Matter Control Printer Selection

[Phil]

I just watched Irv's Youtube video on PID for the Ender 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhUv0U6Wq1s
In it he recommends using Matter Control to enter updated PID values.
I just downloaded the MatterHackers Matter Control software but when I select a required printer the Ender 5 (Plus in my case) is not listed. The Ender 3, CR10 and CR20s are my available choices.
I assume they are not all the same. Which one should i choose that's likely closest?
Thank you,
Phil

[Phil]

I assume I just connect the computer to the mini USB on the priner. Is there something else i need to do on the computer side?

[Ender5r]

With Marlin, I typically would enter the values into the LCD screen and save it to the firmware. Now that I'm using Klipper firmware I just run the PID tuning macro, then run SAVE_CONFIG to get the values entered into printer.cfg.

[Phil]

tyvm. I'm not that experienced. Not quite sure what Marlin is.

[Ender5r]

Ah, got it. Do not feel embarrassed or apologetic. We all had to start from scratch.

That said, your printer, and all 3D printers, are run by firmware. This is basically software that is flashed or burned onto a chip on the micro-controller unit, which is the board inside your printer that controls the printing.

The default firmware on most consumer priced 3D printers is called Marlin. It's 1 of a number of versions of firmware available. I started out running Marlin, but a few months ago I switched to something called Klipper. I find it far superior to Marlin. However, it might be too early in your 3D printing education to make the switch.

I recommend you go through the menu system on your printer. This does not require a computer. Step through the menu options to get a little familiar with what's available. In this case, look particularly for PID, and even more particularly for PID Autotune. You should also look for something labelled Save to EEPROM (or something similar). After running the PID Autotune, you would use the Save to EEPROM to burn the settings into the firmware chip.

[roon4660]

What are the advantages of Klipper in your esteemed opinion? Esteemed by me of course.

[Ender5r]

Klipper has a number of advantages. A couple of them are:

1. instead of having to recompile & reflash firmware almost every time you need or want to make a change, most changes can be made in a file called printer.cfg. It's a text file, so it's easy to edit.

2. Klipper has macros to accomplish many tasks. In particular, there are 2 that made a huge difference to my prints: INPUT_SHAPER and PRESSURE_ADVANCE. These 2 in particular have let me print faster with even better quality.

[Phil]

tyvm again.
Irv's Matter Control demo seems to have a pretty good user interface for a beginner like me. I was trying to follow along and ran into a hiccup when loading MC. I can select Creality Printer but then have to select the model printer to use. My available options are Ender 3, CR-10 and CR-20. No Ender 5 as Irv demonstrated in the above YT video. I was wondering which printer to choose. If MC differentiates between these do they use separate Marlin versions? Which would he have chosen to do the video or does it matter?

[Phil]

https://forums.matterhackers.com/top...eality-ender-5 this was written 3 years ago without a positive answer. Surprised MH doesn't have the Ender 5 printer.

[Ender5r]

The issue doing PID via a slicer is you have to have a printer profile for that slicer program. Doing it via the LCD screen avoids that. That said, whatever slicer you settle on will require a profile for your printer. Bear in mind that the 2 most popular slicers are Cura and PrusaSlicer. It's probably a good idea to pick 1 of them as your slicer because there is more support out there for them than any other. MatterControl is down the list from Cura and Prusa.

[Phil]

I have always used Cura for my last step to create the gcode. I just added a new direct drive system and changed the extraction to much lower as recommended. I'm having trouble with my prints sticking to my reliable PEI bed so I went in search of other answers. Irv recommended using MC method in his above YT video to use Matter Control as a way to view and record the existing and updating the PID. MC gave me a road block since my printer wasn't listed.

I've seen another program in a different video called Pronterface or PronterPrinter. Not sure how I would do the same in Cura.

[Ender5r]

I have used PronterFace, although not really since moving to Klipper. PF works well. Basically, it creates a terminal connection to your printer. There are any number of videos on using it. What you can do is use PF to issue an M303 command to the printer. This is the PID autotune command. When that completes you can issue an M500 command, which is the command to store the values permanently in firmware.

In many ways, the trickiest part of using Pronterface is getting the correct COM port and BAUD rate. Since you're using Creality, that should make the BAUD rate part easy. It should be 115,200. You will have to try each COM port in turn to find the 1 that actually connects. Don't worry, it's easy, and doesn't take long.

[Phil]

I found another of Irv's YT video called 3D maintenance (5) 3d Printer Maintenance, Extruder Steps, and PID Calibration - YouTube where he uses Edge browser to access his web page 3d-printing-utilities (drvax.com) . I've connected to my Ender 5+ i believe correctly as he mentions but when i enter commands, it just echos back the same

Happy to try Klipper. Is this plug and play or do i need Raspberry and octoprint or something intermediate? Seems like beyond my skill level.

moving to Prontoface now.

tyvm

[Ender5r]

I would not recommend trying to move to Klipper yet. Install PronterFace and ensure you can connect to the printer.

[Phil]

Thank you very much for your wonderful help. I was finally able to connect to Irv's web calibration tool. My extrusion length and PIDs are set. If anyone is else reading with the same problem the YT that helped me was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhUv0U6Wq1s

and the program Irv created is at https://3d-printing-tools.drvax.com/...ationchecklist
Phil
now i work on retraction......

[Ender5r]

That Matter Control looks remarkably similar to PronterFace. I haven't used it in so long I forgot. I was thinking of the slicer function.

Glad your getting there. Besides Irv Shapiro's levelling videos, also recommend using the method in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZRY6kunAvs. I use it all the time to get really good, even 1st layers.

[Phil]

Thanks again, my original post was that Irv was using an Ender 5 to work with Matter Control. When selecting the required printer, Ender 5 was not an option. I was wondering how he was able to get around this.
Irv's web based solution was certainly useful but had a couple quirks and i was able to get the job done. Tune stepper extraction and update PID. Haven't tried to print with higher temps yet - my goal. I'll be writing another thread to ask about prints not sticking.