Creality 32 bit V4 board guide - Ender 3 V2, BLtouch & more

this is your complete guide to creality's new 32-bit main boards that come in the ender 3v2 as a standalone upgrade and all end of threes from this point on [Music] this video started as a patreon request to make a bl touch guide for the new creality and a 3v2 but early on it became clear that creality's new 32-bit main board was turning up in many other places i saw a live stream from th 3d where new standard ender 3s were arriving with a new 32-bit main board which can be confirmed on creality's blog there's a lot of confusion over the different boards so i spoke to my contact at creality to make sure i had all of my facts right i want to make this video comprehensive yet concise everything is time stamped with links down below in the description so let's get into it let's start by looking at what these boards are how to get them and comparing them to the old creality 8-bit boards the main board found in the original cr-10 the ender 3 and ender 5 is known as a creality milsi and it's an 8-bit board there were a range of revisions and in the later versions you could get a standard board with a4988 stepper motor drivers or the silent board with tmc 2208 in standalone mode the difference in sound between these two is quite significant in terms of volume that's a huge upgrade but there were still problems with both of these boards apart from them being 8-bit which is quickly becoming obsolete the 1284p microcontroller was always running out of room so when you added a bl touch you had to disable other features the board typically came without a bootloader which means you needed to muck around burning one before you could easily update firmware via a usb cable there was no physical ports left to plug in accessories so for example when fitting a bl touch you had to spend additional money on a pin 27 expansion board finally the silent board is not compatible with linear advance but more on that later so on to the new boards the 32-bit like the version 4.2.2 that came in my ender 3 version 2. as we know this board will now be coming on all new end threes but then there's also the version 4.2.7 on their store which my research tells me people have been receiving even when they try to order the old 8-bit silent board if you've got a new printer or you've ordered a new main board you can tell it's a new 32-bit board by two indicators firstly it will be version four point something and secondly it will have arm written on the processor so let's clear up the confusion for these new boards and the printers they come on at the time of recording the version 4.2.2 will be exclusive to the ender series 3d printers and the version 4.2.7 comes on the cr6 and it's also what you get if you order the upgraded silent board from their website now the 427 board is always silent with standalone tmc 2225s but the 422 board comes in two variants a standard version with hr4988 stepper motor drivers they're the noisy ones and then the silent version which has tmc 2208s in standalone mode if we follow this logic we can work out which printers come with which main boards but this is sure to expand in future as creality adds it to more models you'll remember before that i identified some problems with the old 8-bit melsey boards the good news is that these have largely been rectified the new boards are 32-bit they have larger flash space so no more skimping to fit firmware features on they come with a boot loader they have additional ports for a bltouch and filament runout sensor so the only remaining problem is no linear advanced for the silent boards again more on this later let's look at how hard it is to fit this 32-bit board as an upgrade let's say you have an ender 3 or 5 and you purchase the version 427 board you'll be glad to know that physically it's plug and play reference this diagram as you're removing the connectors and then use this one as you plug them back into the new board both of these diagrams are linked below in the description the next questions are where do you get firmware for these boards from and can you compile marlin yourself if we come to creality.com download we'll see that under the ender 3 and the end of 3v2 we can expand and there's already 32-bit mainboard binaries what there isn't however is the actual source code which means if you want to customize anything or make any changes like additional mods you're gonna be completely stuck lower down the page they also have downloads for the end of five and this is repeated on their blog site but the most accessible downloads are for bl touch firmware making it harder to get the firmware source for a standard machine so i think it's better to compile the firmware yourself the firmware that creality uses is still marlin and it's based on this by downloading straight from marlin's github we're just ensuring that we have the most up-to-date firmware available what we're going to do is to come to the github for marlin and up in the top left we're going to select our branch i recommend switching to the bug fix branch as this should be the most up to date and it's always been reliable for me in the past we'll now click on the green code button and download the zip now we come and click on config and we click to download the configuration bundle which as we can see is matched to our bug fix branch on the left we have the contents of the main marlin download