Tag Archives: Flashforge Creator Pro 2

Klipperizing my Flashforge Creator Pro 2 3D Printer

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Posted 28 September 2024

I’ve had my Flashforge Creator Pro 2 (FFCP2) IDEX 3D Printer for about three years now, and it is my go-to printer for anything requiring internal support structures. For instance, this model is a pill dispenser that screws onto a pill bottle and dispenses one pill at a time.

The dispenser has a slide mechanism (colored grey above) that allows one pill/caplet to drop down from the bottle into a slot when the slide is positioned at one end of its travel. The captured pill is then dropped out of the mechanism when the slide is move to the other extreme. Printing this as a single piece requires the use of a dissolvable support filament, which in practice requires a dual extruder printer like the FFCP2. Although in theory this could be done on a single extruder printer with a ‘multi-material’ setup like the Prusa XL or the Bambu X1, in practice it is extremely difficult because the without a LOT of purging, the dissolvable filament contaminates the extruder head and weakens the print.

So I love my FFCP2 because it allows me to print things like the above pill dispenser, but I hate it because the supplied firmware is anything but elegant, and there have been no updates since I purchased it three years ago (and since it has been discontinued by the manufacturer, no updated are likely in the future either). However, a few days ago, while doing yet another futile search for FFCP2 firmware updates, I ran across this post, which claimed to have gotten Klipper to work on a FFCP2. At the time I wasn’t sure what ‘Klipper’ was, but after some research I realized this was what I was looking for – in spades! According to the Klipper Github page, it is hardware-agnostic 3-d printer firmware with the features described here.

Reading through the features list and the FAQ was more than a little overwhelming; I got lost pretty quickly trying to figure out what the heck this ‘Klipper’ stuff was doing. I think I finally figured out that ‘Klipper’ is a system composed of (at least) three parts, as shown below:

Klipper System Diagram

In the above diagram, the firmware in the 3D printer MCU is replaced by firmware that handles only low-level direct hardware control functions; all the calculations required for a successful print are moved to the Klipper host software on the Linux-enabled device (a Raspberry Pi or equivalent, or a Linux PC of some kind). This offloads most of the computational load from the 3D printer MCU allowing – at least in theory – the printer to actually run faster (although the physics of extrusion and motors will still limit the process). The Linux-enabled device also contains a web server (Mainsail or FLUIDD) that exposes 3D printer controls to the user, via any web browser or dedicated display like the very cool CYD program by Sims. The Klipper software in the Linux-enabled device is much more usable than my old Flashforge firmware, and since it is written in Python and is open-source, much easier to maintain/extend.

Progress to date:

Due to some hardware problems with my FFCP2, I haven’t yet gotten Klipper going on my printer. However, I have managed to connect to my printer’s MCU board using a cheap ST-LINK adaptor from Amazon and the ST-LINK Utility from ST Micro (ST Micro says that ST-LINK is now deprecated in favor of their STM32CubeProgrammer app, but I found that I could not connect to the FFCP2 MCU with this app, but I could with ST-LINK – go figure) . It took me a while to find my way around the ST-LINK utility, but I finally figured out that I could modify the default memory view ‘size’ parameter to capture more or less of the MCU’s flash memory. After a short conversation with ‘Guru’ at ST, I took his advice and expanded the ST-LINK memory view to the full 1MByte flash memory size of the STM32F407xx MCU on the FFCP2 motherboard, and then saved that image to a file for safe-keeping and, if necessary, reversion to the original firmware.

For the ‘Linux-enabled Device’, I decided to repurpose an old Dell Precision M6700 laptop that already had Debian Linux loaded from a previous project. After making sure that my Debian install was up to date, I followed the instructions in Evil Azrael’s Wiki to load Klipper onto the laptop. Here are some photos of the process:

The connections are:

           MCU SWD    ST-LINK

GRN      GND             GND

YEL       DIO              SWDIO

ORG     CLK             SWCLK

At this point, I’m waiting on a part delivery to get my FFCP2 back in working order so I can finish my ‘Klipperization’ project, but I’m really looking forward to having access to a non-moronic printer control package.

24 October 2024 Update:

When I connected up my ST-LINK/USB adapter to my FFCP2 and my Win 11 laptop, I was unable to get ST’s ST-LINK utility to connect to the MCU – bummer! After verifying all the connections and trying different things (power-cycling and/or resetting the FFCP2, disconnecting/reconnecting the USB cable, etc) I still have been unable to connect. This is a serious bummer, as if I have ‘bricked’ my FFCP2 I have no idea what to do next. I posted to the ST forum, so I’ll see how that goes.

After some more research, I found this post describing how to force a firmware reload, as follows:

I did all this using the .BIN file I captured from the ST-micro MCU, but unfortunately the printer did not respond. I have also attempted to find the original factory firmware for this printer on the FlashForge support site, but that all seems to have disappeared. :(.

28 October 2024 Update:

After crying in my beer for a while, I started looking for alternative methods for regaining access to my ‘bricked’ STM32F407 motherboard processor. I figured ST-Micro had to have some way of doing this, so I started poking around there. Eventually I came across this article that described the process, as shown below:

So I started looking for BOOT0 on my motherboard – a process that was hindered by the lack of a schematic. Apparently FlashForge printers (including the FFCP2) are ‘closed’ products and schematics are hard/impossible to find. Fortunately for me, I had developed a bit of rapport with the FlashForge tech support team, and I pleaded to them for a copy of the schematic, pointing out that since the FFCP2 is no longer supported by FlashForge, there shouldn’t be any reason to continue to hold onto the schematics. To my amazement, this actually worked, and I got an email back with the board schematic as a JPG attachment – yay!

FlashForge Creator Pro 2 Schematic with BOOT0 highlighted

As can be seen from the above schematic and photo, BOOT0 is connected to the resistive voltage divider R12/R13, and the value of R13 is 0Ω (short circuit) holding BOOT0 to GND. To raise BOOT0 to VDD (3.3V), all I have to do is remove R13 from the circuit and R1 (10K) will pull it up to VDD. Here is a photo showing R13 removed from the circuit.

