repurpose ender3 lcd panel in stock

Replacing the LCD screen of your Creality Ender 3 with a touchscreen is a very simple upgrade. If you find yourself with a lot of free time while social distancing making sure your printer is running a peak efficiency is a nice constructive way to pass the time. Following these easy steps you can swap your Creality screen for a BigTreeTech TFT screen with minimal fuss. Your Ender 3 will be looking great in no time.

The back of the stock Ender 3 LCD is connected to the printers mainboard by a single ribbon cable. Unplug this cable but try not to damage it. The cables that shipped with my TFT35-E3 were too short to reach from the screen to the board so I needed to reuse the original.

Remove the two screws on the front of the Ender 3 to detach the LCD assembly. There are a few screws on the back holding the LCD to the case. Remove the knob and then unscrew the board to free everything. If you were using a 3D printed LCD back like I was you’ll need to print a new one as this doesn’t fit anymore.

Connect the serial cable to the RS-232 port on the LCD and then run the cable into the electronics box. Follow the ribbon cable so you can use the same cable retention options to keep it neat and tidy. Plug the serial cable into the pins on the mainboard.

Note that the stock Creality board that ships with the printer does not have these pins so if you install this LCD on the board the touch screen functionality and much of the upgraded benefits will not work. If you haven’t already replaced your main board with a 32bit silent board, you should check out our guide on how to do that. The WiFi plug is located at the top left if you are attaching the optional WiFi board as well.

It does take a minute for the LCD to detect your printer and connect over serial so don’t worry if it says “No Printer Attached!” for a few seconds. If you long hold the dial/button you will be brought to a touch screen interface which allows you to select between the touch screen interface and the legacy Marlin interface. It is a nice option to have and if you are running with a stock Creality board then you will be using the legacy interface.

When you power back on the LCD will flash the new firmware and update the image files. If you only want to update images, fonts, or firmware then you can load just those on the SD card next time. You can also replace the images if you’d like just make sure to keep them the same dimensions and save them as a 24 bit bmp.

If you have old ender lcd screen you can salvage idc 10 pin connector. Use screw driver and pry off plastic. Fill gaps with new pins. Make sure all are in one level.

After some fiddling and a lot of reading, I figured out the pin layout of the lcd connector on the Creality 4.2.2 boards, in case anyone needs. I made the display work with Klipper firmware since that supports software spi very easily

Ever since I got Ender 3 v2 (review), I wanted to upgrade a couple of things. As Creality’s firmware doesn’t cover every hardware upgrade that comes to my mind, I have to resort to compiling Marlin firmware myself. Don’t be put off, behind the complex programming lingo, lays a fairly straight forward list of values to change to tailor Marlin firmware to your needs. If you follow this guide, it’s unlikely you screw anything up. Let’s build Marlin 2.0 for Ender3 v2 to enable various upgrades.

I would strongly recommend to use Visual Studio Code and PlatformIO to configure Marlin 2.0 for Ender3 v2 and build your firmware. It takes only a couple of moments to set up, and you will be ready to compile (build your own) firmware.

After upgrading Ender 3 v2 with BL Touch I ended up with an unused Z-stop. I quickly found a way to repurpose it into a filament runout sensor. You can read it all about it here. If you already have a sensor in mind, you can simply enable it by modifying config files.

Of course, when you want to try the latest firmware (example fromMarlin), you can do it easily with a 32-bit motherboard. No extra programmer is needed. Just use a microSD card and some simple steps, you will get it updated. You may also need to update the firmware when you upgrade your 3D printer with ABL (Auto Bed Leveling) using CR-Touch, or BL-Touch. Or in some cases, the firmware is corrupted, for example blank LCD, you can actually try to update the firmware.

JyersUI:Releases · Jyers/Marlin (github.com), very nice pre-compiled firmware for Ender-3 V2, for both V4.2.7 and V4.2.2 32-bit motherboard, Standard firmware, Manual Mesh Leveling, ABL, UBL and many more. As Ender-3 V2 comes with an Intelligent LCD, you will most likely need to update the firmware for the LCD too.

Otioss Landscape LCD firmware:Front-Mounted Panel for Ender 3 V2’s Stock LCD Display (otioss.com), another great firmware modification, making your Ender-3 V2 LCD becomes horizontal and comes with 3D case design for your to relocate the LCD to the front of the printer.

The LCD screen will be blank for a while and you should see Ender-3 Logo or Marlin Logo appear. You can further check the firmware version under “About Printer” selection.