that i've extracted to a folder if we come inside the marlin folder we'll see the configuration files but they're just generic ones and we need to tailor them for our specific printer on the right hand side i have the zip downloaded for the configurations and by using these example configurations our job becomes a lot easier we're going to come inside config examples and then creality and then we're presented with a list of printers what we're going to do for our correct printer is copy the files from inside one of these folders to overwrite the default ones from marlin let's look at three examples let's say we have an original ender 3 or ender 3 pro and maybe it's got the new non-silent 422 board or we've paid to upgrade to the silent 427 board for that we're going to come to ender 3 pro version 1.5 select everything there and drag it to the left when it asks if we want to replace the files we're going to confirm that the version 1.5 folder is missing the boot screen and status screen files so grab those and copy them over from an another ender 3 folder scenario 2 is for an ender 3 v2 that comes with the silent 422 board with that one you might have guessed that we come to the end of 3v2 folder we select everything copy it over to our marlin folder replacing the files when prompted final example how about something like an end of 5 that in the future might also come with the non-silent 422 board or maybe for someone who's purchased the silent 427 board as an upgrade for this one we'll come to the folder for our ender five and we'll stick with the standard creality configuration once again copying all of the files over and replacing when prompted you can now open up the marlin folder in vs code and double check the following lines making the changes if necessary firstly in platform io.ini set your default environment to stm32 f103 ret6 underscore creality and this one is case sensitive in configuration.h set serial port to 1 uncomment and set serial port 2 to 3. just below that you're going to have a choice of two options depending if you have a 427 board or otherwise for an ender 3v2 you're going to set your motherboard to board underscore creality underscore v4 otherwise if you have a 427 board set motherboard to board underscore creality underscore v427 the two boards have slightly different pin mappings for the steppers so setting the motherboard correctly will take care of this automatically if you have an ender 3v2 with the new color lcd this should already be in place but it's worth scrolling down and making sure dwin creality lcd is uncommented if you're using a printer with a traditional lcd scroll down and find define cr 10 stock display and underneath define ret 6 underscore 12864 underscore lcd on the odd chance your processor says vet write that instead optionally you can also set a custom machine name here you can see i'm compiling for the ender 3 version 2. once this is done come down to the lowest bar and click the tick for build and hopefully after not very long you'll have a success message that your firmware is compiled or a 32-bit board normally we come to dot p i o build and then the name of our target environment and inside will be a file called firmware.bin however creality uses a different bootloader that requires a unique file name every time we update the firmware if we always used firmware.bin it would only update the first time so the marlin devs have been very clever and if we follow the same folder path we'll find that our firmware binary file has a time and date stamp added to the end so every time you compile the firmware this will be unique and the printer should update from your file so now that we've compiled our firmware how do we actually update and what about that color lcd on the v2 sometimes people get confused if their firmware has updated so before you start take note of the version number in the display the next thing you need is a micro sd card small capacity is preferable and it needs to be formatted to fat32 we then take our firmware file making sure it's the latest one if we have more than one here and it's the one that ends in bin we copy it over to the sd card put the sd card into the printer while the printer is off and then power up the machine you'll notice the screen stays black for around 10 seconds and then the usual menu will come up after that i found to my dismay that the language had switched from english to chinese but i could verify that the version number was new and the update was successful fixing the language is easy go to the top right menu on the main screen and then down to the bottom and click and you should be back to english if you like you can reinsert the sd card to your computer and delete the unneeded firmware binary if you're running a traditional myelin lcd your firmware update is complete however the new screen on the ender 3v2 has a separate firmware update process so let's cover how to do that again marlin has the exact instructions in a readme on their github you might remember when we copied over the configuration for the ender 3v2 there was a folder called d1 set and to update the color lcd we drag this over to the sd card we need to open up the back of the lcd and we can start by removing it from its mounting flange there are four bolts on the back that need to be undone and then we unclip the back of the case to reveal the sd card slot where we insert our sd card with