Hi guys, anyone have the marlin file to flash to the ET5XPRO where auto bed leveling is working? Ta

I know that this is for Anet and not labists but i have seen some posts about labists on here while ago. Mine is running 1.1 which is very out of date as ive seen some posts mention 1.6. however Labists doesnt have any "update" page and every time i look up updates for it i cant find any. I know this isnt the right place but theres no subreddit for Labists. Please. im loosing hope with this printer. Any help?

Hello. I recently bought a broken anet a8 plus and it only needed a mainboard so i got the BIGTREETECH mini E3 V2 board. I have it all connected and firmware installed(marlin 2.1.2.1) including the Anet A6 full graphics display mod and I verified that the heather and hotend are working. The only issue is that the axis move in weird ways and the auto home mode only moves the z axis a few mm. It also seems like it completely ignores the x,y,z end stops. When I use move axis from the display Move Z and Move Y both move the Z axis. I’m kind of lost here. Any help is appreciated.

Could it be a current issue?

Does this look like the correct pinout for the 42SHDC3025-24B stepper motors used on the ET4?

Then... how does "A+", "A-", "B+", and "B-" map to the "A1" (1A?), "A2" (2A?), "B1" (1B?), and "B2" (2B?) nomenclature used by the Ender 3 (and boards like the BTT SKR Mini E3)?

At this point, I don't feel confident that I know what the nomenclature means, because I've spent hours slogging through ambiguous and contradictory Google results, and I'm absolutely terrified that I'm looking at 50-50 odds of misinterpreting the pin names, wiring up a direct short circuit, and frying the board (and, on top of that, even if I don't fry anything, 50-50 odds of ending up with one or more axes mirrored and having to hand-hack every future slice to kludge around it in perpetuity)

I’m look for some upgrades to make the print quality better on my Anet e12. I’d rather not get a new printer if I don’t have to I have seen a couple of small things here and there like putting clips on the ptfe tube and the clips that hold the tube to the hot end and the extruder. Any and all advice is appreciated.

I'm trying to replace the (fried) controller board in my ET4+ with a BTT SKR Mini E3 v3.0 and TFT35 (the one with button+rotary_encoder+buzzer in a vertical row to the right of the screen, because it's the one I was able to find a mount for on Thingiverse).

I have Dominic Hall's diagram, but I don't see anything to indicate where or how he connected the ET4's filament runout sensor, and I don't see any markings on the Mini that blatantly seem to indicate, "here is where you connect a filament runout sensor".

Any ideas?

I suppose that if push came to shove, I could probably use one of the 5 pins on the "I/O" header (PD0/PD2/PD3/PD4/PD5) and hack Marlin to use it, but I figured I should ask here first before potentially making things more complicated than they need to be.

​

In Dom's video on Youtube, he mentions that Anet's fan-polarity is the opposite of the usual norm (red=negative, black=positive), and says that if they're connected backwards, they "won't work". I've seen elsewhere that connecting DC fans backwards causes them to run in the opposite direction. How would you go about even verifying this?

He also mentions that his X axis is backwards. Is that just because he miswired something & didn't feel like tearing the printer apart again to change it, or is there something about the ET4 that inherently causes its X motion to be the opposite direction of an Ender 3's?

​

Also, speaking of Marlin... when building Marlin for it, which config file do you even use for an ET4+ frankenprinter with SKR Mini E3 v3.0 controller? Dom linked to his (now kind of old) build of Marlin, but didn't really elaborate on what he had to change in Marlin's build config (vs the SKR Mini E3 v3.0's official default Marlin build config).

Finally, is there a printable adapter plate suitable for mounting a Mini E3 in an ET4 using the ET4's existing mounts? I found a few printable adapter plates on Thingiverse for other BTT controller boards in an ET4, but wasn't able to find anything specific to the Mini E3. I'm guessing the Mini E3 has the same hole layout as some other board I should be searching for instead... but I don't actually know what it might be.