After powering up the printer, I found that I was indeed able to connect to it using ST-LINK (ST32CubeProgrammer still doesn’t). Here’s a photo of the motherboard with a small SPST switch installed to make switching BOOT0 high/low easier

But not with STM32CubeProgrammer

31 October 2024 Update:

Well, bad news; although I could regain SWD connection using the BOOT0 trick, I was unable to figure out how to get my original FFCP2 firmware back onto the STM32 MCU. I can load the firmware (or at least ST-LINK utility says I loaded the firmware), but the printer won’t come back up properly after the load. I eventually succumbed and installed a new motherboard (ouch!$$$). The new motherboard seems to be from a different production run, as the ugly jumper wire is now missing.

As an experiment, I hooked up my old motherboard to my lab power supply set for 24 (actually 23.19), and was able to connect to it using ST-LINK Utility on my windows 11 box and a ‘clone’ ST-LINK adaptor. Interestingly, I was unable to connect using STM32CubeProgrammer on either my Win11 box or my Linux box. Maybe I have to have a ‘genuine’ ST-LINK adaptor for that magic to work?

Stay tuned!

Frank

FlashForge Creator PRO 2 IDEX GUI Issues

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Posted 30 August 2022

Exactly one year ago I posted about receiving my then-new FlashForge Creator PRO 2 IDEX 3D printer. Since then I have made many successful prints and have been very happy with the machine. Then just a few weeks ago I started having serious problems with prints not sticking to my flexible build plate. Such problems occur regularly with 3D printers, and they are usually fairly easy to troubleshoot and fix, but this time I found that the touch-screen GUI on the FFCP2 IDEX machine to be more of a hindrance than a help in working my way through the problem. This post describes the issues I encountered and some suggested changes to the GUI to resolve them. The firmware used is the latest version, V1.8.

Extruder Z-axis Offset Calibration:

One of the most common problems for non-sticking prints is the extruder Z-axis offset. If the offset is too large, the filament won’t contact the print bed with enough area to adhere the first layer, and this can cause the BOD (ball of death) as the filament balls up around the extruder. When I do this procedure on my Prusa MK3S+ single-extruder printer, the display shows the current offset so adjustments can be made from a known starting position. Unfortunately the FFCP2 GUI for some reason forces the user to calibrate both extruders every time, and starts by setting the offset on both extruders to +2mm, undoubtedly to make sure the nozzles are well away from the print bed. This also erases the existing offset value, so there is no way to slightly ‘tweak’ the offset value one way or the other – the offsets have to be set from the beginning every time. For first-time users, this might be OK, but for experienced printers it is a royal PITA.

Imagine you have done some minor maintenance on the right extruder, but the left extruder is printing perfectly. Now you need to recalibrate the right extruder, but don’t want to mess with your finely-tuned left extruder. Nope – can’t do that. As soon as you select ‘Z axis Calibration’ you are doomed! The offset values for both extruders fly out the window and you are back to using the supplied plastic spacer to calibrate both extruders ‘by feel’. Doesn’t matter that you had that left extruder all dialed in – you are hosed!

Or, maybe you are happily running PETG on both extruders, but now you want to make a print that requires a dissolvable filament, like AquaSys120 or similar. You change out the filament on one extruder and make a test print using just the dissolvable filament and find it either isn’t extruding at all (offset too close to the bed) or more likely isn’t adhering to the bed due to subtle differences in the texture/stickiness of AquaSys120 filament vs PETG. You know the way to fix this is to slowly vary the z-offset of the AquaSys120 extruder, but you don’t want to mess with the nicely printing PETG extruder. Sorry – go directly to jail, do not pass GO, and do not collect $200.

The only way to handle either of these scenarios is to have already recorded the old Z offset values for both extruders (and who does that?) so you can go through the you must calibrate both every time procedure, dial both extruder offsets to where you had them before, and then adjust slightly from there. Make sure you write the new values down, because if you want to make the next tweak or you make a filament change a month from now, you have to start all over again – ARGGHHHH!

As I mentioned above, this might be OK for first-time users, but becomes a royal PITA for more experienced users. The FFCP2 does have an ‘Advanced’ menu, but this menu only handles X and Y axis tweaks – not the Z axis. This menu should be revised to allow the Z-offset for either extruder to be set independently, and should offer options to start from the default (+2mm) location or from the current z-axis offset position.

Z-axis Calibration Delays Due to Extruder Cooling Requirement:

When troubleshooting a printing problem, I might go through several Z-axis calibration procedures. However, each time I start the procedure, the printer forces me to wait for the extruders to cool to room temperature, which takes several minutes – ARGHHH! This is stupid for two reasons; first, I would think I’d want to calibrate the Z-axis offset at the normal operational temperature to take any temperature-related mechanical changes into consideration, not at room temp. Second, if FlashForge decided that any such mechanical changes were inconsequential, then it shouldn’t matter at what temperature the procedure is conducted, and so there shouldn’t be any delay at all. This seems to be just one of those things where the programmer decided the process should always start with room temperature extruders and never gave any thought to the tradeoff between programming ease and customer frustration.

Print File Names:

The ‘Print’ menu shows a partial list of the available print files, and allows the user to scroll up and down the list as necessary. However, as shown in the following photos, print file names are truncated after N characters, so similarly named files (I use version numbers a lot) all look the same. Moreover, when a file is actually selected by tapping on the name, it still isn’t shown full length. My Prusa MK3S+ printer has the same problem, but solves it by repeatedly scrolling through the name.

Print file list. Notice how similar they are, because the differences are later in the name
Selected print file name is also truncated – you have to just hope you have picked the correct one!

