Understanding Creality Ender 3 Control Board Firmware Fiasco

If you're shopping for a creality  3d printer this christmas   they're good machines but creality has made it  very very confusing whether you're looking at an   Ender 3 v2 an Ender 3 or an Ender 3 pro or even  a cr6. There's differences from older machines   to new machines. If you watch some of my old  videos some of the stuff like bed level or   filament change won't work properly on some  machines. Well creality really messed things   up. Let me explain it so you understand what  you're buying on today's Filament Friday Filament Friday is brought to you  every week by the generous donations   of these patreon supporters. This video  is also brought to you by pcbway.com   a great place to get low-cost circuit boards and  also low-cost assembly services all from one place   pcbway.com. I've been using the ender 3 since  it first came out. I got one of the first units   and frankly it wasn't that great but I made  it better over time and I shared those videos   and then they came out with the ender 3 pro the  Ender 3 pro had a better power supply a magnetic bed   and a few other changes. I did a video comparing  the two I'll put a link to that up here. But then   along the way they eventually came out with the  Ender 3 v2 which has a lot of upgrades that I like.   glass bed, adjusters and a 32-bit board and that's  where things got confusing because at the same   time they came out with this the cr6. And this they  did as a kickstarter and this one is one I got to   show for the kickstarter and it has an 8-bit board.  But if they sold enough on kickstarter they would   upgrade everybody to a 32-bit board similar  to what this has and that's what they ended   up doing. So everyone got 32 bit boards. Now some of  those boards had some flaws in them that actually   caused some circuit malfunctions that smoked the  board. It was a small percentage but it happened.   I couldn't test it because I have an 8-bit  board version and so things got confusing there.   And then it gets even more confusing because  they switched all their ender and ender 3 pro   just the standard ender and Ender 3 pro, they  switched those to 32-bit. But not the same as the   Ender 3 v2 or the cr6. So now you've got multiple  different machines with different boards but they   don't put any numbers on the machine so you know  what you're buying. You can't see it in the box. You   could actually go out right now and buy an Ender  3 and possibly get an 8-bit board which was great   but you are probably are going to get a 32-bit board  which is not as great because the firmware that   they put in the 32-bit boards on the Ender 3  or Ender 3 pro or even the v2 it's not complete   firmware. It's missing a lot of the features  that marlin offers and creality hasn't kept up   the firmware that they offer for you to download  and install. Now fortunately you can upgrade the   firmware on these guys because they're using open  source marlin and all the 32-bit boards have a   bootloader in it so changing the firmware means  just putting in an sd card, starting the machine   it'll load the new file and then update its  firmware. But where do you get updated firmware   that's what I want to talk to you about. I  found this site and I'll put a link to it   below, it's a marlin site where this individual  builds a new firmware for any of these machines   every day. Now it's a service you have to pay  for and in full disclosure he gave me a free   subscription so I could test it out but it cost  about ten dollars and fifty cents for the year.   And you can download new firmware every day if you  want. He's building new firmware every day for cr6   for Ender 3 v2 and for the Ender 3's  and also for some of the cr-10 and some of those.   So I highly suggest you check it out I've been  using it because I've tried to build my own marlin   firmware and it hasn't always worked out. I did a  video on how to update Ender 3 v2 firmware and I had to take my firmware down because it worked  for me but it didn't work for everybody else.   So I just decided to let a third party to handle  it and I got to tell you it's been working great.   I've now brought my machines up to date  and my ender 3 and Ender 3 pros that are 32-bit   are now working great. But some of my older  videos like when you try to level the bed I had    Gcode that would move the nozzle to each corner so  you could level it. Some people complained that the   nozzle wouldn't stop it would go to the corner  and then pick up move to the next corner pick   up go to next corner they never had time to put  the paper in. That's because the creality firmware   released on the 32-bit boards doesn't recognize  the M0 command. And that's the same command   that I used and a lot of people use in the pause at  height if they want to do two color or change   filament. That's what it uses and the firmware on  the v2, the ender 3 and the Ender 3 pro weren't   recognizing it. Also if you use the prusa slicer  where it uses an M600 to do a filament change   it didn't recognize M600 so the firmware that you  get with your machine is incomplete on the 32-bit.   