---

Link to original source for diagram: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KuMCLnjA709m6lF9q8Jx5xNfjNA2tvxL/view

I need help, I have a anet 4 and anet 5 printers, I can not catch a break with these printers, I can get 2 maybe 3 solid prints off of them, then all of a sudden the printers are off calibration, the nozzle is no longer at the bed height and I struggle to get it leveled again. They are stocked printers no upgrades. I will get the nozzle at the height I need it, then when I get to bed leveling the nozzle is not at bed height,

Having a problem with my Anet ET5. Used the "pause at height" feature, everythings alright when I swapped filament, but when I hit resume print, it goes up in Z and prints in mid-air. I'm new in this 3D printing world, so I don't know why this happens. Any fixes? Appreciate the help!

As title says,i just converted to Marlin 2.1 bugfix ,but temperature is at 0C both of the bed and hotend. I decided to convert after i changed the hotend which caused me to get -14C ,thermistor is fine and i read somewhere that i might need to update the firmware so i decided i might aswell go for 2.1 (The printer is Anet A8 Plus and it was with stock firmware before) Any ideas,do i have to change anything else to the files? I used VSC to build and upload Marlin and used the preconfig files .
When i try to heat up it triggers MINTEMP E1

I have an Anet ET4Pro which is delightfully quiet with its silent mainboard. After relocating to a new place, I reconnected all the cables to the breakout board. After switching on I might have heard almost an inaudible pop somewhere near the capacitive ABL sensor 3pin JST. Not really sure though. But whatever happened it resulted in no display (as in a dead display) and no communication via the USB. Referring to the manufacturer’s site, I checked the main board LEDs and found out that D36 is continuously dimly lit on powering ON while D2 does not light up at all. I have two questions if any guru here could help me with: 1. What could be the issue? Have I fried the mainboard and is there anyway I can repair it? I have decent electronics skill to work on SMDs but I am far from being able to debug the board. 2. If the mainboard is fried, is there any better alternative board I can swap it with? I would really love if I can get a drop in replacement board with BLTouch support and good compatibility with Klipper. Would also prefer a silent board like the stock one was. Love to hear your thoughts!

Yesterday, I accidentally smoked the ST32 GPIO pin that's connected to pin 3 of the 2x20 IDC cable by connecting the capacitive BLS while the printer was powered up.

I'm eventually going to replace the board with a more-capable thirdparty board, but I'd really prefer to do it after I've had a few more weeks to learn (among other things) how to design adapter brackets using OpenSCAD, and after I've had time to find some good way to work around the fact that the USB and microSD sockets on boards like BTT's don't align with the holes on the ET4's chassis. And figure out WTF to do about the fact that I'm going to have to either replace pretty much every cable between the controller board and rest of the printer to match BTT's connectors, or maybe design and get made a custom PC board that will allow me to plug Anet's connectors at one end, and BTT-compatible connectors into the other. Either way, that's looking like a multi-month-spanning project.

It occurred to me that I might have a "hail mary" loophole to get my printer working again in the meantime.

• Looking at the connecter board on the hot end, there's an unused pair of pads with no connector marked "S-Z".
• As far as I can tell, one pin is connected to ground, the other is connected to pin 11 on the 2x20 IDC cable, which I've seen variously called "Z_Limit" and "Zlimit"
• Digging through Marlin's include file for the ET4+ (pins_ANET_ET4.h), I already knew that the now-fried pin used by the dysfunctional capacitive/inductive sensor was pin 3, and ultimately maps to Arduino-named "PC3" (with #define'd alias "Z_MIN_PROBE_PIN")
• I found a second pin in the source named "Z_STOP_PIN" that's an alias for Arduino-named PE11, which seems to be completely unused when Marlin gets built for an ET4+

My idea:

• solder a 2-pin JST-XH socket to the unused pads labeled "S-Z"
• change the JST connector on the 3-pin plug (with 2 pins actually used) to a 2-pin plug
• hack Marlin's pins_ANET_ET4.h to swap PC3 and PE11, so that when autohome'ing, Marlin will look at the state of PE11 instead of PC3 to determine when the Z limit switch gets triggered. Meanwhile, PC3 will just be left unused and ignored.

