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Creality BL Touch Auto Bed Leveling Sensor Guide

BL touch kits

Are you still struggling with how to choose the suitable BL Touch kits for your printer? Are you worried about the cable connection or firmware flashing? Do not worry! In this article, you will find the most gathered, plain, and useful information related to Creality BL Touch kits.

Before telling you how to choose, install and flash the firmware, I would like to introduce what the Bl touch is and how BL touch works. In this way, I believe that you will understand the BL touch accessory much better.

  • What is BL Touch?

Simply saying, BLTouch is an electronic sensor for 3D Printers which can precisely measure the distance between nozzle and bed surface, no matter what is the materials of the bed, such as glasses, woods, metals, and so on.

  • How does BL TOUCH works?

Here I am not going to explain it complicated as well. BL touch will measure the distance between the build plate and the nozzle. When you print something, the printer will automatically adjust the Z-axis deviation between the nozzle and the bed according to the data that BL touch measured before. In this way, the nozzle will always be relatively parallel to the bed even the bed itself was not leveling.

How to choose BL touch?

When you check the Creality3dofficial website, you will find there are 3 options for BL Touch Auto Bed Leveling Sensor in the accessories BL Touch Kits page. Please see the following:

BL Touch kits for Ender 3(Pro)/ Ender 5(Pro)/CR-10

Remember that it is very very very important to choose the right BL Touch accessories for different printers!

What will you get in BL Touch kits?

What you get in the box of BL touch kits will cause the different methods to flash the firmware. I’ve summarized the following three situations:

  • Generally speaking, the Bl touch kits including a BL touch, Pin 27 board (Pinboard A), A BL touch extension cable (Burner), a metal bracket as well as a programmer (ISP Pinboard) that negates the need for a bootloader, of course, you will also find an instruction manual and some mounting bolts.
  • However, for some printer’s BL touch kits, such as the BL touch kits for CR-10 V2/V3, there will be no ISP pinboard and Burner, which used to write the firmware to the mainboard. In this case, you will need to flash the firmware via the Micro USD or Mini USD port.
  • Besides, For the printer Ender-3-V2 that has a 32-bit mainboard, you can flash the firmware via an SD card.

Note：Just make sure that you format the SD card before copying the firmware file to the SD card, as it is only available for the printers to update when there is ONLY one firmware file in the SD card. (The official instruction included in the BL touch kits teaches this clearly)

How to flash the Firmware?

The first job is to flash the firmware. Basically, you can follow the official instruction manual to flash the firmware. The purpose of this step is to make your printer recognize the newly added Bl touch kits.

How to connect the wires for firmware flashing?

As I mentioned before, there are different ways to flash the firmware. It depends on your printers’ mainboard. Here I am going to tell you the method of flashing firmware via ISP pinboard and burner.

Step 1: To take the ISP programmer and plug in the ISP Pinboard. There is only one direction that they can insert so you do not have to worried about the direction.

Step 2: To read the labels on the side of the ISP Pinboard and locate the side with GND and VCC. You need to unplug the ribbon cable connector for the LCD screen to create the room so that we can plug in our adapter with the VCC and GND side facing outwards to the edge of the board.

Step 3: Plug the programmer (Burner) into our computer and switch to the software.

How to finish the Firmware Flashing Settings?

If you go to the page for the product, there will be many links there and you have to choose to right one for your printer. Be careful that this step is also very important, you have to make sure that you download the right version of firmware for your printers.

More Creality 3D printer firmware information, please click here: Creality 3D Printer Firmware Download Guide.

After downloading the firmware, you can unzip the files, then we start the main program via progisp.exe. Then you can follow the below instructions to flash the firmware.

Firmware Flashing Settings

After finishing the settings, Upplug the ISP pinboard from mainboard.

How to install the BL touch?

The BL touch installation is not the difficiult part. Just install it according to the instruction manual as below.

The BL touch installation

How to connect the wiring?

There are two types of BL touch wiring. One is the 5 pins connectors and the another one is 3+2 pins.

  • If it is 5 pins connectors. Easy! Just unplug the original cable from the Z limit switch and insert the BL touch connector.
Ender-3-V2 with V4.2.7 32-bit mainboard
  • But if it is 3+2 pins connectors as below picture. You will be very careful with the colours of BL touch wirings.
Wire connection

Must be careful with the colours of cables!

  • Step 1: Plug in the BL touch extension cable into Pinboard A. It needs to be in the correct orientation to avoid blowing anything up, so read the label on Pinboard A and plug the BL touch extension cable in alignment.
  • Step 2: Pinboard A plugs into space where the LCD ribbon cable was. Take care to make sure it is centered as it is possible to plug in misaligned.
  • Step 3: There are three stop plugs all in a row on the mainboard, We need to find and unplug the one that has the Z label, and then insert the BL touch black and grey cables in the correct direction.

How to Setting Z-Offset for a BLTouch?

When you finished the BL touch firmware flashing and installation, it does not mean that you can use the BL Touch directly while printing. You have to do the platform adjustment which tells your printer where Z is and how far off is the nozzle when the BL touch probe found where Z is.

Actually, there are some instructions for platform adjustment, but I prefer to recommend you watch this video-How to Install Creality BL Touch Auto Bed Leveling Sensor Tutorial which was made by cheule. In this video, you will not only find how to do it and will also understand why.

Ok, that is all what I want to share with you today. Hope it helps you and thanks for reading! If you are interested in Creality other accessories and have some confusion on it, please leave me a message.