Conclusion:

The FlashForge Creator PRO 2 IDEX printer is a great printer, and I have gotten many many good prints from it over the last year. Even with the frustrations associated with the less-than-perfect GUI, I don’t regret trading down from my previous MakerGear M3-ID Independent Dual Extruder (IDEX) machine. However, I believe the GUI was not given the care and resources it needed to be a first-class example of a 3D printer user interface, and should be updated. If it remains in this ‘sort-of-OK-sort-of-clunky’ state, I think it will sour a lot of 3D makers off the FlashForge brand.

Flashforge could actually kill two birds with one stone if they were to open-source the GUI code; then users like myself who are frustrated with the current performance could collaborate in making it better.

Stay tuned,

Frank

FlashForge Creator PRO 2 IDEX Filament/Color Designator Project

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Posted 29 July 2022

I’ve had my Flashforge Creator PRO 2 IDEX 3D printer for a while now, and ever since Jaco Theron and I got the Prusa Slicer Configuration for this printer working, I have been enjoying trouble-free (as much as any 3D printer is ‘trouble-free’) dual-color printing.

However, there are some ‘gotchas’ that can make using this printer annoying.

  • The way that the FFCP2 filament spools are arranged on the back of the printer means that the filament from the left spool feeds the right extruder, and vice versa, which leads to confusion about which filament feeds what extruder
  • The printer configuration in the slicer refers to the left extruder as ‘Extruder 2, the left extruder temperature as ‘T1’, the right extruder as ‘Extruder 1, the right extruder temperature as ‘T0’, so I’m never sure which physical extruder I’m dealing with when setting up for a print.
  • The filament spools are located at the rear of the printer, so it’s impossible to tell what filament type is loaded without physically rotating the whole printer, removing the spool from the holder, and looking at the label. And, since my short-term memory is about equal to that of a amoeba, I wind up doing this multiple times.

So, I decided to see what I could do to ameliorate this issue. The first thing I did was to use my handy-dandy Brother label maker to label the left and right extruders with their respective designations in the software, as shown in the photo below.

The next thing was to use my newly-acquired Blender super-powers to create and install removable filament color/type tags to both sides so I would no longer have to rely on my crappy memory to know what filament type and color was loaded on each side, as shown in the following photo.

Filament type and color tags for each extruder

The type/color tags slide into slots in the plate holders, and the plate holders are mounted using the FFCP2′ 4mm hex-head front plate mounting screws. I printed up tags for all my normal colors and filament types and store them inside the printer (the red box seen inside the printer on the left-hand side). Then, when I change a spool, I change the tags to match the new filament type & color.

FlashForge Creator Pro 2 IDEX Profile for Prusa Slicer 2.3

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Posted 12 September 2021

I recently sold my MakerGear M3-ID and replaced it with a FlashForge Creator Pro 2 IDEX (FFCP2) model. The M3-ID was a great printer, but I could never get it to reliably print with dissolvable filaments. Since that was the entire reason I got the printer, I was more than a little bummed out. After viewing some very positive YT reviews of the FFCP2, I decided to sell the M3-ID and used the proceeds to buy my new FFCP2.

The new printer allowed me to successfully print water soluble PVA with PLA pretty much right away using the FlashPrint5 slicer that comes with the printer. However, after a few prints I started looking for ways to use the printer with either Simplify3D or with the Prusa Slicer, as the FlashPrint5 software is pretty buggy and suffers from really poor GUI design (for instance, the only way to specify the support extruder is via a right-click option in the plater view). This post is a description of my efforts so far to make this happen.

Some web research revealed that there was a FFCP2 profile for the Simplify3D (S3D) slicer floating around. This sounded like a good start, as I had S3D from well before from my PowerSpec 3D Pro (FlashForge dual extruder knockoff marketed by MicroCenter) days, and later with the M3-ID. In response to my emailed request, S3D sent me their FlashForge Creator Pro 2 17MR21.zip file containing just one file – FlashForge Creator Pro 2 17MR21.fff. After loading this into S3D, I was able to print a storage rack for a metric nut driver set fairly easily using a PVA dissolvable support structure.

So, now I could get away from the stupid FlashPrint5 slicer, but what I really wanted was a workable profile for Prusa Slicer 2.3. I use this slicer with my Prusa MK3S single-extruder printer, and I love it. Also, it is open-source, and quite actively developed by Prusa Research. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have developed a profile for PS2, and the process of doing so is not straightforward, at least to me.

After a LOT of reading through the Prusa FAQs and other support documents, I discovered there is already a profile available for a dual-extruder printer – the BIBO printer, so I thought I would try adapting it to use with the PS2. Here’s the BIBO profile, edited to change ‘BIBO’ to FFCP2 and other minor stuff.

By placing this file (FlashForge.ini) in

C:\Users\Frank\AppData\Roaming\PrusaSlicer\vendor 

I was able to get Prusa Slicer to recognize the new profile and load it. However, when I tried to print a small 20mm cube (one that I had printed successfully using S3D), it appeared that the right extruder and the bed heated up properly and the movement codes were reasonable, but I wasn’t getting any filament extruded onto the bed.

Comparing the gcode from S3D with the gcode for the same model but sliced in PS, I found the following:

  • The beginning of the start g-code sections were identical (no surprise, as I had copied the start/end gcode from S3D to PS), but the PS2 file had the following lines added

After that, both files contained LOTS of G1 commands, so I got lost pretty quickly. However, I could see that the PS code definitely contained code that should have pushed filament out of the extruder, as shown below:

But this code doesn’t actually extrude enough filament to make the model, as shown in the following photo:

Very faint filament extrustion – should be a skirt with a solid 20mm x 20mm square.

I posted this problem to the Prusa Slicer section on the Prusa forum, and got a reply that triggered off yet another search through all the various slicer settings to see if there was something that might affect this issue. This time, however, I found a setting in the ‘Advanced’ section of the ‘General’ page on the ‘Printer Settings’ tab, as shown below:

The ‘Use relative E distances’ box was checked. UNchecking it fixed the problem

After UNchecking the ‘Use relative E distances’ box, the demo cube started printing correctly – yay!

