Corrupted screen display and several other issues

Ender-3 V3 Printers
1

New user, first-time post. I was gifted a (base) Ender-3 printer which worked well, so we know the machine itself is sound. A couple of upgrades were then provided, and carefully installed: A direct feel extruder/printhead and a CR Touch.

The install went well and every connection was verified. However, the printer now has multiple problems, and while I am still working with customer support, we’re not making progress. Hoping the community can offer suggestions.

Some of the problems encountered:

  1. Reading the TF card usually comes back as “no card” unless I pull the power cord itself and restart. In that case, half the time it sees nothing on the card, the other half of the time I can select a gcode file to print.

  2. Once printing starts, the extrusion is a mess. thin, stringly and generally equates to a non-artistic angel hair spaghetti blob. In addition, it’s common for the display to corrupt, overlaying foreign characters sometimes intermixed with English. It is also not uncommon for the screen to go blank and for the printer to brick and stop, refusing to take any input until power cycled.

  3. I have attempted to flash the firmware several times with no change at all in behavior – it is unclear to me if the firmware ever was applied. Or how to determine the current firmware loaded.

Note: The CR Touch appears to be working, sampling the print area in nine locations as it should. The device seems to know the work area just fine. Tech support seems focused on step ratio (apply their recommended changes had no impact), but I am at a loss how that would affect screen corruption and TF card reliability. The mainboard is v4.2.2.

In short – we’re brand new to this technology, and hoping some/any/all of this is familiar to someone who can offer suggestions. There is much appreciation in advance.

1 Like
2

I now have the same issue, did you fix yours?

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Unfortunately no. None of the issues have been resolved and no usable solutions have been suggested yet.

4

A month later (Which was a month after this started), still haven’t had a single error resolved. I’m leading myself to the idea it’s a bricked printer and the only option is to replace it. Still hanging out for that idea or suggestion that may break the logjam…

5

In two months of attempting to work through technical support, I solved these problems by surrendering and purchasing a replacement motherboard. Problems all solved.

As best I can tell, my original suspicion was correct – One of the firmware updates either corrupted or was incorrect for the motherboard and bricked it. It stopped taking updates and scrozzled a lot of the printer’s functions and displays. There may have been other solutions that preserved the original motherboard, but sometimes it’s just less painful to replace the brains and hope for the best.