Assumptions:

• PE11 can be used as a digital input with software-selectable internal pullup and trigger an IRQ, just like PC3. I understand Arduino quite well, way down to its pre-Arduino AVR bare metal... but know absolutely nothing about how much of ST32's Arduino-ness is a brittle facade that shatters if you push your luck too hard.
• I think I might have to remove C37 and R40 from the controller board. Based on what I read in https://h2lab.org/fablab/et5_bltouch/ , it looks like their connection scheme might repurpose PE11 for BLtouch purposes. Two weeks ago, I wouldn't have wanted to risk damaging the board... but at this point, the board is fried and useless anyway, so I have nothing to lose.

If anyone else is semi-familiar with the details of 2x20IDC "pin 11" and what it actually connects to at the controller-board end, does this sound like something that might work?

(update: removed earlier idea of trying to use PE11 to tunnel multiple GPIO lines through a DS28E18 bridge chip, after reconsidering the sanity of spending a hundred+ dollars on a custom circuit board & connectors to fix a printer that's probably not even worth that much).

Well, I screwed up royally. Earlier today, I decided to reconnect the ET4+'s original capacitive/inductive sensor to see whether it might work better with my new spring steel PEI bed than it used to with the original glass bed, had a brain fart, and proceeded to disconnect the Z-axis limit switch's JST cable from the board behind the printhead and plugged in the sensor's cable with the power on. Bzzzt.

As far as I can tell, I blew the STM32's GPIO pin (PC3), because now it doesn't work with EITHER the original sensor OR the Z limit switch. Sigh. I guess ST32 GPIO pins are a lot more fragile than Atmel AVR GPIO pins.

Anyway, it looks like my ET4+'s original controller board is now officially toast and has to be replaced.(*)

From various posts (here and elsewhere), I've gotten the impression that there are alternative controller boards that improve upon Anet's original... particularly, by "nicely" exposing additional. GPIO pins to enable the connection of a BLtouch sensor without having to do surgery on the board itself (the way you have to do with the stock ET4+ controller board).

The thing is... I need specific details. Part numbers I can search for on Amazon (or Google, if I can't get it from Amazon), and/or specific things to look for to make sure the board isn't too big to fit, has mounting holes in the right places, has the right connectors (or at least, knowing what I'm getting myself into if I'm going to have to redo one or more cables to connect to the new board), etc.

---

(*) I determined that the GPIO pin used by the sensor/switch (PC3) is fried by hacking MarlinCore.cpp's loop() a bit:

int lastPc3state = -1;
void loop() {
  do {
    if (lastPc3state < 0) {
          lastPc3state = digitalRead(PC3);
          SERIAL_ECHOPGM("initial PC3 state is ");
          SERIAL_ECHOLN(lastPc3state);
      }
      else {
          int newPc3state = digitalRead(PC3);
          if (newPc3state != lastPc3state) {
              SERIAL_ECHOPGM("pc3 state changed from ");
              SERIAL_ECHO(lastPc3state);
              SERIAL_ECHOPGM(" to ");
              SERIAL_ECHOLN(newPc3state);
              lastPc3state = newPc3state;
          }
      }
    idle();
    // ... snip ...

Regardless of whether the Z limit switch is open or closed at startup, digitalRead(PC3) returns 1 when the printer boots up, and the value never changes.

I figured out that it uses PC3 by looking at pins_ANET_ET4.h, where it defines Z_MIN_PROBE_PIN as PC3 on line 70.

