two hour mark, always a layer shift or a full stop, and I tore the machine apart twice looking for a loose pulley. Turned out the culprit was my smart plug. I had the printer on the same outlet group as my shop heater, and when the heater kicked on the plug's load sensor tripped and dropped power for a second. Just long enough to kill the print, not long enough for me to notice the screen flicker. What finally cracked it was plugging the printer into a plain dumb outlet and going a full week without a single failure. Moved it back to the smart plug and the problem came right back that same night. So if anyone here has their machine on a smart plug or a power strip with surge protection, try swapping it for a basic wall outlet before you start suspecting hardware. Some of those strips cut power to one socket when the total draw spikes, and a printer sharing with anything that cycles on and off will behave exactly like this. Cost me a month of evenings and a lot of wasted filament to learn that.

Mine was fur in the fans, not the rocking. Kept getting random layer stutters on my Guider and the cat was the obvious suspect, but she was innocent for once. Pulled the fan shroud off during a clean and it was packed with gray hair, basially a felt filter at that point. A can of compressed air and a cheap desk air purifier running in the room fixed it. Since then I blow the fans out every month or so and the stutter never came back. Worth checking yours if you print in the same room as a shedding animal.

I keep seeing people suggest a blanket or towel near the printer as the fix and I have to push back on that. My cat ignored the comfy spot I set out for a solid month and went right back to the machine. What actually worked for me was making the printer itself unappealing, so I stuck a sheet of double sided tape pads on a spare piece of foam board and laid it on top when a print was running. Cats hate the sticky feeling on their paws and she gave up after two tries. Took the pads off once she stopped bothering. Cheaper than hoping she prefers fleece.

This thread saved me a bunch of time actually. I was about to pull apart my Creator Pro over similar random stops, read this last night and set my phone up on a tripod pointing at the machine before bed. Footage showed my dog wagging his tail against the table leg every time he walked past. Moved the printer to a diffrent bench he can't reach and everthing's been smooth since. Cheap fix beats chasing phantom hardware problems.

Update: reading the reply about the towel being ignored for a month has me second guessing my setup. Mine took to the box right away but she's fickle, so if she ever gets bored I'll try making the printer itself less comfy. Also checked the fans after the fur comment and found a small clump allready starting. Cleaning that out tonight before it becomes the next mystery.