After UNchecking the ‘Use relative E distances’ checkbox (deliberately stopped after several layers)

The Prusa-supplied informational flyover associated with this setting said ‘most firmwares use absolute E distances’ and ‘the default is absolute’ , so now I had to figure out where this unusual setting was coming from – the .INI file?

So, it turns out that the FlashForge.ini file, which I ported from the BIBO.ini file, did indeed have ‘use_relative_e_distances = 1’ in the [printer:*common*] section (and in a couple of other places as well). So, I edited the .INI file to change these settings from ‘1’ to ‘0’ and then closed and re-launched PS2 to confirm that the proper value changes were being picked up from the INI file.

There is still (at least) one mystery remaining, in that the little ‘padlock’ icon at the top of the ‘Printer Settings’ page still shows an ‘unlocked’ condition, even immediately after the initial load from the INI file. Don’t know why this is, but at least I’m one more step toward my goal of having a working FFCP2 profile for the PS2 slicer. Here’s the current .INI file contents:

15 September 2021 Update:

When I tried printing a simple 2-color 20x20x10mm cube using S3D, the actual print came out all in one color, even though I could see what I thought was a tool change gcode command in the gcode file. However, when I did this same thing in FlashPrint (FP5), it came out OK. So, I looked at the gcode commands in the .gx file emitted by FP5 and saw the following (after the binary thumbnail image code)

This shows that the FP5 slicer is using considerably different g-codes than S3D or Prusa Slicer. In particular I was dumbfounded by the first line – M118 X30.00 Y30.00 Z10.10 T0 T1 When I looked up the M118 command, it shows as a ‘serial print’ command, basically like “echo” in BASIC or other script languages. This clearly not right, as the M118 command used here is describing the overall dimensions of the model to be printed, including the skirt. Even after extensive web searches, I was unable to find much that described the syntax for the FlashForge usage of this command, except for one post in the Simplify 3D forum, talking about the FlashForge Adventurer 3, which had the following:

So, it appears that if this line is placed in the startup g-code section of S3D, then it will be placed in the start section of the gcode file, with the {} parameters replaced by the maximum X, Y, & Z values. I’m not sure that is actually what I want, as the FP5 output seems to be the entire size of the model, not just the half-dimensions.

16/17 September 2021

In my continuing quest to get my FFCP2 functioning with Prusa Slicer, I have been going back and forth between FlashPrint5 (FP5) – FlashForge’s proprietary slicer, Simplify3D which purports to have a FFCP2 profile, and Prusa Slicer, which purports to have a way of adding ‘vendor bundles’ to its configuration. Yesterday I managed somehow to screw up the S3D configuration so that it no longer prints with the right extruder at all, and in fact appears to be extruding from the left extruder while moving the right one – weird!

So, this morning I went back to basics and reprinted the 20x20x10 two-color cube .gx file from FP5, and verified that it worked properly – yay!

Next I reloaded the original unmodified S3D profile (FlashForge Creator Pro 2 17MR21) back onto S3D and printed the cube again using only the left extruder. This also appeared to work fine.

Next I tried the same cube using the original unmodified S3D profile and just the right extruder. This also worked fine.

Next I tried a two-color print in S3D using two processes – ‘LeftTop’ and ‘RightBottom’. I set ‘RightBottom’ to ‘Right Extruder Only’ and ‘stop printing at 3mm’. I set ‘LeftTop’ to ‘Left Extruder Only’ and ‘start printing at 3mm’. Then I selected ‘Prepare to Print’ and ‘Select All’ for process selection, but this time I said ‘Yes’ to ‘The selected process is not configured for the number of extruders you have chosen to use’, instead of the ‘No’ response I had selected before this test. When I did this, the print preview looked proper, with the right extruder shown for the bottom 3mm, and the left extruder shown for the top portion. However, the actual print failed – the bottom 3mm printed normally, but the right extruder continued ‘air printing’ after 3mm, and the left extruder first clashed with the right one, and then ‘air printed’ off to the left, like it was doing a duplicate print

I sent an email off to S3D support regarding this issue, and got a reply back saying that the problem was related to me changing the gcode flavor from ‘FlashForge Dreamer Firmware’ to ‘Makerbot’. So, I changed it back by reloading the original Flashforge profile, and tried this trick again. Got exactly the same result – the two heads crashed on the tool change.

Then I had an inspiration and tried using S3D’s ‘dual extrusion wizard’. First I created a 20x20x3mm solid in TinkerCad, loaded the model into S3D, and then duplicated it to get two separate cubes. Then I used the ‘dual extrusion wizard’ to stack the two pieces and assign them to different extruders. This worked great – yay!

So next I tried looking at the difference between the print file that worked (210917_20x3mm_S3D_DualExtWizV1.g) and the one that didn’t (20mm_2col_S3DorigFFProfile.g) and it basically boiled down to the startup gcode, and the tool changeover code. Here’s the startup code section:

The 4 commented-out lines are from the non-working print file, and the uncommented lines are from the file that worked. As can be seen, the working file set both extruders to operating temperature at the start, even though the left (T1) extruder isn’t used until the changeover point. Here’s the changeover code:

The commented-out M-commands were my attempt to get the left extruder up to temp but for some unknown reason I couldn’t get that to work. The line

was added to manually park the right extruder, as this was not done automatically by S3D (in fact, AFAICT the 2-process setup doesn’t even consider that each process could use a different extruder). The ‘M108T1’ command is the same as the one found in the ‘Dual Extruder Wizard’ print file. With the above changes, I was able to successfully print the 20x20x20mm cube with the first 3mm printed by the right extruder and the remainder printed by the left extruder, as shown in the following photo:

Successful print using the ‘2-process’ method, with manual edits as described above.

