Hello everybody and welcome to another video tutorial. Today we’ll be updating the firmware
on our Ender 3 V2 with either the Official release or with the community version. Full
disclaimer, I’m in no way responsible if any damages may occur, so do this at your
own risk.
So there’s a couple of reason why you might want to update your machines' firmware, but
the main one is to fix any issues in operation, which can often include safety upgrades. Some
community versions include added functionality, as well as a more up-to-date versions of marlin.
The process will be identical for either versions of the firmware, as long as you understand
some basics.
First off, there are two portions of the machine which typically need to be updated separately.
The first is the motherboard, which is normally quite simple to update, and the second is
the screen, which frequently requires some form of disassembly. I should point out that
sometimes this process isn’t as straightforwards on certain machines, therefore you’ll always
want to do some research before undertaking this task.
There are two different types of motherboards for this machine, and we’ll need to know
which version ours is prior to uploading the firmware. To find this out, we’ll open up
the base of the machine and read the labelling that’s on the motherboard. In my case, it
was the 4.2.2. So that’s the version I will be downloading.
In my testing, I did to update the machine with a larger 32gb card, however if you do
run into issues you may which to switch to an 8 GB card instead. Once you’ve formatted
the card to FAT32, you’ll download the files from either the Creality website or the GitHub
page. I’m going to include a direct link to both options in the description below.
In my case I've chosen to use the Community version since it includes several additional
features which include but aren’t limited to the following. Manual levelling menu, Z
offset menu, Pre-heat menu, Change filament, Support for the M600 command, Manual Mesh
Levelling and an advanced menu which may be updated in the future.
First we’ll download the .bin file that’s going to be used to update the motherboard
and that’ll be one of these files here. The files all follow a simple naming convention
to make it easier to tell which option is the most suitable version for your machine.
The first part of the name refers to the machine, which in this case is the Ender 3 V2. The
second portion is the levelling method followed by the probing layout and Motherboard Version.
If you're looking to use the stock version, then you’ll want to choose the default version.
In my case, I wanted to install the default version since I would be updating to a BLTouch
at a latter date. Now that we have the motherboard firmware downloaded, we can now download the
folder update for the screen. For this, you’ll scroll down and download the source code for
the machine. Once you’ve downloaded this folder you’ll unzip it and go to Marlin
+ Display Firmware + Firmware Sets where you’ll pick the version that you want to use. In
my case, I picked the DWIN_SET (Gotcha) version for this update. If you’re updating with
the Creality versions, then all the necessary files will be within the Zip folder that you
download.
You’ll copy the .bin file to your SD card once it’s been formatted to FAT32. Turning
off your 3D printer, you’ll insert the SD card into the card reader, then power back
on the machine. It will take a while longer to boot up, but once it’s finished loading
the screen, the update should be complete. With the main motherboard updated, it’s
now time to update the screen as well. In this case, updating the screen is optional,
but I highly recommend doing it since it solves the contract issues which were present in
the original version. Make sure to reformat the card again before copying your DWIN_SET
(Gotcha) file to your SD card, you need to rename the folder, so you're left with just
DWIN_SET as the name. After turning off the printer, we’ll lift the screen out of it’s
stand and turn it over to unplug the cable. Once that’s completed, we can then unscrew
the cover and use a prying tool to remove the panel. You’ll notice an SD card reader,
which is where we’re going to insert the SD card into. Simply turn on the machine to
start the updating process. In this case, the screen will change to an orange colour
once it’s finished updating. Simply close everything back up and put everything together,
and you should be ready to go. One of the nice features in this update is the ability
to change the interface colours to which every one’s you want. As you can see, I’ve begun
playing around with these and many other settings to get the best results for this machine.