Files
firmware/README.md
Oleksandr ShyshatskyiandClaude Opus 5 65a7528e09 The manual assumed a printer that arrives broken. It arrives calibrated.
The pages written on top of the old README inherited its premise: that after
flashing you face a gauntlet -- go/no-go checks, a safety net, a mandatory
calibration -- before the machine can be trusted with a model. That is not
what happens. The factory numbers import themselves on the first boot, a bed
mesh loads at the start of every print, and the mod is built to run the files
the stock firmware ran. A printer that printed before the flash prints after
it. "Your first print" now says so in its first line, and everything under it
is optional, ordered by what you would actually reach for: check the offsets
are applied, and calibrate only if that disagrees with the machine.

Three audiences now, because owner and contributor was not the real split.
"For experienced users" sits between them: How a print runs, and How
calibration works. Someone who knows Klipper and wants to change what happens
around their file has a place to go that is neither a walkthrough nor the
build system.

What was cut is most of what changed. Pages that were cryptic to the reader
they were aimed at -- Printing, Upgrading -- are out of the nav and kept on
disk to be rewritten rather than deleted. Within the pages that stayed:
Expected output, Probe sampling, What is being measured, the symptom table,
the dark-screen diagnosis, TOOL_Z_ADJUST, PLATE_CHECK, the ff-*.cfg
inventory, [ff_legacy] and SAVE_CONFIG in a paragraph about factory
calibration. Filenames and internals earn their place on an owner page only
when the reader has to type them or look at them; the rest moved to the
experienced pages or to Internals, where the audience wants them.

Calibration became a section rather than a page, because tool offsets are not
the only calibration: bed mesh has its own page now, and its own gotcha
written down -- BED_MESH_CALIBRATE writes `default`, a print loads
`MESH_DATA`, so a mesh probed by hand is a mesh no print will use. Input
shaping is described but has no procedure page yet.

Several claims came out because they were not true. "Is this for you" listed
calibration and input shaping as things the mod gives you; both are the
touchscreen's own sequences, recovered and reimplemented, and the notes say
so plainly. What the mod actually gives you is that anything speaking
Moonraker can drive the machine -- on stock, FlashForge's Klipper does not
toolchange at all, it raises a flag and waits for an application that is not
watching a Mainsail print, and the print hangs at the first T2. The page now
opens by telling most owners not to flash it.

Contributors are still deferred. Their pages are regrouped, not rewritten.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S3XZh4SqPdXAowVndz6tMr
2026-08-28 23:33:29 +03:00

4.8 KiB

Reforge

Custom firmware for the FlashForge Creator 5 and Creator 5 Pro.

It installs the way a normal FlashForge update does: copy one file to a USB stick, plug it in, power the printer on. No jailbreak, no soldering, no opening the case, no ssh needed to get started — the printer's own updater does the work.

Packages are published on the Releases page — two files per release, one per model, marked pre-release while the mod is young. Help and support: the Discord.

Unofficial and unaffiliated with FlashForge. It voids your warranty and you are responsible for your machine. See Status for what has actually been tried on hardware before you flash anything.


Status

It runs on a real printer — a Creator 5 Pro, flashed and printing:

HelixScreen mid-print on the Creator 5 Pro: T2 mounted, layer 2 of 173 HelixScreen's bed-mesh screen showing a probed 10x10 mesh

A checked box happened on that machine; an empty one has not, yet.

For everyone:

  • Install and migration from stock firmware — the printer's own updater does it; your unit's factory calibration imports itself on the first boot
  • Printing — gcode straight from the slicer, nothing edited
  • Toolchanges — a current Klipper with real toolchanger support, in place of the 0.12-era tree FlashForge ships
  • Nozzle-offset calibration
  • Mainsail at http://<printer-ip>/, with a current Moonraker behind it — anything that speaks the Klipper API works
  • Camera — mjpg-streamer, already on the printer; the mod just starts it
  • Wifi
  • HelixScreen on the printer's own screen
  • Chamber heater
  • Creator 5 (non-Pro) — its package builds and passes the same replica test suite, but has not touched hardware
  • Going back to stock — proven on the printer replica, not yet needed on the machine. The stock package restores everything it carries; Moonraker is not in it, so the mod's build stays and keeps working — see Support

For the tinkerer:

  • ssh as root — a random password is chosen on the first install and written to anvil-password.txt on your stick; updates keep it (make passwd bakes in your own)

What you give up

FlashForge's application is one binary, and replacing it takes everything that lived inside it: the network API on :8898, and with it FlashPrint, Orca's FlashForge profile and the mobile app. Moonraker's API takes over. Flashing the stock package brings them back.

If your prints already come out the way you want and you like the printer's own screen, this mod is not for you. It trades FlashForge's polish for Klipper's reach, and it expects you to be comfortable with a Klipper config and an ssh session when something breaks — Is this for you is the honest version of that question.


Get it

Creator 5 and Creator 5 Pro are not interchangeable. The printer refuses a package built for the other model — the most common reason a flash "does nothing". Yours is in Settings → About.

Your printer The file on the Releases page
Creator 5 Creator5-anvil-<date>.tgz
Creator 5 Pro Creator5Pro-anvil-<date>.tgz

Download the stock FlashForge package for your model before you begin. It is the undo button: flashing it back puts the printer as it was.


Start here

Is this for you Who should flash this, who should stay on stock, and what it asks of you
Installing The flash, the first boot, your root password
Your first print The go/no-go checks, calibration, and the two verification files
Support The logs, and the way back to stock

The full manual is at reforge.readthedocs.io. If you want the insides — one file, firmwareExe, with the stock boot scripts, updater and recovery path left untouched — How it works is under For contributors.


Credits

Built on the work of others: ghzserg/FF publishes the stock packages and factory image everything here starts from; Mainsail, Moonraker and HelixScreen are shipped as released; the toolchanger status API follows viesturz/klipper-toolchanger so tool-aware UIs work unchanged.