So, to summarize progress to date, I believe I have figured out that the ‘dual extruder wizard’ in S3D does a good job of handling the extruder switch, but the ‘manual multiple process’ method does not. I also figured out that – contrary to a number of web postings about the FFCP2, at least the S3D profile with it’s ‘FlashForge Dreamer Firmware’ setting for gcode flavor is correct.

22 March 2022 Update:

Early this month ‘jacotheron’ posted a comment to this article, asking if I would share my Prusa Slicer work so far. I said ‘sure’ and sent him off the FlashForge.ini file I had created by copying the BIBO printer configuration and editing it. This exchange started a long conversation between me and Jaco Theron of South Africa. Jaco was also interested in using the Prusa Slicer software to run a FlashForge Creator Pro 2 IDEX machine, and being a heck of lot smarter than me, he was actually making significant progress! In just a few days he had a working version of a Python script to convert PS gcode output to the required *.gx format required by FFCP2. Of course I volunteered to test it, and once again embarked on a new voyage of discovery.

Jaco had already put together a very complete GitHub repo for this purpose, and the Readme documented the required support software installation (Python and a couple of extensions). First and foremost, I didn’t know Python and didn’t have it on my Windows 10 system. After some inet research I felt like I knew enough to take a stab at doing the installation. Of course, even with Jaco’s very detailed instructions, I managed to run into several potholes on my way to Python nirvana.

The first step is to download and install Python (3.10.3 is the latest version) from https://www.python.org/downloads/. However, since I almost always accept all the default selections when installing a new program, I didn’t check the ‘Add Python to your PATH statement’ checkbox and boy did that leave a mark! Because I hadn’t checked this box, The ‘post-processor’ command in the FlashForge.ini file couldn’t find Python, and I couldn’t even run it from a normal command-line console. I tried modifying the PATH statement myself (you’d think that would be easy – what could possibly go wrong?) and again failed – Rats! Somewhere along the line I picked up on the fact that Python was also available from the Microsoft store – so I though “Aha – that’s the ticket! So, I uninstalled Python, and re-installed it from the store. That installed fine, and I wasn’t asked about the PATH statement, so I think Microsoft did that by default. Nope – it didn’t, and now I could not only not run Python from the command line, but apparently the Microsoft version was well out-of-date – bummer! Alright, so next I uninstalled Python (anyone keeping score?) and re-installed again from Python.org, being VERY CAREFUL to check the ‘add Python to PATH’ option, and this time it all seemed to work – yay!

One good thing did result from all my thrashing around – I learned about using the Python ‘pip’ command to install and update other packages like Pillow (also required for the Python script). Here’s a screenshot showing this process:

Python Command Window: Installing Pillow and upgrading pip

The next part of the process involved placing the FlashForge.ini and the Python post processor script ‘ff-creator-post-processor.py’ in their respective locations, and then modifying the the FlashForge.ini file’s ‘post-processor’ line to point to the Python script. I used the ReadMe recommendations from Jaco’s Github repo directly for the location of these two files, as shown below:

FlashForge.ini location
Python post-processing script location

And the modification to the ‘post-process’ line (line 80) in FlashForge.ini:

If you use the folder locations as I have above, you should be able to use this post-process line, changing only ‘Frank’ above to your user name, (and possibly ‘Python310’ to ‘Python311’ or ‘Python32’ or whatever is current at that time).

After getting all this to work, there was one more hurdle (or maybe two if you count the Prusa Slicer ideosyncracy described below); The FlashForge Creator Pro 2 firmware does not like long filenames, and Prusa Slicer loves them. Once Jaco figured out what was happening, he modified the post-processing script to shorten them to something the printer could handle. What this means to the typical PS user is – Don’t freak out when the filename you thought you were getting is not what is on the SD card! There was one last hiccup in this regard when I used the default filename for a 3D Benchy print, which came out as

after the post-processing step. This produced the dreaded “file opened failed” error when I tried to print it. When I shortened the filename to ‘_3DBenchyDualPrint.gx’ it printed fine. I passed this along to Jaco, and he has undoubtedly fixed this problem by now.

So, after all this, I was able to print my first ‘Benchy’ in dual-color splendor. Actually it was a pretty crappy print, but it certainly showed me why Jaco recommends enabling the ‘draft shield’ option as shown below:

My first real 2-color print using Prusa Slicer – unfortunately with ‘Draft Shield’ disabled
How to enable the ‘Draft Shield’ option

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why this option was called ‘draft shield’ when its purpose seemed to be a lot more like an ‘ooze shield’. I finally twigged to the idea that the ‘draft’ in ‘draft shield’ related to wind drafts causing the print to cool off too quickly. However, this puts an image in my head of someone trying to do 3D prints on their front porch in a high wind, but what do I know 😛

One last thing. Prusa Slicer has a couple of idiosyncrasies that you normally don’t see until you start working with multiple extruders. The first (and most frustrating) one is that Prusa Slicer refuses to allow objects on the build plate to be moved in the Z-direction, which means you can’t stack parts to do a simple 2-color cube, for instance. There is a trick, however. First you add the first part to the print bed, then right-click on that part and select ‘Add Part’ from the context menu. Then add the second part from the resulting dialog. The part added this way can be moved in the Z-direction. It’s a kludge, but it works.

The second idiosyncrasy is even crazier. When multiple extruders are defined, a ‘phantom’ part appears on the print bed, as shown below:

Where did that come from?

As you can see, this part isn’t on the object list on the right, and it cannot be deleted! As it turns out, however, this catastrophe is caused by Prusa Slicer having ‘Wipe Tower’ enabled by default for multiple extruder prints, and not also placing it in the object list to give us poor users a chance to figure out where it came from. To rid yourself of this plague, disable ‘Wipe Tower’ as shown:

Disable ‘Wipe Tower’ to rid yourself of the ‘phantom part’

So, thanks to Jaco Theron’s hard work, those of us with FlashForge Creator Pro 2 IDEX printers now have a pretty reasonable (and getting better by the minute) free alternative to the truly dreadful FlashPrint5 that comes with this printer. Thanks Jaco!