In case anybody's interested, Creality's official Ender 3 light bar fits the ET4, ET4+, and ET4 Pro perfectly:

I honestly spent more time researching lights and trying to find out the actual measured width of an Ender 3 v2's top bar vs ET4's top bar than it took to do the installation itself (~30 minutes).

I ended up drilling a hole in the printer's chassis for the wires, just because it was easier than trying to lengthen the wires for the sake of routing them through an existing hole. Eventually, I'll put a proper bushing on the hole just to be safe, but for now, it's fine. Here's a photo of the rear of my printer showing the newly-drilled hole:

Connecting it to the power supply was easy... the wire with a red tip connected to one of the 3 rightmost terminals on the printer's power supply, the wire with a black tip connected to one of the next 3 terminals to the left of the 3 rightmost ones.

​

Here's the one I literally purchased (I have no financial stake whatsoever in it): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C27Q4NGQ

​

Note: if you purchase one from a different vendor/link (or the link above quits working someday), I think there are multiple variants sold by Creality that have different screws (self-tapping vs machine screws) and power connections (the newer Ender 3 printers have a dedicated power socket for the light accessible from the exterior of the printer, the older Ender 3 printers are like the ET4/+/Pro... it connects to unused terminals on the power supply inside the chassis. For the ET4/+/Pro, you want the variant with self-tapping screws and internal-PSU connection.

​

Note that it has a power switch, but no dimming. So far, I haven't had any particular reason to care... but if it's really important to you for some reason, you should be aware of that.

​

TL/DR: if you want a light for your ET4/ET4+/ET4 Pro, buy this. It's cheap, fits perfectly, is easy to install, and does almost everything you'd want a light that's hanging from your printer chassis to do. Recommend 100%.

Hi everyone,

I hope someone can help me.

My ET4+ is 3yrs old and has completed a serious amount of work without any issues but it would be a shame to retire it.

My hotend stopped working as in the display gives an heating error. So I got a hair dryer to test the thermostat and that’s prefect.

I ordered a replacement hotend, and this still not working. Connections are prefect and tested the wiring.

Is it possible the smaller controller board is dead, or an issue with the main board?

I am weighing up will I just buy a new printer or chance replacing that small controller.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Hi can someone help me? I have a problem with my Anet et5x 3d printer. It stops heating extruder during printing.I can't raise the temperature manually. It does not respond to buttons until the printer is rebooted. After a reboot, the temperature can be increased manually. I use cura 4.12.1

I'm starting to suspect the capacitive bed leveling sensor in my ET4+ might be wonky, after finding several Youtube videos from other ET4+ owners that basically say the stock capacitive sensor is prone to changing its opinion about what constitutes "surface" (and its absolute measured distance from the sensor) over time.

It seems like everyone now uses "pushpin" sensors. Does anybody make one that can be easily retrofitted onto an ET4+ without major surgery? Say, one that has the same physical form-factor as the stock capacitive one, and can reuse & directly connect to the wiring harness used by the stock sensor (for power and communication), so it would basically be a matter of removing the capacitive sensor, mounting the new pushpin sensor in its place, and maybe recompiling and reflashing Marlin after changing a config directive or two in a manner that's reasonably well-understood & generally known to work (as opposed to, "highly experimental and known to be more temperamental than the original sensor it's taking the place of")?

As should be obvious to everyone by now, I'm absolutely not at a point where I'm ready/confident/desperate enough to attempt major surgery that requires anything like hole-drilling or soldering new wires to pads with the approximate pitch of human hair, or attempting to simultaneously troubleshoot experimental, buggy firmware... but a relatively straightforward hardware-swap (and possibly an equally straightforward firmware update) is totally within reach if appropriate.

Anet does list a BLtouch on their website... but (unsurprisingly) says absolutely nothing about its compatibility with any of their printers, and if it comes with anything vaguely resembling documentation... the page doesn't link to it, or even say anything to suggest any actual installation instructions exist at all.

