BL Touch

The media could not be loaded.  What can I say….what a mission! Physically installing the device was easy enough, getting it to work properly was another task. First of all, that usb flasher that it comes with was useless to me and it is a knockoff of some other device that’s used for that, I think usbasp; I did manage to use it twice semi-successfully with firmware that ended up not working for the device at all, then along the way of troubleshooting, I followed some instructions online that somehow updated the drivers for the device and from then on it was useless and unrecognizable by my computer even upon restoring the drivers. Thankfully I had an Arduino on hand. Maybe you can get it to work for you but I couldn’t. I recommend you flash a boot loader and never have to do this part again. I ended up using TH3D’s Unified Firmware and that’s what I’m sticking to.Anyways, the story ain’t over. No matter what I did, the bltouch would always fail the self-test or calibration at a certain point, then I discovered that it works as a solenoid and the screw at the top works to set the distance of the pin and the magnetic force holding the pin. It seemed that when I played with the screw, the self-test would fail more or less often depending on the direction. The first problem was that basically, the center hole on the mount that lets you tweak the screw is not large enough to let the screw past a certain point, so I had to drill the hole wider to be able to tweak it further as just setting the bltouch further down wasn’t what I wanted to do. I got it to work more often than before but it would still fail even at the very tip; other times just doing the self-test would unscrew it just from going up and down as it was on the tip. This didn’t work for me and to add to my frustration, I was tweaking the screw once and the little thing fell out of my sight and into a black hole never to be found again….I thought I was going to have to get another sensor and then…I found another beautiful bolt that fit just right and it was way less magnetic than the one I had just lost. Magnetic enough to hold the pin when needed, but not enough to not let it go during use.The bltouch has not failed the self test once since then. Once you get the z offset right, you’re good to go. Perfect to almost perfect first layer. I no longer have to play with paper leveling for over an hour to then watch it fail.I installed this on a CR-10 V1

This is a difficult product to review, because it seems everyone's experience is different. Here's mine (so far). This is a highly recommended accessory to the Creality line of 3D printers. I was having the experience of going through bed leveling for a print, then coming back the next day to find that gremlins had changed all my leveling adjustments while I slept. This item is supposed to put an end to that.Out of the box, be careful. There are two instruction sheets - one for the V1 mainboard and one for the V2 mainboard. The V1 is the Ender 3/3 Pro which is my printer.They ship it with a bracket to attach the probe to your hot end. On mine, the holes for the screws either were not threaded, or were threaded the wrong size, because after an hour of trying I could not get the screws to start in the holes. The solution was to 3D print a new bracket, one that would work.So with the mounting done, next was the wiring. I found one of the screws for the mainboard cover plate so tight, I ruined the head trying to get it out. That has nothing to do with this kit, but added immeasurably to the frustration I was already dealing with. The wiring is very fiddly with a cramped space to work in. Be sure the 3-pin connector from the probe is inserted in the right direction or you will damage the probe and possibly the board. Fortunately I avoided this particular catch.So mounting complete, wiring complete, time to get the new firmware and flash the board. I plan to eventually compile a new firmware version to flash but for now decided to go with the instructions, download from Creality and use their included programmer for this task.The firmware comes in a zip file with the image and instructions, including instructions for the in-circuit programmer (ISP). I open the directories with the instructions so I can move forward. The instructions are in Power Point! I don't have Office installed, so I can't use that one. But there are PDF files, surely they have the instructions? Maybe yes, maybe no. I will never know because they are all written in Mandarin.Creality? Please hire some translating staff for us barbarians in the West who are not familiar with your language.Meanwhile I need to have a drink and lie down. If I ever get this working (and I've seen working examples on YouTube so I know it can be done), I may write a followup review on how it works. But my nerves are so frazzled from getting this far. that could be a while.Here’s the follow up. After a -lot- of time getting the Z-axis offset right (there are videos. Lots of videos), I have it working, and it does work great. I still maintain this is not a project for beginners and the difficulties I dealt with slowed the process down considerably, but it does what it claims to do and does it very well. I will keep the 3 stars because of the frustration I had to deal with, but fir that I would give it 5 stars.

I have a Creality CR-10 S5. It has a HUGE bed, massive x gantry arm, and long long long frame members. This means that the bed leveling can go out within the time frame of a single print. This thing has been a huge upgrade, and now a 6x6 point bed probing mesh, look in Octoprint Bed Visualizer, has replaced my 30+ min slow and wasteful manual leaving process.However, the supplied cable really isn't long enough for the S5. I've had to artificially limit my max Z height due to the length of this cable.Note, CR-10 S5 V2.2 board: the red wire goes furthest away from the z- stop connector, when you plug in the 3 wire connector. The applied bltouch cable needs the black and white pins reversed where you plug this into the Z stop connector (might be able to invert sensing on your Marlin build).The 1.1.6 + BLTouch firmware from Creality is a flaming pile of garbage, many errors and sends your x and y to the positive end of travel on every power up, home command, and other random times. This isn't really the fault of Antclabs or this BLTouch product per say, but it's an area where documentation and product compatibility testing needs to be better on both Creality and Abtclabs' part.The first BLTouch unit I received and installed was defective, even after doing the wire reversal and checking continuity, it would fail power on self test, intermittently fail to deploy, stow, self test, etc. Amazon replaced the unit and the new one is working quite reliably.