Oleksandr ShyshatskyiandClaude Opus 5
65a7528e09
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
8.8 KiB
Printing
Day-to-day use once the machine is calibrated: how to set the slicer up, the rules that keep a toolchanger from damaging itself, and what happens when filament runs out or clogs.
Slicer setup
Leave the profile stock. The mod is built to print the files the stock
firmware printed, so there is nothing to add and nothing to re-slice; if you
want to drive the sequence yourself instead,
How a print runs is the page for that. An untouched FlashForge Orca profile works as
shipped: nothing to paste into Machine start or end G-code, and files sliced
before the mod keep printing. [ff_print] wraps SDCARD_PRINT_FILE/M23,
reads the bed, nozzle, initial tool and first-layer height out of the file
itself, and runs START_PRINT before the file's first line -- which the stock
block needs, because it has no G28 (its first motion, G1 Z5 F2400, assumes
a homed machine) and no M190 (nothing waits for the bed). At the other end
its ;end_gcode is a single move that turns nothing off, so
FF_AFTER_PRINT_END runs the exit sequence when the job leaves the printing
state.
To drive the sequence from the slicer instead, put an explicit START_PRINT
call in Machine start G-code and set
SET_GCODE_VARIABLE MACRO=FF_BEFORE_PRINT_START VARIABLE=prepare VALUE=0
so the machine is not prepared twice.
Leave Change filament G-code empty. With no custom block Orca emits its
own bare Tn at each tool change, which reaches ff_toolchange.py directly.
Older instructions here asked for a T[next_extruder] ; ff-toolchange line to
dodge a trap in FlashForge's Klipper fork; we ship upstream virtual_sdcard
now and that trap is gone, so clear the field if it still holds anything.
Files already sliced with the old marker keep printing correctly — the G-code
parser discards the comment and T2 arrives either way, so no re-slice is
needed for that.
No re-slicing is needed: [ff_print] applies the print Z offset for any file,
including ones sliced before the mod existed.
START_PRINT options, for the explicit path: TOOLS=0:220,2:240 every tool
the file uses with its clean temperature (Orca: is_extruder_used[n]; a bare
TOOLS=0,2 also works and falls back to NOZZLE=) — presence gate and
pre-print
nozzle clean; without explicit temperatures each tool is cleaned at the
temperature its _FF_FILAMENT.tool_material maps to; CLEAN=0 skips the clean (default on: each used tool is grabbed,
heated, purged 50 mm at the chute with the part fan on, wiped at the
station, cooled by 100 °C and docked while the bed heats — the app's
clearNozzlePrint); LEVEL=1 probes a fresh mesh (recommended for the
first print); SOAK=<seconds> dwells after the bed reaches target (the app
waits 5 min; default 0).
The rules that matter
These are the gates the mod puts between a bad command and your build plate. Knowing they exist explains most of what looks like the printer refusing to cooperate.
G28docks a mounted tool before homing Z. Z homes on the carriage's eddy sensor, whose trigger height is ~3.2 mm below the nozzle tip — with a head on, the nozzle hits the plate first. TheG28wrapper inff-toolchange.cfghomes X/Y (endstops at 0, away from the docks), runsTOOLCHANGE_PARK, then homes as asked;G28 X/G28 Yalone are untouched. If the dock sensors can't say whether a head is on, Z homing is refused.- Prints refuse to start while uncalibrated.
START_PRINTruns_FF_PREFLIGHTfirst, and[ff_print]runs it again throughFF_BEFORE_PRINT_STARTbefore the file is even loaded: if any tool'snozzle_zor thestation_zis missing, the job is refused before anything heats, homes or grabs, with the fix spelled out. Override only for bench tests:SET_GCODE_VARIABLE MACRO=_FF_JOB VARIABLE=allow_uncalibrated VALUE=1. - Calibration moves are bounded. The plate check gates both calibration commands; the Z probe targets −3 by default (the app's own station value) and, once a trigger height is known, stops 2 mm below it instead of driving on.
- Implausible results are not saved. A circle-fit residual above
0.05 mm, or a nozzle-to-station gap (
nozzle_z − station_z) outside 1.5–5 mm, aborts the command with nothing staged. Thresholds are inff-tool-offset.cfg. - A
T<n>on an unhomed machine aborts instead of homing silently (auto_home: False) — a remote G28 with a tool mounted rams the nozzle into whatever is on the bed. - Missing tools are caught before anything moves.
