ender 3 max neo possible firmware issue on printer that has never worked for original buyer

Ender Series Creality Ender-3 Max & Pro & Neo
1

Hi, I’m very new to Creality, but have been around computers for longer than I care to think about, so not a complete newbie.

Bought a ender 3 max neo, not working, and the person who had it had clearly given up after spending some time with support, they never did get it working, and bought another printer and they sold this one as not working, which I knew, so I’m now trying to get it working, and getting royally confused in respect of the firmware it’s supposed to have.

So, from the beginning, when I put it on the table to see what was or was not working, the fuse holder was missing, but in a bag of bits that the previous owner had put with it, there was a new socket, which had the fuse carrier in it, and there was also a spare power supply, and a main board cooling fan. and a good few screws either loose or missing, so I decided that a closer inspection was called for before applying any power to it.

The check was interesting, one of the PSU’s was set to 115 volts, which made me wonder if maybe they’d missed that critical step, and possibly blown something, so I went a bit deeper, and checked the PSU to see if it was working, and the right voltage, with the boards disconnected, which it is, so at that point, I checked the motherboard and display, to see if there were any issues like a blown fuse on the board, it’s good, so I then went a bit deeper, and discovered that the display also has a SD slot for updating, but at that stage, I didn’t worry too much, and put everything back together, to see what happened, and on powering it up, I got a Creality display, but nothing beyond that.

In a box in the garage, I also have a Ender S1 in parts, and looking at it, the display looks similar, so I tried that display on the Ender 3, and got a result, it powered up and the basics are working, it will home, and do a basic bed level, but clearly, it’s not going to have the right software or configuration on it, so at that point, I went to the creality site, and downloaded what in theory is the right software for this device, but despite doing the right things, it’s not loading the firmware from the SD card on power up, and when I got into digging a bit deeper, I’m not sure if I’ve got the right firmware for the configuration that this machine is built with. The motherboard is a version 4.2.2, and there’s a T8 sticker on it, the sticker on the back of the board ,has 1000069170, E-3 MAX NEO, 2101020199 on it, and the QR code comes up with 2101020199A240414189A,

The label on the display is TJC4827X243_011N_P04, and the QR code comes up with HXEL****XSEK15ELV1.65+10807012

So, the basic machine seems to work with the S1 display, but refuses to allow me to load the replacement firmare in the non working display, and I’ve not gone near the mainboard to do anything firmware wise at the moment.

The label on the box says it’s an Ender 3 Max NEO, a clatter of Chinese characters, and then UL/ROHS and under the bar code, EUW030-1001020445A, the last part of that number is then repeated on the next line. The packing list number is RVEUW030-231226-0002-66, the QR code on the top of the motherboard housing is 100006284633423LYSX.

It didn’t come to me with an SD card, I’m not even sure if it had one from new, and there wasn’t a manual either, at some stage, I think I will need to check the set up of the Z axis, as the belt seems very loose, but that’s a little down the road, the first thing is to try and determine if I’ve got the right software, and how to load it, or if I need to get a new (later ) motherboard, or possibly a display, with how much worked using the S1 display, I don’t want to get boards if the issue is a wrong firmware.

So, help please, where do I go from here, I’d like to get this working if I can, as I have plans to do some 3 d printing of model railway track, and this looks like it could help with that.

Thanks

Steve

2

Hello Irish_Steve and welcome,

I personally don’t own that printer, but looking at the spec’s, it doesn’t have wifi.

I was thinking that if you were thinking of buying a new display unit for it, then why not buy a Sonic pad instead.

New screen with the bonus of WiFi along with greater control.

Just a thought.

Cheers.

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3

Radical_Data,

That’s an interesting idea, which I will have to explore in a lot more depth before taking that route, and it might not need to be done as urgently as I’d thought, in that after putting the initial post up, I did a bit more digging, and came up with a different firmware, supposedly a universal firmware that is the right one for this device, and on the basis of the instructions in the readme file, I decided that I wasn’t going to risk too much by doing a full update, and that’s what I did, the main motherboard first, which changed things, on powering up after the load, it fully booted, and then I updated the display, which also did what I expected, so I’m now in a much better place than I was, I don’t know if it was the filename and structure that produced the result, but I’ve ended up with a much better situation, the machine now boots using the original display, and seems to be doing things like bed levelling using the probe across the print surface, so my plan now is to get the right user manual for this machine, and make sure that I’ve got the right firmware, and then go through the entire process that the manual implies, including checking nozzle height, and all the other startup steps, I’m pretty sure that was never done, and then load the other things that I’ve found, like the test pieces, and see what happens, initial impressions is that I may well now have a working printer that just needs to be checked and set up properly, and if that’s the case, I’m well happy, I wasn’t expecting to find that it wasn’t working because the software had been corrupted somehow, I’d kind of thought that support would have checked things like that, but maybe that’s me, I have a long background with both hardware and software going back to early days of computer terminals with 20 characters a second golf ball mechanical clutch controlled oil bath printing controllers and mechanical keyboards from nearly 50 years ago, and it’s stood me in good stead over the years, and by the look of it, I’ve been more than lucky to get a real bargain with this device, time will tell.

Im sure I will be coming back with more questions and queries, this is a whole new ball game for me, and there’s clearly a lot of differences from business computing, so I know I’ve got a huge learning curve to deal with,

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4

Hello Irish_Steve,

Great progress there :+1:

Reading it, I am sure you will end up with a good working printer.

Happy traveling forward.

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