the d1 set folder don't forget to plug back in the ribbon cable we now power on the machine the screen will go from black to blue to orange and when it reaches orange the process is done we can now turn off the printer and remove the sd card from the display before powering it back up where we should find the menu has returned as normal assuming it has we can reassemble the case of the lcd and now is a good time to test the menu functions and potentially start a print to verify your machine is working as it should be if all is well your firmware update is successful so how do you add a bl touch the mounting shown in this video guide is for an ender 3 v2 but the firmware and wiring is accurate for this main board in other printers all we need for this is a bl touch extension cable and a mount what we don't need is a pin 27 board or programmer so avoid any kits that have these that means the only thing you need to buy is a bltouch with extension cable the one i fitted was 1.5 meters and that was perfect one meter would be too short so if you need to get a 2 meter cable and just tie up the xs for an ender 3v2 this mount is free and works really well there's two versions and they're almost identical but the less philip version is going to stick a little bit nicer to your build plate the standard version had some slight detachment for me but was still usable step one is to attach the bl touch to the printed mount using the hardware that comes with the bl touch we now use a hex key and wrench to loosen the upper left v-roller we slide the bl touch on its mount in from the left hand side until it's wedged tightly do back up the v-roller bolt and we're done you can now attach the extension cable to the existing wiring going back to the main board remembering to leave some slack so the cable is not pulling tight on the bl touch for a neater install you can run the extension cable inside the braided sleeving as i've done here for the last portion to the main board now to plug in our bl touch to the main board and one of the improvements of these new 32-bit boards is the addition of ports for things like bl touch and filament run out this diagram is linked in the description and shows how i have wired my bl touch i've plugged the brown red and yellow into the left three pins of the bl touch port but i've plugged black and white into the z minus port where the z end stop was previously connected depending on your extension cord the connection could be a little bit loose so you can use a dab of hot glue to hold it in place and ensure it's reliable if you double check your colors it should be pretty straightforward so let's move on to firmware with the wiring method i've shown it's important to uncomment define zedmin probe use a zedmin and stop pin this should be the default which is why i prefer this wiring method next we search for an uncomment defined bl touch and then we input the offset of where our bltouch is mounted for the probe used in this video that's -42 -10 search for and uncomment define auto bed leveling by linear the same for define zed safe homing and in configuration adv search for and uncomment define baby step z probe offset we now compile and update the firmware with the sd card as we did earlier in the video and if it's worked you'll have a new level option on the main menu we're going to come to control go to restore defaults and then after that come up and click on store settings to test the probing you'll first need to auto home and at this point it's highly recommended to trigger the bltouch probe with your hand so that way if it's not working you can kill the power rather than have the printhead crash into the bed if all is well auto home again normally and then you can come to the menu option for level pressing this button is the equivalent of sending a g29 command and with our basic firmware changes this will probe a 3x3 grid and it will be quite slow you'll also notice that the grid is oriented to the left hand side of the printer if you want to up your grid to 4x4 or 5x5 increase the value from 3 for grid max points x if you want your probing grid to be centered in the middle of the bed in configuration advance search for the word kinematic uncomment the four probing margin lines and enter custom values which is how far from the edge that the probing grid will go to speed up the probing there are two settings in configuration.h increasing xy probe speed will speed up the horizontal movements between each probing point and increasing homing feed rate z will speed up the vertical probing movements here's an example of probing with a 3x3 grid symmetrical probing positions and sped up feed rate you can speed up things even more than this but keep in mind the faster you go you're going to lose a slight amount of accuracy to probe before every print we need to add g29 after g28 in the start g-code section of our slicer this will probe the bed at the start of each print and automatically apply compensation when you start your first print you'll probably find the nozzle is printing in mid-air to fix that we need a one-time adjustment which is setting the z offset we come to the tune menu and scroll down until we reach probe zed offset turning the dial to the left will lower the nozzle but the change won't take effect until you click and then the nozzle will move down that distance the aim is to trial and error until you have the perfect amount