Now if you get an 8-bit board then everything  works fine. The firmware is up-to-date and   working but it's harder to get those so how do  you know which board you have well that's where   the circuit board is supposed to tell you by  the version number. Now it says version 4.2.2   on all the Ender 3, Ender 3 pro and Ender 3 v2s but  they're different. Ender 3 v2 is for version 4.2.2   but has silent drivers which is really nice but  Ender 3 and Ender 3 pro have a same version 4.2.2  but they have 4988 drivers. In fact they're hr 4988.  They're not even the actual 4988 originals so your   machine is noisier. So how do you know if you have  the latest or not? You can't tell because there's   no other indicator and you can't easily pull these  heat sinks off and see what number is on the chip   to determine what you have. So another way to do it  is to upgrade your board to the 4.2.7 and I did a   video on that. That's the board that's in the cr6  but some of those had that problem with the driver   that would actually smoke. Well apparently that's  all been fixed so now you can buy a 4.2.7 board   which has the silent drivers which is the same one  in here and then you can get the updated firmware   from that marlin site that I'm referencing. so do  you update your machines with a new board? That's   really your call. You can try out his firmware.  But not at least you know what you're buying   if you get an 8-bit board it'll say version  1.1 point something version 1.1.4 is typically   the board that's out there that has the 4988  non-silent drivers. If you get a version 1.1.5   it's probably not going to be in the machine  but you can get those from third party. Those   have these silent drivers. I know this can sound  very confusing but it's really not that tough.   The whole idea is that the firmware that  you get with your ender 3 ender 3 pro or v2   that's currently shipping with 32-bit boards  version 4.2.2 you probably should update the   firmware to the latest version. And I highly  recommend this marlin site. It's going to   cost you a little extra. $10.50 but for the year so  that's pretty cheap. That's less than half the cost   of a good spool of filament and then you've got  firmware, the latest firmware direct from marlin.   That's why he builds every day any bug fixes he  picks up new firmware. And if you go with the cr6   you can get the new firmware there too. And if  you do end up updating to that 4.2.7 which is the   board that's in here which is the latest silent  board from creality, he has firmware for that as   well. So if you get a new machine for christmas  don't be frustrated that my board level    Gcode isn't working or you can't do two color  prints or some other thing isn't working right,   update your firmware and you'll probably  find out that all of it starts working again.   And speaking of circuit boards, if you're into  electronics and you want to design your own   circuit boards and also get them soldered  together with components and everything   check out pcbway. Not only do they offer low cost  circuit boards but you can get them to assemble it.   Through hole parts, surface mount parts, so you can  give them the whole design they'll build it up and   ship it back to you gerber files, build materials  give it to them they'll build it ship it back to   you at very affordable prices. So check out pcbway if you want to build your own circuit boards.   pcbway.com. If you do decide to update the firmware  on away 32-bit board, 1st shutoff power then copy   his dot bin file to an eight gigabit or less SD  card, formatted to fat32 and then just switch on   power and it'll automatically update. And you'll  see the display go black for a while and then   it'll come up after about 30 seconds and then  you have updated the firmware. It's that easy. Hopefully this will make you a smarter shopper the next time you go out and buy a 3d printer.   Especially if you're getting one for christmas.  That's it for this week. If you like what I'm doing   here, maybe check out some of the videos popping  up. And if nothing else click on that CHEP logo   and subscribe. I'll see you next  time right here at Filament Friday

Channel: CHEP

Views: 124,830

Keywords: creality ender 3 firmware update, creality ender 3 firmware upgrade, creality ender 3 firmware download, creality ender 3 v2 firmware update, creality ender 3 pro firmware update, creality v4.2.7 board, creality v4.2.7 firmware update, creality v4.2.7 silent board, creality 4.2.2 firmware update, creality 4.2.2 board, creality 4.2.2 vs 4.2.7, creality 4.2.2 firmware, creality v1.1.5 silent motherboard, creality v1.1.5 firmware, Understanding Creality Ender 3 Firmware Fiasco

Id: vFcMW6m9OGg

Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020