After tuning my vref, the printer was missing steps still. I pulled the trigger and am swapping from the 4.2.2 to the 4.2.7 creality board to see if that resolves the issue.
While i was in there, I figured I’d put another z axis motor on there.
Do you guys have any recommendations on firmware or should I just stick with creality’s?
Klipper is a different beast but once you get it going it’s leaps and bounds ahead.
No more compiling and editing firmware. Since the Klipper firmware itself is built and deployed to the board so the logic of what features, pins, etc can be controlled by your pi.
E.g. the board is no longer the “brains” of the printer but the brain stem. Where the brain (the pi) tells it on pin A “tell this stepper motor to turn this”, on pin J “tell the heater to cycle on” etc.
Basically you download Klipper, look at a printer.cfg for the board you have, and then just use that as a starting point.
Here’s the generic printer.cfg for your new board
https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/blob/master/config/generic-creality-v4.2.7.cfg
The real power comes from having the option to use macros for things like START_PRINT and END_PRINT.
For example, when I added a Nevermore fan on an skr mini e3v3 board I just had to wire it, find the “pins for the plug” on the board and then add the necessary config change.
Didn’t work? Comment it out and restart firmware and you’re no worse than it not being there. Adjust, restart, and go.
So where I’d avoid a marlin update because of the hassle of building and updating I now just check for updates, ssh in and build it with a command and update the board over USB.
And that’s just to update the Klipper firmware on the board for whatever fixes/changes are needed for Klipper. For things like new macros or existing items changed around you just update the config and “restart” and it does the rest.
The only thing that you lose with an ender is the screen. Their screens aren’t dumb… they have their own weird firmware. Personally I just use the website and now the moonraker mobile app to control everything and I don’t bother with a screen at all.