of first layer squish with this mount i found an offset of -2.26 pretty ideal giving me nice first layers if you're using a traditional lcd the system works exactly the same the only difference being that you need to store the setting yourself using the menu whereas the v2 seems to do this automatically bltouch done but how do we add a filament run out sensor this one's easy because the new main board has a dedicated port that makes it plug and play for one of these common three pin filament runout sensors which are actually just a micro switch inside a plastic housing we plug it in as shown in this diagram in a terminal you can send m119 and that will report whether the sensor is triggered or not and let you know if you need to swap the two outer wires the firmware is pretty straightforward we need to uncomment define filament run out sensor and if we find our sensor is working in reverse we can change the fill run out state from low to high also in configuration.h we need to uncomment define nozzle park feature and finally in configuration advanced uncomment define advance pause feature there's a lot to customize here but i've always been happy with the defaults again we compile the firmware and update via the sd card feed your filament through the filament run out sensor and start a print wait a little bit and then employ a ninja to snip your filament this is detected instantly by the printer and it moves to the park position but you'll notice nothing on the lcd normally marlin will guide you through the process but with the end of 3v2 this doesn't happen so i found i had to manually turn back on the hot end wait for it to get up to temp load in the filament and then resume the print some filament will then purge in the corner before the print resumes it would be better if the lcd gave some confirmation but the results are good i did two during this print and the change is quite subtle so what does it mean that the drivers are connected in standalone mode and what disadvantages does that bring first things first functionally tmc 2208s are the same as 2225s just with a different size package let's say we have an a4988 stepper motor driver as found in the original ender 3 it's possible to swap this out for a tmc 2208 without any further changes and this is standalone mode the beauty of this is no firmware changes are required and no wiring changes required on the board and i imagine this is why creality uses this method it's also why in my firmware instructions i haven't told you to change the stepper motor drivers in marlin changing the wiring in this case by attaching a jumper and plugging in the 2208 will allow it to connect in new art mode and this is already done in boards like the big treetech skr mini e3 and the easy board light from th 3d the downsides for the manufacturer is that firmware and wiring changes are required but then the upsides of this uart communication are numerous including driver diagnostics g-code control of stepper current various modes with a hybrid threshold between them linear advanced compatibility and sensorless homing if we compare the tmc drivers in standalone mode we miss out on all of these smart features so that means if you need to adjust your stepper driver current you're going to have to do so manually with a multimeter and screwdriver my patron glenn's ender3v2 came with the vref set too high from factory the steppers got so hot that the extruder was melting the filament on its way through requiring the v-ref to be lowered which is not really a convenient thing the other thing that i've mentioned from the start is that this board is not compatible with linear advance say you compile your firmware uncommenting linear advance and setting the k value what you'll find is that the print starts like usual but a minute or so in you'll find the extruder stepper just stops turning no errors or warnings the printer will continue as if nothing was wrong overall this board is a big improvement from the old one and a worthwhile upgrade but it's worth noting that the skr mini e3 is cheaper the th 3d easy board is higher quality and both boards have a lot more functionality thanks to the stepper drivers connected in uart mode besides the step-by-step instructions in this video i've also got some branches set up for this main board on my github page and for those who just want to click and download the firmware already compiled i've got some free links to do that too now i have ordered a 4.2.7 board to verify everything in this video and if there's any future updates look for a pinned post down below in the description thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3d printing g'day it's michael again if you liked the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 367,466

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printed, 3d print, 3d printer, creality, ender 3, ender 3 v2, ender 3 v1, ender 3 v1.5, mainboard, board, v4, v4.2.2, v4.2.7, 32 bit, melzi, 8 bit, guide, step by step, firmware, marlin, th3d, bltouch, filament runout, bootloader, update, upgrade, silent, tmc2208, tmc2225, ezout, pin27, wiring, sd card, btt skr mini e3, ezboard lite, standalone, legacy, uart, smart, z offset, mount, offset, lesson, free, download

Id: neS7lB7fCww

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020

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[u/ulfbert_II]

One of the best 3D printing channels imo