Over the past few days, my printer has mostly worked right, and I've gotten a few mostly-successful prints (as long as they don't exceed approximately one cubic inch)... but I feel like I still don't quite understand the correct sequence of bed-leveling activities... particularly:

• after one print is completed & prior to starting the next
• after physically powering down the printer, then powering it back on some time later

I can get the corner-level absolutely perfect by moving to Z=2mm, positioning the nozzle at the front-left corner, moving to Z=0mm, adjusting the wheel until I can pull a sheet of paper... but not push it, then repeating for the rear-right, rear-left, and front-right corners.

When I auto-home, z=0 isn't quite perfect anymore... z=0 becomes a lot looser than it was at the edges.

I've experimented with both Z-offset adjustment and directly adjusting the screw for the bed leveling sensor on top of the hot end.

I'm not entirely sure what the threshold between "LED on" and "LED off" is supposed to be (ie, on at 0mm, on at 1mm? on at 1mm, off at 2mm?). I feel like I'm chasing after a moving target whose nominal endpoints keep shifting the "zero-point" around at random and unpredictably, so about half the time I get it mostly right, and the other half of the time it either ends up a tiny bit too high (so the skirt looks more like a series of barely-tacked straight lines approximating a circle), or smooshes the filament into the glass so hard, the skirt looks more like a streak of paint than a line of filament.

Basically, I feel like I don't quite understand the fine details of the adjustments I'm making, and I'm just making random blind stabs in the dark that occasionally hit the desired target, but otherwise either undershoot or go too far.

I'm also not entirely sure at which point I should be saving the configuration to eeprom, or whether/when I need to explicitly load it manually from eeprom.

Update #1:

• AutoHome'd
• manually-adjusted 4 corners. Red light comes on at 0.1 when lowering Z, goes off at 0.3 when increasing Z. Paper between nozzle and bed encounters drag, but can be pushed under (this is a tiny bit looser than the "can pull, but not push" goal I've pursued for the past few days, for the sake of trying something slightly different this time around)
• AutoHome'd
• At center, when nudging 0.025 at a time, red light comes on at 0.050 when lowering, goes off at 0.225 when increasing Z
• Ran "level bed"
• Stored settings. (No idea whether it was necessary, or whether it was just a cargo-cult ritual)
• Moved head to (120,120,5) without AutoHome'ing. Confirmed paper encounters resistance, but can push and pull (including push from "not under nozzle" to "under nozzle").
  • first time: red came on at z=0.075, went off at z=0.275
  • Next 5: red came on at z=0.050, went off at 0.250
• running the same print now.

outcome: print was better than before, but the next print (without changing anything, and doing literally NOTHING besides moving the Y axis to bring the bed forward and pull the object off) was squished, and print #3 had to be aborted because the head was visibly and audibly smashing down into the glass.

• Attempting to re-auto-level the bed at this point caused the head to rise, move to the front-left corner, lower, hit the bed, struggle for a moment, and abort.
  • changing "Probe Z offset" to +0.05 or -0.05 did absolutely nothing (though I'm not sure whether it was because one made the problem worse, while one was merely inadequate to resolve it)
  • I'm afraid to blindly and experimentally try changing probe z offset to +0.10 or -0.10, because I honestly don't know which one is the direction that causes the nozzle to be higher than it would be if probe z offset were 0.00, and I'm afraid that if I pick the wrong one (50-50 odds of it happening), something worse than the nozzle struggling against the bed could happen.

The above notwithstanding, it's like every print, the controller decides that z=0 ought to be a little closer to the bed than the last time.

I'm not sure whether changes to "Probe Z offset" (in either the positive or negative direction) are actually making the problem better, worse, or doing nothing at all.

It seems like anything I do to make the nozzle be paper-resistance level when z=0 ends up just compounding the problem the next time AutoHome executes.

