3D Universe Presents: The Unofficial FlashForge Creator X Manual
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Upgrading to Sailfish Firmware
The FlashForge Creator X is fully compatible with the popular Sailfish Firmware, created by Dan
Newman. This firmware adds several significant features and improvements, including:
•
Support for improved acceleration, which improves print speeds and reduces vibrations
without sacrificing quality.
•
Enables faster preheating by allowing the build plate and the extruders to heat up at the
same time (this feature was included specifically for the FlashForge Creator and Creator
X printers, which have a strong enough power supply to support this).
•
Provides an improved bed leveling function. When the bed leveling option is selected,
the build plate is raised and the stepper motors are disabled. This allows you to move
the extruder manually to any position you wish, so you can check the leveling in several
places more quickly without having to keep pressing the buttons on the control panel.
•
Adds a “Pause @ Z Pos” option, which allows you to have the printer pause a print job
automatically when it reaches a certain height (in millimeters).
•
Adds an “Override Gcode Temps” option, which allows you to have the printer ignore
any temperature settings in a .x3g file and instead use the current preheat settings for
printing temperatures. This allows you to switch materials without having to
re-‐generate your .x3g files.
If you are trying to upgrade to Sailfish, here are some tips and suggestions.
•
Make sure you follow all the instructions specified on Makerbot’s
Sailfish installation
guide (
http://www.makerbot.com/sailfish/install/
). Also, don’t forget to complete
Step 1 and 2 on the
Sailfish setup guide (
http://www.makerbot.com/sailfish/setup/
).
When you get to the ‘Installing the Sailfish Firmware’ portion of the guide and it asks for
you to select the correct board, make sure to choose the FlashForge board.
•
If the extruder is printing extremely far off to the left, make sure your home and
extruder head offset is set correctly in the EEPROM. To do this, open up Replicator G
and open up Onboard Preferences from the Machine menu.
•
For the
x
home offset, you should have a value around 152mm.
•
For the
y
home offset, you should have a value around 75mm (for dual extruders)
or a value around 72mm (for single extruders).
•
For the extruder offsets, you should have a value of around 32mm or 33mm.
Alternatively you can have a value of 0mm and the firmware will automatically
set it to the default value.
When you change the EEPROM settings, be sure to click on the ‘Commit’ button to save your
changes. If you need to change all the settings back to default, press the ‘Reset Motherboard
Completely’ button.
