Walkthrough and Demos of the Klipper 3D-Printer Firmware Project

In short, instead of modifying any hardware, upgrade your 3D-printer by modifying the firmware powering the unit. (We haven’t tested this so, at your own risk.)

Thanks to reader Alvaro for sending this in. He writes,

With a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint, and a regular 3d printer you can upgrade it without changing hardware, just by changing the firmware of the printer (you can go back if you need to). This new firmware optimizes stepper control to make the printer faster than default, way more silent, anti-oozing and with better torque.
Works with multiple 3d printer models from several vendors.

Or as described on the project’s Github repo:

This project implements a 3d-printer firmware. There are two parts to this firmware – code that runs on a micro-controller and code that runs on a host machine. The host software does the work to build a schedule of events, while the micro-controller software does the work to execute the provided schedule at the specified times.

For starter here’s some demos of Klipper firmware in action:

Here’s a video walking through the firmware installation:


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



2 Comments

  1. I’ve been using Klipper for the last few weeks since it was featured on Hackaday. I absolutely love it, although a Pi Zero is not _quite_ fast enough to run it without occasional pauses. A Pi 2 or 3 works glitch free. However, I certainly wouldn’t recommend running an ordinary firmware printer with a Pi Zero either.

    What I _have_ been able to do is massively increase my print speeds without significant drops in print quality. I use a Felix Tec 4 standard Cartesian printer with heated bed and PLA or PLA+, and where I used to feel that I needed to limit speeds to a max of 60mm/sec or so, I can now routinely print at 120-150mm/s without major temperature excursions, blobs at corners, or other artifacts I’d attribute to the higher speeds. The straightforward tuning procedures for setting pressure advance values helped significantly.

    What you will be losing, however, is “front panel” display and/or control using your printer’s hardware, Z-leveling or probing, and other automated calibration procedures, assuming it had any in the first place. Control will be solely through Octoprint and some manual endstop value tuning in the config file may be required. However, it’s easy to restart the software to pull in the new config values without shutting down printer firmware, so this sort of thing can be done relatively efficiently. I feel it’s been a worthy tradeoff for now. I may go back to Repetier someday, but I like how Klipper is performing.

  2. This is great insight Andy – thanks for sharing!

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.