Just as an aside, I’m an old broke-down retired engineer from the 70’s, so much of my professional life was spent without benefit of the internet.  Every so often now I realize how much more productive the inet makes us. How cool is it that an old fart from Ohio and a young engineer from South Africa can so easily collaborate to improve a software package written by a company in Czechoslovakia to support a completely different 3D printer.  An improvement that will be immediately available to everyone in the world!

12 August 2024 Update:

I recently acquired a new Windows 11 laptop and discovered that I no longer had the ability to use Prusa Slicer to do prints on my Flashforge Creator2 Pro IDEX printer- yikes! My choices seemed to be a) dive down the ‘rabbit hole’ to solve the problem, b) return my brand-new Dell XPS15 9530 laptop for a refund and forget the whole thing, c) commit suicide, or d) all of the above :). Because I’m a old broken down engineer with too much time on my hands I chose “a) dive down the ‘rabbit hole’ to solve the problem” (‘b’ was out because my 30-day grace period had elapsed, but I kept ‘c’ in mind too!)

Thank goodness the three-year younger version of me had the forethought to document this, as it was immensely helpful in ‘loading up the buffers’ with previous knowledge’. In particular, I had forgotten about Jaco’s Github repo, so getting that hint saved a lot of time.

Looking around on Jaco’s site, I found this ‘issue’ post – “worked in super slicer but not in prusa 2.6.1 #11′. In the comments, I found this:

I was running into a similar problem with Prusa Slicer 2.8.0.
I would put the FlashForge.ini and .idx files in …/Roaming/PrusaSlicer/cache/ and …/Roaming/PrusaSlicer/cache/vendor, but as soon as I started Prusa Slicer the files would be deleted.

Below is a workaround that finally ended up working for me:
-Close PrusaSlicer
-Remove all FlashForge files from

any folders in …/Roaming/PrusaSlicer
-Install PrusaSlicer 2.6.1
-Follow above steps detailed by @Kingston-C:

From Kingston-C:

I believe that Prusa changed the way it reads vendors in 2.6+.

A workaround I found is to place “FlashForge.ini” inside of the PrusaSlicer’s AppData folder (typically on Windows at “C:/Users//AppData/Roaming/PrusaSlicer/cache/vendor/”). Then, in this same location, make a copy of any .idx file and rename this file to “FlashForge.idx”

I hope this helps!

-Start Prusa Slicer and add the printer
-Make sure slicing and exporting work
-Upgrade Prusa to newest version

Whatever Prusa 2.8.0 didn’t like about the .ini files seems to be fixed during the upgrade process.

The comment about PS2.8.0 not liking the older .INI file/folder arrangement rang true to me, as my old laptop was still able to process STL files for my CreatorPro2 IDEX with PS2.8.0 installed (hence my complete disbelief that the same setup didn’t work on my new laptop!).

The very first thing I did was verify (again!) that my old laptop did indeed play well with my CP2 by printing out a small calibration model – check!

The next thing was to UNinstall PS2.8.0 from my new laptop and install PS2.6.1 per the above notes. As an aside, the Prusa repo has installers for their latest (PS2.8.0), but not for earlier versions – they just offer a ZIP file. So, I didn’t so much ‘install’ PS2.6.1 as expand the ZIP file to a folder and then just run PS2.6.1 by double-clicking ‘prusa-slicer.exe’.

In my previous (unsuccessful) efforts I had installed Python 3.12.5 using the default install options (plus the ‘admin’ and PATH options), and this put python.exe way down in ‘c:\users\Frank\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\’, which made for a real long line in the post_process line in Flashforge.ini (to be fair, that’s what happened on my old laptop and the long path didn’t cause any problems, but….). In any case, per the above notes I chose the ‘custom install’ option this time and (with the ‘admin’ and ‘PATH’ options still checked), installed Python at ‘C:\Python312’ leading to a much more readable ‘post_process’ line in Flashforge.ini.

Next I had to install Python’s Pillow library. The ‘Readme’ does say ‘Using Command Prompt’ run the following two commands:

but I missed the ‘Command Prompt’ part and tried to run these commands from inside python – didn’t work :(. Once I figured that out and used Windows command prompt, it still didn’t work. Some more research revealed that the ‘python’ in these commands should be replaced by ‘py’, making the commands

The ‘upgrade pip’ command was a bit redundant in my case, as I had just installed the latest version of python, but the ‘upgrade Pillow’ command was absolutely necessary.

After this, I downloaded and unpacked the latest ZIP file from Jaco’s github repo. Then I placed ‘ff-creator-post-processor.py’ in ‘C:\Users\Frank\AppData\Roaming\PrusaSlicer\post-processor’, and ‘Flashforge.ini/.idx’ in ‘C:\Users\Frank\AppData\Roaming\PrusaSlicer\vendor’.

Then I edited the post_process line in FlashForge.ini to read:

Then I fired up PS2.6.2 again, and now the ‘FlashForge FFF’ option is available in the config wizard, as shown in the screenshot below:

And the CreatorPro2 options show up in Prusa – yay

And, even more fantastic, I was able to successfully process an .STL file for printing on my CP2, and even more amazing, the print came out perfectly (I would have accepted even a lousy print, so the print quality was a bonus!).

So, the last step in this drama is to upgrade PS from 2.6.1 to 2.8.0 and find out whether or not all my work will stay in place – fingers crossed!

Fail! PS2.8.0 popped the following error:

And now the config wizard doesn’t show the FlashForge FFF item, and when I clicked on the still-visible ‘CreatorPro2 Left Extruder Only’, PS2.8.0 crashed :(.

Interestingly though, although the ‘FlashForge FFF’ entry no longer shows up in the config wizard display in PS 2.6.0, I can still see (and select!) all the CP2 configuration choices, and I can still process gcode files properly – yay!