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More accessory links:

235*235mm Tempered Glass Build Plate for Ender 3 (Pro)/Ender 3 V2/Ender 5

12/24V Blue Violet Laser Engraving Module High-Power Laser Head Kits

Z-Axis Profiles Kit for Enlarging Print Space Ender-3(Pro)/3 V2

Ender 3(Pro) / 3 V2 Upgraded Direct Extruding Full Kits with Nozzles

3D Printer Enclosure: Safe, Quick and Easy installation

PEI Magnetic Build Plate For Ender 3/ 3 Pro/3X /3 V2/3 Prox /Ender 5

LED Lighting Kit for Ender 3 Series

kevin

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20 responses to “Creality BL Touch Auto Bed Leveling Sensor Guide”

  1. I have installed the Creality branded BL touch auto leveling system on my Ender 3 v2 and it seems not to be doing the job. I manually level the bed and print a leveling pattern and it turns out ok, however if I do the auto leveling and then print the pattern, I have to manually adjust the bed again.

  2. Just got my BL touch for my ender 5 pro, everything installed, and firmware updated. However, after adjusting the Z axis and saving the settings.. I run the bed leveling and as it’s doing its points, it goes off the bed area to the left on the X axis and touches nothing.. thus making me stop the leveling.. What do I need to do to fix this??

  3. This is awesome. Thanks for making this. Is there a pdf of this?

    • I can make a pdf of the page, but if one is already made that would be better.

  4. Hi,

    Can anyone help me??

    I have an Ender 3 Pro with a v1.1.4 main board running firmware 1.1.6.2…

    Like most people i am struggling to get consistent prints, some times they turn out great but most of the time they fail from what appears to be bed leveling issues..

    I opted to buy a genuine BL Touch (v3.1 ) but when it arrived the kit only contained the sensor/probe a few dupont connectors a couple of wires but no mounting bracket or wiring etc..

    I thought I’d be smart and buy a Chinese copy that contained everything needed such as the ISP pin board, Pin board A, Burner etc..

    I have no issues with regard to the physical installation of this kit, where do i have a problem relates to flashing the firmware. The USB ISP burner provided with the Chinese copy is not recognised when plugged into any laptop i have tried (x1 running Windows 10 and x2 running Windows 7)..

    Can anyone offer advice on how i can get this burner to work?

    Thanks in advance.
    Ian

  5. I have problem with BL touch connecting on v4.2.2 first pictures do not show what color from bl touch probe go on what pin,second pin on probe change With version OF THE PROBE ,we need pin assignment ON THE MOTHERBOARD
    WITH SCHEMA OF ELECTRONIC AND ELEMENTS IC , THEN PIN ASSIGMENT ON THE BL TOUCH PROBE V1.0,V2.0,V3.0,V3.2 ,ENGLISH IS NOT MY NATIVE LANGUAGE ,SORRY.

  6. I have a Ender 5 Pro and the 8 bit motherboard, I am trying to update the firmware but I cannot find the file available for a Mac computer. Is one available?

  7. I apparently have no idea what I’m doing. While trying to install the BLTouch, I used the wrong wire for the Z axes and shorted my main board. I replaced the main Board with the 4.2.7. Got everything working properly but when I try to save the Z offset, it beeps and says the offset is too high. Setting shows to be -2.9. I have to reset each time i run it. What am I doing wrong? Thanks

  8. I have Ender 5 Pro with a V4.2.2 main board. I have decided to install ABL but on my previous much modified printer I decided not to use a probe that had anything of a mechanical nature and went for an induction probe which worked flawlessly until I mothballed it and upgraded to my current machine. For whatever reason everybody seems to think that BL Touch is the only system on the planet which of course it’s not. My problem is where do I connect my probe on the 4.2.2 board as on my previous machine the Z min endstop had 3 pins so it was a simple operation to fit and set up whereas of course there are only 2 pins on the endstop socket. but the BL Touch has a dedicated socket to plug in to. My probe is the standard 3 wire (blue, brown, black) which,if any of those pins can be utilised?

    • There should be a 5pin BLtouch socket on your V4.2.2 mainboard, which has a white plastic cover. So the best way is to buy a 5pin Bltouch to plug in the 5pin socket on your V4.2.2 mainboard directly. Now you said that your probe is 3 wires(blue, brown, black), so you need to use the adapter(Pinboard A). There wire connection method is like the last picture (3+2 pins connectors) in this article. Then flash the firmware WITH ADAPter.

      • I could have easily bought a BL Touch but I prefer to go with an accurate method I’ve used before. Creality seem to be “in bed” with the makers of BL Touch and offer no help whatever for customers who don’t like to be told what to do. Although I’ve been more than happy with the overall performance of the printer as a whole there is a lot of little things I don’t really like and this particular aspect is one I can improve on.

  9. Hello, I have the Ender-3 Pro with the V4.2.2 motherboard (5 pin connector) for the BLtouch. I got the V3.1 BLtouch and I have tried all possible combinations and firmware but nothing seems to be adding up or compatible with each other. Can somebody please advise how to wire the BLtouch V3.1 on Ender-3 Pro with V4.2.2 motherboard (5-pin connector)?

    • How you connected the wire? There is a 5pin port on the V4.2.2 board, just insert the Bltouch and the other side insert to the Bltouch. Can you describe your problem in detail?

      • @Kevin I have actually watched this video, but like other commenters there, I am actually missing a couple of part numbers (from Crealty or otherwise). It’s kind of ironical that Crealty would create a video to install a product that they don’t explain where to buy. I suppose it is one of their existing BLtouch kit for older printers?

        • Correct me if I’m wrong but Creality will sell you a BL Touch like the one in the video clip or you can get one exactly the same that plugs straight in on the 4.2.2 board even though the filmed example is on the Ender 6 at the end of the day a 4.2.2 has identical sockrts etc.