A few days ago, I attempted to upgrade my Ender 3 3D printer from the stock motherboard from Creality to a new revision of the board. The original one doesn’t have a bootloader or the ability to easily flash the firmware, but a newer rev does. So back in October of 2019 I picked up a v1.1.5 board (mine was v1.1.4) and finally installed it this past weekend.

After installing it, I realized the printer’s Z-axis was “broken”, in that the carriage with the nozzle/extruder would go up but not come down. I did a bunch of troubleshooting and thought it was the new board. So, I ordered another board, but this time, decided to upgrade to a 32-bit processor and move from the Arduino-based platform from Creality. So, I got a BigTree Tech SKR Mini E3 v2.0.

That arrived last night and I installed it, and the Z axis still didn’t work right. So, I started troubleshooting and found out it was actually the JTS connector on the cable for the Z limiter switch. I built and entirely new cable from scratch, and, voila! Fixed. Tonight I’m going to add new springs to the bed levelling system, and then I should be able to do a print with the new system.