So, screwing around a bit, I saved a copy of ‘BIBO.idx’ as ‘FlashForge.idx’ in the ‘C:\Users\Frank\AppData\Roaming\PrusaSlicer\cache\vendor’ folder, and then re-launched PS2.6.1. This time the config wizard showed the ‘FlashForge FFF’ printer, and I can still see (and use) the CP2 options. Not quite sure why, but even though there is a ‘BIBO FFF’ printer item shown in config wizard, the various configurations don’t show up in the ‘printer’ drop-down box.

Well, I can live with PS 2.6.1, but I’d really like to get back to the newer features with 2.8.0, so I’m going to try again to run 2.8.0. Fingers crossed (again)!

Well, good news and bad news; 2.8.0 came up OK, and I could see the CP2 configuration choices, and I could process a file for the CP2. However, when I saved the processed file to disk, I got another Prusa Slicer error as shown

When I dismissed the error message, PS2.8.0 didn’t crash immediately, and I could still see (and select) the CP2 entries in the ‘printer’ drop-down box. However, when I tried to run the config wizard, PS2.8.0 hung up for a long time, and then produced the same error as above. After dismissing the error window the config wizard came up, but without the ‘FlashForge FFF’ entry. Cancelling the wizard still let me use the CP2 config entries, so that’s a plus. I ran the config wizard again, with the same long hangup and the same error message, thinking this time I would click on ‘Finish’ rather than ‘Cancel’. However, I couldn’t even get that far, as the config wizard (and Prusa Slicer) were hung, and I had to kill the whole thing. Brought 2.8.0 back up, and didn’t run the Config wizard, but still got the same ‘preset bundle version not found’ error after 10-30 seconds. Dismissing the error window allowed me to see and use the various CP2 options. I think for the moment I’m going to leave everything where it is. I don’t really need the config wizard, and dismissing one error message is a small price to pay for having the advantages of 2.8.0.

Summary:

I now have PS 2.8.0 working on my new PC, albeit with a one-time error message popping up each time I launch the program, and no ability to use the config wizard. For the moment at least, that’s good enough.

16 July 2024 Update:

Well, that didn’t last long; shortly after I typed the above summary, PS2.6.1 started crashing it was game over for the current iteration. And, it was about this same time that I noticed that I have actually been running PS2.8.0 on my older laptop – with the Creator Pro II (alias “FlashForge”) profile and without any problems – wtf?

So, I decided to start over (again). This time I uninstalled or deleted all PS installs just to be sure (PS2.6.1 wasn’t ‘installed’ – I was running it from the expanded release folder from Github). Then I uninstalled Python312 (it didn’t like some deprecated syntax in Jacothery’s Python profile) and downloaded/installed Python310. Then I copied over my Flashforge profile from my old box to my new one, downloaded PS2.61 (again) and fired it up. Right away I was able to see the CreatorPro2 selections (yay!), but when I sliced a test file and tried to save it, PS popped an error as shown below:

Yuk, down the rabbit hole again! However, by this time I had figured out how to run the post_processing script in Visual Studio in debug mode – not perfectly, but enough to get a clue, and the clue led me to understand that I had pulled a major boner and not installed Pillow, the Python Imaging Library – oops (and this clue hit me on the forehead right after I posted an issue at the Prusa Slicer Settings repo, so I had to follow up the post with a mea culpa). Anyway, I installed Pillow, and suddenly all was well – at least in PS2.6.1. I was able to load an STL model into PS, slice it, save it in proper .GX format to an SD card, and then print the model on my CP2 – yay yay yay!

Then I crossed my fingers and allowed the upgrade from PS2.6.1 to PS2.8.0, and – amazingly – it worked! So now I have both my old and new laptops running PS2.8.0 and both are fully capable of supporting my CP2 printer – whew!

Stay tuned,

Frank

Frank

FlashForge Creator Pro 2 Dual Independent Extruder (IDEX) 3D Printer

1 Reply

Posted 30 August 2021,

For the last year and a half or so I have been struggling to get reliable multi-material 3D prints from my MakerGear M3-ID Independent Dual Extruder (IDEX) machine, and failing. I could get it dialed in for a few prints, but then prints would simply refuse to stay attached to the build plate no matter what I did. I tried everything I could think of, short of ‘hair-spray’ and ‘glue-stick’ options, which I refuse to do. In addition, the web-browser-only operator interface to the M3-ID was more than a little clunky. The printer was set up about 2 meters away from my PC, so I kept having to run back and forth to get simple things done, like load/unload filaments or do first-layer calibrations, or cancelling a print when it, once again, jumped off the build plate.

Eventually I realized I was never going to get it to work reliably in my small home lab, so I started looking for alternatives. In addition to the M3-ID, I have a Prusa MK3S single extruder printer that is completely reliable, almost completely silent when printing, and about twice as fast as the M3-ID. I seriously considered getting the MMU2 multi-material add-on to the Prusa, but there are some serious drawbacks to that option; for one, there have been many reports where running dissolvable and structural filaments through the same extruder causes the printed part to basically fall apart, due to filament cross-contamination. For another, printing a dual material part with the Prusa takes MUCH longer than printing the same dual material part with dual extruders, because the Prusa setup has to go through a complete filament retraction, change, and purge cycle for each material change. For a complex part this adds up to hundreds or even thousands of change cycles.

So, back to the web, where amazingly enough I found that FlashForge had just recently come out with their Creator Pro 2 IDEX model, at a very reasonable price-point. Moreover, I was able to find several YouTube reviews by well-respected 3D printer enthusiasts, and they had very good things to say about the printer. One of the most consistent comments was how easy it was to assemble the printer out of the box and get very high quality prints, and – important to me – get high quality prints using PVA water-soluble support material paired with PLA. In addition, at least one of the reviewers was successful in printing with PETG, even with the 240C extruder temperature limit on the stock extruders. And, even better, there is removable build plate option that works flawlessly (with the addition of a 2mm shim – available on Thingiverse). The build volume of the Creator Pro 2 is about half the volume of the M3-ID, but since I rarely build large items that wasn’t a deal breaker for me.

