I converted both of my CR30 hot ends to direct drive, one using the stock hot end and another with a custom high flow setup that I designed. Direct drive really helps with PA b/c the CR30 bowden setup is kind of extreme (long push).
I may consider going DD (assuming you went with the Orbiter V2?) as down the line i want to get kooky and be the first guy as far as i can tell that documents a multi filament setup for a belt printer and keeping it direct drive would help with the space needed
A few years ago I did multi-color testing on a CR-30 using a Palette 3 (which was all coded into KM at the time). It worked, but the P3 turned out to be unreliable and finicky. More modern AMS systems are better. I have since removed the P3 code from KM.
Update: Using the Accelerometer for input shaping did not work for my Sonic Pad (stringing and massive layer shifts), at this point im not sure which one is hitting its ceiling more, the CR30 or the Sonic Pad, inclined to just sell the Pad and move on to another board and BTT Touch Pad or Octoprint etc…
Hi, two questions
- How did you slice the files for multicolor?
- Do you have a .step or fusion360 file for the whole printer
I just picked up a secondhand CR-30 that I plan to mod with klipper. I’ve done some toolhead design on my CR-6, so I was thinking about making a toolhead with a filament cutter and setting up a box turtle style MMU.
- if you “customize” the CR-30 device, you can add another extruder. even though your printer only has one extruder, the same tool conceit can be used to trigger color changes if you have something like an AMS (or if your gcode sender has a facility for this, pause and manually change filament). then you can select parts in KMs ui and use the dropper menu (center top) to change the tool associate with that part.
- nope, sorry
Big thanks for this info. I have got a cr-30 as my first printer and what a learning curve. I got it printing from the box using cura. I have since added linear rail as per your tutorial, loosened bed screws, scrubbed the bed, change tubes, and moved to kiri. The difference is amazing and the experience much improved. Would love to see more tutorials like the x-rail upgrade, particularly when custom aftermarket parts are sold out.
1 Like
Hi Steward, first of all thank you for all the info you’ve provided in this thread! I’ve had a CR-30 gathering dust for a couple of years (dead mainboard) and have recently decided to put it back to use. Your posts here have been invaluable to getting things up and running again!
I’m running on an SKR E3 Mini v3.0 and I’ve upgraded to a Capricorn tube but the printer is otherwise stock (Upgrade kits seem to be out of stock everywhere).
I was wondering if you could share some more info on the pressure advance and retraction values you were/are using in Klipper? I’ve used this tool to get a rough idea of the pressure advance I should be using for my filament and came up with a range of 0.7-1.0 for the PLA I’m using. This gave me decent results with the 6mm retraction I was using before, but this post of yours led me to believe I could get this value much lower and still see good results:
So I’ve been tuning Klipper’s firmware retraction settings using this model and even with the pressure advance set to 1.0 (the high end of what produced good results when tuning) and retraction of 7mm I’m getting small amounts when the extruder travels between the two posts. Not an unacceptable amount, but more than I was expecting
I was wondering if you think having the pressure advance set so high is normal for the CR-30? According to the Klipper docs:
If there is no significant improvement with a pressure advance up to 1.000, then pressure advance is unlikely to improve the quality of prints. Return to a default configuration with pressure advance disabled.
and
If a high pressure advance value (eg, over 0.200) is used then one may find that the extruder skips when returning to the printer’s normal acceleration.
So before I start going beyond a 1.0 pressure advance I thought I’d ask your wisdom 
glad you were able to revive it! I haven’t had a CR-30 in a while, but I do recall on the one that had the bowden, the PA setting in Klipper was tuned to be around 0.72 – very high for a typical Klipper setup, but the tube is very long. my direct drive CR-30 was much lower. I think I recall around 0.03
I used Kiri:Moto to create a PA “tower” (with gcode header macros) from a slab that was 100mm long (Z along bed) by 20mm wide (X) and 5mm high (Y)
You are a saint for responding so quickly!
Do you happen to remember what, if any, retraction settings you were using? I get terrible stringing on anything less than about 3mm, and unacceptable oozing up to about 6mm. It seemed from your post that you were able to reduce your retraction settings quite a bit with the use of pressure advance, so I just want to make sure I’m in the right ballpark.
Thanks again for responding to questions on an ancient thread about a printer you don’t even own anymore 
I don’t really recall. In the 5mm range is typical for the long bowden setup even with Capricorn. check your bowden fittings. they do wear out (sometimes quickly) and then the tube slips inside of them creating all sorts of havoc.
Perfect, thanks again for the rapid response!
For anyone reading this in the future (including me) the Klipper values I landed on that seem to give the best results:
[firmware_retraction]
retract_length: 6.0
retract_speed: 60
unretract_extra_length: 0
unretract_speed: 60
[extruder]
...
pressure_advance: 0.72
This is with eSUN black PLA+ filament, 220C extruder, 60C bed
1 Like