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