So, I put my MakerGear M3-ID up for sale on eBay for about a third of what I paid for it, and it sold in about an hour. Then I used the proceeds to buy the FlashForge Creator Pro 2 with a little bit left over – sweet!

When I received the unit, the shipping box looked a little bit beat up, and some of the foam packing material was damaged, so I was worried about printer damage. However, the printer itself seemed in perfect condition, other than a seriously mis-aligned X axis carriage (more on that later). Here are some photos I took during ‘unboxing’ and assembly.

After getting everything unboxed, I started going through the ‘quick start guide’, and rapidly got the extruder assemblies attached to the X-axis carriage, but when I checked the X-axis alignment with the very well thought-out alignment tools (the grey 3D printed parts in the above photo), I discovered the carriage was way out of true, as shown in the following photos:

So, I decided it was time to see how well FlashForge support worked, and I was pleasantly surprised that I got a very quick response to my email. I was connected to ‘Cheery’, who said he would be responsible for getting me going, and he did an excellent job of doing just that. After a couple of back-and-forths, he sent me a link to a video demonstrating how to re-align the extruder carriage. The video showed a FlashForge technician simply reaching into the printer, and brute-forcing the carriage into alignment – wow! Never in a million years would I have tried this without seeing the video – just not something you contemplate doing with your brand-new printer. While watching the video I heard some quite loud clicking sounds which at first I attributed to background noise in the obviously industrial setting, but then realized it was actually the printer itself making the clicking noises as the tech forced the carriage into alignment. I verified with ‘Cheery’ that I too should hear ‘clicks’, and that gave me the courage to apply enough force to overcome whatever ratcheting mechanism is associated with the carriage. I’m a big guy and in pretty good shape for an old fart, and it took some real force to make anything happen. In any case, I eventually got the right number of ‘clicks’ and the carriage was then aligned perfectly – yay!!

Once I got everything put together, I did a couple of the test prints provided by FlashForge, including one they called a ‘Hilbert Square’ that required a support material. I decided to try it with PVA water-soluble material support, and it turned out very nicely.

Not museum quality, but plenty good enough for me!

Although not perfect, this print was SO much better than I had ever been able to achieve with the M3-ID that I almost cried from happiness; out of the box with no real tuning, using FlashForge’s so-so proprietary FlashPrint5 slicer, and bingo – great prints with dissolvable supports – yay!

The next thing I tried was my pill-dispenser design, which features a sliding drawer arrangement to dispense one pill or caplet at a time from a bottle. The sliding drawer requires a dissolvable support to make it work, and again the print worked like a champ on the very first try.

Needless to say I’m extremely happy with my new FlashForge Creator Pro 2 IDEX printer. There are lots of things to quibble about (FlashPrint doesn’t seem to recognize the USB connection, and it’s kind of clunky compared to Simplify3D or Prusa Slicer), but it really, really does a nice job of printing, at least with PLA and PVA support material. I’ve already printed a set of ‘universal filament spool holders’ to replace the FlashForge proprietary ones, and I’ll be doing some more prints in the near future. I have quite a backlog of dual-color, dual-material prints I have been unable to finish while fighting the M3-ID, and I’m looking forward to actually being able to set up a print and walk away, knowing the FFCP2 is reliable enough to leave alone.

28 March 2022 Update:

Since this post was first published back in August of last year, I have been pretty happy with the Flashforge Creator Pro 2 IDEX machine, especially since Jaco Theron and I collaborated (well, Jaco did all the work and I helped with the testing) on a Prusa Slicer config file and post-processing script for this printer, I’ve been even happier.

Unfortunately that all came to a screeching halt about a week ago as I was doing some dual-color test prints to prove out Jaco’s latest changes. First I suffered a filament jam in my right extruder, which I could not seem to clear using my tried-and-true methods.

After a lot of cursing and gnashing of teeth I finally did get it cleared, only to start getting errors about the right extruder not holding temperature. I’ve never heard of this error before, so after scratching my head and searching vainly through the inet, I wound up completely disassembling the right extruder assembly, whereupon I found that the thermocouple cable to the right extruder had broken off where it enters the heat block, as shown in the following photo:

broken thermocouple cable (blue wire) where it enters the heat block.

I had been working with ‘Cheery’ from FlashForge’s After-sales support site through this process, and after verifying the printer was still under warranty, he arranged to have a completely new extruder assembly shipped to my house, from China via DHL – talk about customer support – Wow!

So, the DHL box arrived today, and sure enough, it contained a brand-new extruder assembly, including a brand new stepper motor already attached – wow and wow!

New extruder assy still in its protective foam wrapper, old parts on build plate
Old (left) and new extruder assy – note damaged thermocouple cable on old part

30 March 2022 Update:

I had some time last night, so I installed the replacement extruder assembly. This took a couple of hours and the requisite number of mistakes, including the required “Oh shit – I dropped a screw into the printer and it (of course) went right into one of the gaps in the interior floor and into the electronics space in the bottom – crap!” At first I thought – “no problem, I have spares”, only to realize later that I didn’t have spares for that particular set of two screws – double crap!

And, one last little ‘gotcha’; when the new extruder module was assembled at the factory, the cooling fan was mounted upside down, with the open port for cooling air to the extruder pointing up, and the closed ‘top’ pointing down, as can be seen in the following photo:

red circles show upside down fan mounting. Airflow direction arrow circled at upper right

Anyhoo, after removing the bottom cover of the printer (this turned out to be pleasantly easy, with only four screws vs the 54,225 for normal printers) to find and recover the (literal) loose screw and re-orienting the cooling fan to mate properly with the cooling duct, I finally got everything back together. That was enough drama for last night, so I waited until today to see if my repair worked. After loading filaments and calibrating, I printed a two-color calibration cube using Prusa Slicer for slicing; It turned out pretty nice, as shown below:

two color calibration cube, with ‘draft shield’ enabled

Stay tuned,

Frank