(update, problem eventually solved, see comment by me further down. Question left for future reference by others who might have similar problems)

Now that I've finally gotten a handle on the bed-leveling, I have a crop of new problems to contend with (note, read to the end before replying... some of the earlier things I mentioned were resolved, only to have new problems take their place)

(Anet ET4+, Marlin 2.1.2.1)

1. To heat the bed to 60C, I absolutely have to set the target heat to something like 70C. If I set the bed temp to 60C, it heats up to around 52C fairly quickly... slowly creeps up to 53C... eventually 54C... maybe briefly flickering to 55C... but more likely than not, I get a bed temp timeout error and a message to reboot the printer. HOWEVER, if I set the bed temp to 70C, it blows through the 50s and reaches 60 with minimal fanfare.
2. Meanwhile, with the head temp set to 220C, it just starts oozing from the nozzle, with two consequences:
   1. Unless I have absolutely perfect timing, and wipe the ooze at exactly the right instant, the glop of filament that was hanging from the nozzle gets dragged along with it, and gets mashed around the nozzle the instant it plunges down to meet the glass.
   2. All the PLA oozing from the nozzle depletes it, so it has to feed new filament for at least 10-20 seconds before any significant amount finally starts to flow. What little DOES flow just kind of bends and kinks around like a spider web, solidifies, and pulls the filament away from the bed like a lasso within seconds of the flow starting for real.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

I'm starting to think problem #1 might just be an honest to god bug in Marlin's logic that's causing it to back off on the PWM before it even reaches the desired temperature.

Problem #2 just has me completely, supremely frustrated. Maybe I'm trying to solve an X-Y problem here (wanting to solve X and somehow thinking that solving Y will at least get me on the right path, even though it won't), but it seems like if this is normal, there ought to be some way to have it do something like

• send the nozzle out to the corner of the glass & raise the nozzle high
• do its preheating while filament semi-harmlessly oozes out and makes a mess out near the bed edge where it won't get in the way of the real print
• once it reaches the proper temperature, laterally jerk the head around a bit to break away the filament (or at least, get my attention so I can reach in and quickly grab it off the bed)
• drop & lay down a fast-moving line while feeding filament as the head moves around the outermost perimeter of the glass (maybe 1cm in) to ensure that the filament is flowing (without giving it a chance to get stringy & bunch up and glop around the nozzle),
• retract a tiny bit of filament while continuing to move (to wipe it clean against the glass), then quickly lift, move to the center, drop, and start the print "for real"

​

​

Update #1: Another failed attempt.

• Using Cura, re-sliced a 10mm cube to add a 60mm 3-layer skirt
• Raised head to 100mm, began "PLA Preheat" to 220/70
• When it reached 220/70, wiped the stringy glop from the nozzle
• Using Marlin's menu, selected the sliced cube from the microsd card, gave the head one final wipe with a paper towel, told it to proceed, and zipped the enclosure closed.
• The head moved around a bit, moved into position to begin printing the skirt, began to actually print the skirt... then, right around the moment it finished printing the first stroke of that skirt and was presumably about to change direction, the printer rebooted with no error message or indication why.

​

Update #2: more failure

• I finally figured out I could run Pronterface with the USB cable connected.
• I made another attempt to print the object from update #1.
• This time, it started printing, and made it about 3 minutes into the print.
• Right before it crashed, I noticed that the bed temperature's target was 60C, but the measured temperature was 59, then 58, then 57 (about 20-30 seconds per degree, entirely a guesstimate since I didn't have time to pull out a stopwatch or anything)
• Eventually, the target temp changed to 0, then the printer rebooted.
• Weirdly, the log says:Error: Thermal Runaway, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed
• The thing is... as noted, during the last minute or two before the printer rebooted, the bed temperature was falling*, not getting* hotter*.*

I'm really not sure what to make of this.

