I have an Ender 3 pro. Upgraded to a 4.2.7 silent board, an Ender direct drive, and the problem child, A CR touch. I’ve been wrestling with the touch since October. First one was bad out of the box, never even self tested. Creality sent a new one. This one tests fine. Problem is definitely the firmware (maybe??)
. I have tried Every one that even remotely has the same config on both the Marlin and Creality sites, plus 3 different versions from Crality customer support… The ones that work at all , all seem to have the same issue. Load up fine, will test move all axis ok, then when I try to auto home it moves Z up, X and Y zero then center of plate. deploys probe and moves up. after some time “stopped” is displayed on screen and now Z axis won’t move down. I can move up, but not back down, even to where it started. Checked wires and they look like all the pictures. I can reflash back to a non touch firmware and manually level just fine, all axis will go both directions. I just built my first firmware to see if thet works but I don’t have much hope.
If that doesn’t work guess, I’ll break out the multi meter to see if the ground and signals aren’t reversed. I just don’t want to release all that precious smoke from the main board.
Depending on the cable you have, this sounds like the signal wire isn’t working correctly. It’s either the black & white two wire plug, or the end two pins on a 5 pin connector.
If marlin deploys the probe, then retracts and deploys it again, then errors - then it doesn’t see the level shift coming from the probe to indicate a state change.
In the BLTouch FAQ - this is shown as the G and OUT pins on the probe port.
The Creality ender 3 direct drive kit. I didn’t see any other naming on it.
I’m going to ring out the cable this week to see if MAYBE the polarities were reversed. I can’t understand why the Z axis won’t go down but everything else works fine. Is it getting a signal that it is at bottom already?
Reading up on the firmware options I see there was an option/ switch for negative Z required but I can’t believe with all the different versions I’ve been sent that it could be as simple as that.
As a safety option, most of my firmwares don’t allow you to go to a negative Z setting or move down without a home being successful first.
This ensures that the printer actually knows where the print head is and doesn’t try to jack-hammer your nozzle through your bed when you tell it to go through the bed.
If any of the stepper motors time out for power saving, then you’ll need to re-home the printer before it will allow you to bring the Z down.
There are ways to disable this safeguard - however as someone who has put this in place for a reason after damaging a number of beds and nozzles, it is certainly best left enabled.
Not so much a reply as a related question: can the probe output itself be verified, direct reading the probe wires, using a quality multimeter such as a Fluke 87 series? Rather than relying on the machine as a whole to function as it should or not? Or maybe a way to monitor the level shift from the probe using Pronterface or something similar?
Annoyingly, the BLTouch and CRTouch only output a pulse when triggering.
A normal microswitch will have a continuous HIGH or LOW signal (3.3v or 0v) - but the probes only outputting a pulse makes it difficult to measure.
It also only means that the mainboard will only receive a pulse so things like the M119 G-Code won’t normally show the pulse unless you just happen to catch it at the right time.
Yah… digital meters do have their limitations. I still have an old analog meter which I use for brief signals that might not show on a digital meter; the needle definitely swings (amount doesn’t matter, not interested in a reading, just whether or not there was a pulse.) I imagine this is an active (needs to be powered) sensor, and not a passive that will work out-of-circuit? Does make verification testing a bit more difficult.
Do you have any idea exactly what sensor is being used in the CR Touch? Might be able to get a better idea of how to test it from the datasheet if I knew what sensor was in use.
I’m having the same problem as Davemc, except that I cant get any cr-touch to work at all. I’ve tried 3 different touches and all do the same thing. I tried upgrading to the SKR mini pwb, twice, the Color touch screen, then finally Back to the original setup. I’ve downloaded 50+ firmware’s with no luck.
Please help, I’m getting tired of looking at this boat anchor.