Its_All.Lost
Because hope just breeds everlasting misery…

Adventures in Klipper

Klipper

Let me start off by saying by no means am I an expert with Klipper, or 3D printing. I don’t really know wtf I am doing half the time, I just manage to get it working – hah! I few days ago I decided to take the plunge into Klipper with my printer, a Monoprice Maker Select v2.1 with an SKR 1.3. I had been running Marlin 2.x on my printer and it was all setup and configured and working perfectly. I decided apparently that “working perfectly” wasn’t good enough, and I needed to break it. Enter Klipper. From what I gather now that that I have a 32 bit board I wont really gain much in the way of performance with Klipper vs if I still had the 8 bit Melzi. What you do gain is a much easier way to configure the firmware over compiling and flashing the board after every change. You just save a file and reboot.

Now I wanted to document the process for others in case it helps, and I figured this would be a quick build process and a quick write up. Heheh, I was wrong. I has now been a solid week of tweaking and configuring Klipper as well as a few days of writing this post and attempting to get it finished. Every time I do something else comes along that I feel I need to add to the process. Well, I finally got it all done – I think. Now what started off as a nice clean post turned into a ton of sections that didn’t jive. I’ve done my best to make it all flow and make sense, if I missed something let me know.

 

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Wanhao i3 32bit upgrade

Maker Select 32Bit Upgrade

I decided to make the jump to 32bit printing. I upgraded from a stock Melzi on a Monoprice Maker Select v2.1 (a rebranded Wanhao i3, Cocoon Create). I had no real reason to other than I wanted something to do and I figured this would be a good project, and as always I’m looking for better prints. So why not? I got a BIGTREETECH SKR 1.3 and five (5) TMC2208 v3.0 UART ready steppers. I pulled the trigger and went all in head first after a single night of research. To be honest though when I started this journey there was not a lot of info for doing this just yet, the SKR was still pretty new. What info I have found came mostly from some facebook groups (BIGTREETECH) I am in and a few YouTube videos. But as I type this there is now tons of info available, just most of seems to be directed towards the Ender printers, yay.

 

Things to note up front:

This guide is a long one, I would read this all the way through first it’ll save you a headache. From what I read the TMC2208s don’t support Linear Advance while in stealthchop. It must be disabled and used as spreadcycle over UART instead if you want Linear Advance. The other option is to use a different driver than a 2208 for the extruder. This would get around the Linear Advance issue. It may also be fixed in Marlin further down the line, who knows.

Getting everything setup including the new programming environment was a pain in the ass, hopefully this “guide” will alleviate some of the pain.

I recommend that you DO NOT buy the TFT35 or any TFT (except maybe the new dual mode TFTs). The dual screens can switch between TFT mode and 12864 LCD mode. The regular TFTs do not have all the functionality of a regular LCD screen. I ordered the TFT35 at first and after two days I sent it back and got a LCD12864 Graphical display instead. Thats the route I am gonna go. The stock screen on a Wanhao i3 is not compatible with the SKR as far as I have been able to find, unless you rewire the plug (see comments below for pinout). The TFT35 was $32 and the LCD12864 was only $12. Heres a good video showing the TFT35.

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