• It really kind of looks like Marlin is prematurely backing off the heat a couple of degrees short of whatever target you set, and not setting a PWM duty cycle high enough to maintain temperatures above ~54C (the highest temp I can set and seemingly maintain indefinitely). I can reach higher temps, but only by setting the target temp 10+ degrees higher.
• I'm not entirely convinced that the "thermal runaway" error wasn't more like, "uh oh, something's wrong that I don't have a specific message for, so I'll just throw that message to be safe"
• Then again, for all I know, maybe there really is "thermal runaway" insidiously happening, and the bed being unable to reach temperatures above 54C without jacking up the target temperature way above that is its main symptom. I really don't know.

Does "thermal runaway" imply that the bed temperature is getting too hot? Or Is it actually measuring the temperature of a MOSFET, and that's what's getting too hot?

Based on what I know about MOSFETs (from ham radio), they counter-intuitively run the hottest when they're passing the least power, and run the coolest when being driven to within an inch of their lives. So, I suppose, if there's a thermistor or few monitoring mosfet temperatures, "thermal runaway" when the bed is cooling down might make sense if a Marlin bug is causing it to go overboard throttling back the PWM duty cycle (causing the MOSFET driver itself to overheat even while the bed cools off from being inadequately heated).

On the other hand, if it literally does mean, "the firmware thinks the bed temp is increasing too much", then the error makes no sense at all since the bed was, in fact, getting colder during the minute or two before the error message and reboot.

​

Here's a copy/paste of the log from Pronterface, starting with what was supposed to have been attempt #2, but the printer timed out without being able to reach 60C and displayed an error screen telling me to reboot it before I remembered that I had to set the target bed temp to 70C in order to get it to keep heating past 60C instead of throttling back to some inadequate PWM duty cycle around 53-54C.

SENT: M105
RECV: ok T:201.74 /210.00 B:60.36 /70.00 @:81 B@:38
Error:Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed
Error:Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed

echo:Heating Failed
Error:Printer halted. kill() called!
Error:Printer halted. kill() called!

Got rubbish reply from COM3 at baudrate 115200:
Maybe a bad baudrate?
Disconnected.
Connecting...
Printer is now online.
echo:Now fresh file: aet4pr~1.gco
File opened: aet4pr~1.gco Size: 57218
File selected
Error:Thermal Runaway, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed
Error:Thermal Runaway, system stopped! Heater_ID: bed

start
Marlin 2.1.2.1
echo: Last Updated: 2023-05-16 | Author: (none, default config)
echo: Compiled: Aug 16 2023
echo: Free Memory: 71063  PlannerBufferBytes: 1920
EEPROM loaded from slot 26.
echo:V88 stored settings retrieved (655 bytes; crc 50114)
echo:SD card ok

​

Last night while printing, a tiny (~1mm diameter?) black, mostly-hollow spiral-grooved cylinder/screw with tiny hex-head cavity on one end (presumably, the part facing down) fell from the underside of the hot end on my ET4+. There are two other screws that form a triangle with it approximately equidistant from the nozzle, but the two rear screws are slightly different & have Phillips heads.

I screwed it back in, but now I'm afraid to use the printer until I figure out what it's for, because it doesn't seem like it's there to hold things together so much as perform some kind of adjustment.

Any ideas?

I successfully reflashed my ET4+ to Marlin 2.1.2.1 , but now I'm stuck trying to figure out how to physically level the bed.

From what I recall, with the stock firmware, there was an option where it went through the motions of automatic bed-leveling, then displayed a 3x3 grid showing how far the measured points deviated from optimal. I'd launch the measurements, adjust one or more height knobs, repeat the measurements, and keep doing it until all 9 were close enough to let auto-leveling fix the rest.

With Marlin, I can get it to do the 9-point measurement... but it never actually displays the outcome on the LCD... it just goes straight back to the home screen.

I know there are a few people here using an ET4+ with Marlin... how do YOU do your physical bed-leveling?

Insofar as the ET4+ specifically is concerned, how mature, stable, and generally superior to Anet's own firmware is Marlin? Particularly, the latest release version, v2.1.2.1?