START_PRINT TOOLS=…passes them to the same_FF_PREFLIGHT: every tool the file uses must be sitting in its dock (switch pressed) or be the mounted one, else the job is refused with the list of what is missing (the app's E0165 — which only checked the first tool and let the others fail mid-print at their grab). - Runout and clogs pause the print. See Runout and clogs.
Filament: load, unload, purge
payload/klipper/config/ff-filament.cfg reproduces the touchscreen's FilamentLoad page
(recovered from the binary — docs/notes/47-filament-load-recovered.md):
each tool has its own direct-drive extruder, so loading means grab the tool,
drive it to the purge chute at the back right (X275 Y254), heat to material
temperature + 30, push 150 + 145 mm at F240, park the tool, heater off.
LOAD_FILAMENT TOOL=1 TEMP=220 ; or MATERIAL=PETG (app's temperature table)
UNLOAD_FILAMENT TOOL=1 TEMP=220 ; prime 10 mm, then pull 80 mm out (LENGTH= to tune)
PURGE TOOL=1 PURGE_TEMP=220 LENGTH=50 ; app's clearNozzlePrint purge + cold wipe (WIPE=0 to skip)
TOOLdefaults to the mounted tool;RELEASE=0keeps the tool on the carriage afterwards,HEAT_OFF=0leaves the heater on.PURGEends the way the app's pre-print clean does: the nozzle rests on the front-right wipe spot (266.5, 13.8) 1 mm above the eddy trigger height while the hotend cools by 100 °C, then lifts — the purge string freezes and tears off instead of riding back to the dock.WIPE=0skips it.LOAD_FILAMENThas no wipe, as in the app (its guide tells you to pull the string off).- While a print is paused the macros only act on the mounted tool, use
the app's in-print lengths (100 mm then −5), and leave tool and heater for
RESUME. While printing they refuse. - The stock app has no retract-unload — its "unload" is the same forward
push and the on-screen guide tells you to cut and pull.
UNLOAD_FILAMENTis therefore designed, not ported;unload_length(80 mm) in[gcode_macro _FF_FILAMENT]is a first guess — shorten it once you have measured the nozzle-to-above-gears path. - All geometry, feeds, the temperature table and the per-tool chute nudges
are variables of
[gcode_macro _FF_FILAMENT].
Runout and clogs
The stock config ships all eight filament sensors with pause_on_runout: False and a runout_gcode that only prints wheel runout:Tn — the
touchscreen app did the rest (polled the mounted channel's switch sensor
from its print loop, kept only the mounted tool's motion sensor enabled).
Without the app nothing would happen. payload/klipper/config/ff-runout.cfg restates the
sensor sections (Klipper merges repeated sections, later options win — the
stock printer.filament.cfg stays untouched and OTA-safe) so that
runout_gcode calls _FF_RUNOUT, and ff_toolchange arms the mounted
tool's two sensors on every grab, disarms everything on release, and
re-arms on RESUME (the app's setFilamentWheelManager).
Flow: sensor fires while an SD print is running and the sensor belongs to
the mounted tool → PAUSE, T<n> out of filament / T<n> clog on the
display and console → fix the filament → LOAD_FILAMENT TOOL=n (its paused
path is the app's in-print feed: 100 mm, then 5 mm back) → RESUME.
Sensors of tools that are not mounted never fire, and nothing fires
outside a print. TOOLCHANGE_STATUS shows which sensors are armed;
FF_RUNOUT_ARM [TOOL=n] / FF_RUNOUT_DISARM do it by hand. Clog pausing
can be made report-only, as the app's plugCheck toggle did:
SET_GCODE_VARIABLE MACRO=_FF_RUNOUT_CFG VARIABLE=clog_pause VALUE=0.
The pause is immediate, as the app's was. Note that the runout switch is
upstream of the extruder gear with a long PTFE run in between (~600 mm
here), so the head still holds that much printable filament when the print
stops — it is lost. Printing on and pausing once that length has been
extruded is a real improvement, but it needs a per-machine measurement and
a watcher counting extrusion; it is not built in.
No endless-spool: another tool is another head, not another spool of the
same material. Untested on hardware: whether the motion sensors
(detection_length 50, event_delay 3) stay quiet through LOAD_FILAMENT.