printing

Upgrading Marlin firmware on the Ender 3 Pro

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Part 4 of my New Years’ 2024 upgrade posts series …

Upgrading my Ender 3 Pro with the newer 32-bit mainboard means I can now more easily upgrade the firmware. I considered trying out Klipper, but since Marlin is what I’m used to (the original 8-bit board was running Creality’s version based on Marlin v1.1.9), I decided to get my feet wet using that first. The firmware on the new board was based on v2.0.8.2 (from August 2022) but the latest release was v2.1.2.1 so I figured that would be a good first upgrade to attempt.

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Upgrading some Ender 3 Pro hardware

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For Part 3 of my latest round of upgrades to kick off 2024, I also made some hardware changes to my Ender 3 Pro 3D printer for the first time since getting it back in 2021:

Yeah, just a few things. šŸ™‚ I completed these changes around the same time as the upgrades to my HomeTroller and Debian Bullseye, but wanted to wait a bit before posting so I had more time to play around with the results and I’m pretty pleased!

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Canon MF455dw

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Canon MF455dw

It’s been 9 years since I bought a new laser printer. I typically don’t replace my equipment until it’s either broken or having too many problems to deal with. My Canon imageCLASS MF4890dw has been chugging along faithfully since I bought it back in 2014 but it recently fell into that “too many problems” category: the ADF has been squeaking and jamming regardless of my attempts to clean it, replace the rollers, etc.; one of the flatbed cover hinges broke back in 2020 and while I was able to replace it, last year the plastic slot that holds the hinge in place cracked so now the cover won’t stay open on it’s own (and the hinge pops out when I open it); and finally despite replacing the toner cartridge and cleaning, it’s been printing black lines down the left side of each page. That was enough to push me over the edge to look for a replacement.

I didn’t do a ton of research this time … I have been really happy with my Canon printers so I just looked for the latest revision of what I already had. Canon’s MF450 series has a few models that are all very similar, the primary differences being the inclusion of a fax, and print speed. There wasn’t much of a price difference for the top-of-the-line model (and it was readily available) which is why after reading a few online reviews, I selected the Canon imageCLASS MF455dw.

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OctoPrint and the OctoPi

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Now that I’m semi-comfortable with the 3D printing process for my Ender 3 Pro (download/create model, slice STL in Cura, save GCode to micro SD card, put micro SD card in printer, print model), I wanted to eliminate the “sneakernet” step of manually shuffling the SD card between my PC and the printerĀ andĀ enable some more monitoring options (eliminating another sneakernet connection: walking back into the office every now and then to check on the printer!).

Enter OctoPrint: “the snappy web interface for your 3D printer that allows you to control and monitor all aspects of your printer and print jobs, right from within any browser on your network. It runs basically everywhere, from a Raspberry Pi to your gaming rig, can be easily extended thanks to a powerful plugin system, and is Free and Open Source Software.” Specifically, I’m using the Raspberry Pi-enabled version, OctoPi.

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Creality Ender 3 Pro 3D printer

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Ender 3 ProI have a new hobby!

For Christmas, my wife and daughter surprised me with a 3D printer, the (SainSmart-branded) Creality Ender-3 Pro. It was a well-timed gift since we were stuck at home for the holidays and winter break so I had a whole week to immerse myself in a brand new area of tech, learning about new acronyms (FDM, PTFE, PLA, TPU), terminology, filaments, web sites, and, of course, printing stuff!

Where to start?

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Canon PIXMA TS9120

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Canon Pixma TS9120

I went to print a color document on my Epson XP-410 printer the other day and, despite non-empty ink cartridges, got a print that was missing several colors. I ran the print head cleaning procedure multiple times, replaced ink cartridges, even manually cleaned the inside of the printer and could not get it to print cyan or magenta anymore. Epson support said I could send the seven year-old unit in for repair, and offered me a discount code for a newer model, but I decided it was time for a change. After my requisite online research, I selected the Canon PIXMA TS9120.

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Epson Expression Home XP-410 and Canon imageCLASS MF4890dw printers

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Although there was nothing technically wrong with my trusty workhorse Epson AcuLaser CX11NF color laser printer/scanner/fax machine, it was over 7 years old and I was starting to be disappointed with its color quality, speed, and general noise. Rather than replace it with another color laser printer, I decided to go with dual printers: a monochrome laser for basic printing, and a color inkjet for photos. I ended up selecting the Epson Expression Home XP-410 and Canon imageCLASS MF4890dw.

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Microsoft Surface RT tablet

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Surface RT tablet

Last month I picked up a 32gb Microsoft Surface RT tablet as a combined birthday/Christmas present for my daughter. In a bit of pre-planning I upgraded her laptop to Windows 8 so she had time to get familiar with the new OS before she finally got the tablet last week. So far, it’s been a hit, despite some of the setbacks of WinRT, but I’ll get into those later.

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Jumping onto the Jaunty Jackalope

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Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released this week and for the first time included a specific version for netbooks.

It took a long time to download (apparently everyone is trying to get it), but once I had the image I created a bootable USB stick and then used it to boot my EeePC into the new OS.

My first impression was that it’s really slick looking. My second impression was that the remix interface was slow. The mouse moved jerkily and the eye-candy like fades and animations were sluggish. It was only the remix interface that was affected though, as once I had Firefox or any other app running, performance was fine. I found a single post on the Ubuntu forums reporting the same thing, but it could’ve been related to running from the USB stick. I did find another article that blamed it on the combination of a new version of the X Server and a new Intel driver in the distribution and finally this one that contained instructions on how to revert to a slightly earlier kernel to fix the problem.

Despite these warning signs (I like being on the cutting edge!) I took the plunge and did a full fresh install on my Eee. Since the 701 has an SSD in it, I used some of tips in this article to not create a swap partition and selected the ext2 (non-journaling) file system during partitioning for less wear-and-tear (you can find some other tweaks for running Linux on SSD drives here).

I’m happy so far! I haven’t noticed the GUI performance problems I saw when running the “live USB” version. The installer also detected my little Bluetooth dongle and I had no problems re-pairing it to my Treo (though I still need to test using that as a data connection).

Now I’ve got to put everything back the way I like it, just like when I switched from Xandros to Ubuntu EEE and then to Easy Peasy (which just had their 1.1 release). In a month or so, I’ll also upgrade my server to this new release.