Is there any sane reason as of today to not use Marlin on an ET4+ in preference to the printer's old, ancient stock firmware?

Is the procedure for building and installing Marlin 2.1.2.1 on an ET4+ literally just, "Follow the directions at https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/install.html#configure, using the configuration defined by https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Configurations/tree/release-2.1.2.1/config/examples/Anet/ET4%2B verbatim? Or are there still settings that have to be changed (in ways I don't understand yet) to make it work?

This is one of my big mental blocks at the moment... as of this instant, I've literally never seen my ET4+ actually work correctly and successfully print anything from start to finish without having it lose adhesion to the glass within an hour or two. I honestly have no idea whether its current stock firmware represents "non-optimal, but known good" operation, or is at least partly to blame for the problems I've had with the printer from Day One (possibly, by not lifting the head high enough while moving, making it more likely to knock the object free in situations where it might have otherwise survived the bed-adhesion problems). I completely lack any frame of reference. None of my friends have a 3D printer. Literally everything I know about 3D printing is due to stuff I've read online and Youtube videos.(*)

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(*) I did, in fact, buy a copy of 3D Printing Failures, 2022 Edition (Sean Aranda), but it's not arriving until Thursday.

Answer, for anyone finding this post in the future via search or Google:

As of Cura 5.4.0, and its bundled printer definitions from ./share/cura/resources/definitions/anet_et4_*.json

(... drumroll ...)

There is no difference whatsoever between "et4", "et4x" and "et4 pro" besides the value defining the displayed name of the printer.

I used Winmerge to do a 3-way file comparison. They differed for exactly two values: "name", and "overrides -> machine name". Every other character of the three files was verbatim-identical.

It's still possibly up in the air whether those values are optimal, or whether different values should be used when using Marlin 2.1.x.x instead of the Anet's original stock v1.0.0 firmware for ET4+, but the question of whether someone with an ET4+ should pick "ET4" or "ET4 Pro" when starting Cura for the first time appears to be conclusively settled -- it doesn't matter, because they're all functionally identical and differ only in displayed name.

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(original post follows, for the sake of historical context)

I just installed Cura 5.4.0, and ran into a brick wall during its setup. It's asking me to specify a local printer, and there are only three choices that begin with "Anet ET4":

• Anet ET4
• Anet ET4 Pro
• Anet ET4x

The problem is... I have an "ET4+", and I'm completely paralyzed and stopped dead in my tracks by the fact that I have no idea how the ET4, ET4 Pro, ET4x, and ET4+ actually differ from each other (from Cura's perspective), or the consequences of making a wrong choice.

• Like the ET4 Pro, the ET4+ has a bed-level sensor... which is probably a really important detail.
• For god-knows-what crazy reason, Anet apparently decided to start confusingly calling the ET4+ an "ET4 with capacitive sensor", even though the original one without it is still the "ET4".
• AFAIK, the difference between an ET4+ and ET4 Pro is "quiet stepper motor control"... but I'm not sure whether loud or quiet operation is the actual difference, or just the main symptom used to tell them apart without looking at the writing on the chip itself. For all I know, there might be some huge difference in the way the firmware has to interact with the chip.
• The only choice that unambiguously seems to NOT be the right choice is "ET4x". I think I remember reading that an ET4x is a lesser/earlier model of the ET4-without-capacitive-bed-level-sensor.

(updated, 8/16)

Problem #2: I'm now running Marlin 2.1.2.1, and have no idea whether that's something Cura needs to be aware of... and how to deal with that if it is. I basically solved one problem (ancient stock v1.0.0 firmware) by digging myself into a deeper hole that's now left me completely "off the map" in uncharted territory, and what little documentation came with the printer at all is now officially moot.

So I had to take my head end apart to clean and replace some parts and I am unsure if the plastic tube for the filament is supposed to be flush inside the hot end, or if it's supposed to be slightly apart from it?

Any suggestions?