Creality Ender 3 / Pro / V2 / 5 Plug and Play Deluxe LCD Color Touch Screen with 4.2.7 32-Bit Silent Control Board and Silent Fan Upgrade Kit - Improved UI and Faster Operation (Now Open Source)

I’ve had this kit for almost exactly 8 months now and it has been great!I work with 3D printers for my job and teach people the basics of them at my local tech college so my day can be surrounded with 3D printing at times. I believe the most important thing you can add to your printer is reliability. Start it and walk away is the goal. Consistent first layer, quality and control. This board does that very well! It is certainly quieter as well, I tested this on my home machine and my wife is now much happier to indulge me in my projects. Which is also the goal haha. The touchscreen works great too, had one glitch in the 8 months of use and was able to power it off then back on and it self corrected. They also have a Facebook page that you can reach out for support, which was very helpful when I had a firmware question about a filament runout sensor.Here are a few things to keep in mind before you take on the project. 1) Set up on this does require removing your current board and disconnecting/reconnecting everything plugged into it which for some people might be a challenge. 2) You do have to flash new firmware onto this device which can also be a challenging project if you’ve never done it before. First layer support will give you their proprietary firmware if you reach out so realize that you don’t HAVE to use their firmware if you don’t want to. That being said I chose to use their firmware and it’s worked great for me. 3) It likely will not use the same mount holes as the previous screen so if you don’t like the silver metal showing you can print an end cap for it later.Summary - it does what it says it does, it’s quieter, more reliable, more user friendly and should you ever need it their support is great. It does require quite a bit of set-up for the new user.

This has been a great upgrade so far. The install of the board and fan were very straightforward. Once you manage to get the hot glue off the old board, this moves pretty quickly. It took me about an hour to install the new board, swap out the fan on the hot end for the RGB one they include in this kit, install the new screen, and add a CR bed leveling kit.Everything fit pretty well. The only exception being that the screen bracket is for the Ender 3 frame where the horizontal rails have 2 channels and the vertical rails have 1. The Ender 5 frame is the opposite. The screen will still fit, you just have to leave out one of the channel nut/screws and the screen is at a lower angle than it would otherwise be.Once installed the kit started right up and the screen lit up. It did have an issue booting the first time, but a quick power cycle resolved it and everything was up and going.The board comes flashed for an Ender 3 but it is very simple to change. F1rst Layer has really clear instructions on the process and have pre-compiled the firmware for each setup. They have them all shared through Google Drive and a link is in the kit. I was able to find the ones I needed after reading through the guide they have in the drive and got everything flashed in about 20 minutes without any issues.Once flashed, the mesh bed leveling, offsets, etc, are all easy to set from the new screen. The touch sensitivity leaves a bit to be desired, but it definitely works and is easier to navigate than the old screen was. I did run into an issue printing the test print from the bed leveling screen as it seems to overshoot the X axis and the CR probe collides with the roller for the Y axis. I didn't encounter this with any of my other testing though, so I think it is just a setting in the gcode for that file.The only other snag I hit was that the steps per mm on the Z axis were set to 400 instead of 800 in the flashed firmware making all my prints half height. This was correct for the older Ender 5 though so if you run into this, just make sure to adjust the setting and you will be back up and running.After I got everything properly calibrated the prints are looking better than ever. I love being able to tweak the settings mid print as needed too fine tune the quality. It is much quieter as well. Thanks for the great kit! I will definitely check with this company first for any future upgrades.

--- As a disclaimer this is my first 3D printer and am also working though the growing pains of just getting started. Additionally, I have not yet printed with this setup, however once I do, I will adjust this review accordingly. ---I purchased an OG Ender 3 from a private seller with some minor upgrades around a month ago. I then proceeded to make a series of upgrades to include a Creality Sprite Pro Extruder, dual z axis and this kit from F1RST LAYER. Attached below are the bullet points as well as my full review because I didn’t think it would be this long.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------• The installation was clear and concise.• The customer service/support was fantastic; thank you James for all your help.• The UI of the display is a pleasant easy to use experience, the stock screen the printer came with is no comparison.• If I have any future upgrade needs for my Ender products F1RST LAYER will be the first place I look.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Full ReviewI proceeded to move forward with my installations one at a time. First the board and screen physical changeout, dual Z-axis addition, Sprite Pro changeout w/ the CRTouch included in this package, and lastly wiring everything together. One important thing to note is that they state "Plug and Play" in the title. After plugging everything in and triple checking the wiring one more time, I powered it up. It booted up first try without any issues, I then proceeded to running through checking that everything was working correctly as well as had the full range of motion, the only issue I had was with the X-axis. On the Sprite Pro I purchased from Creality the 2 screws on the bracket included from Creality Official are ~3/16" (~4.8mm) too long, again this was at no fault of F1RST LAYER (I talk more about this and the resolution towards the bottom.)Since this kit didn't include a Sprite Pro, I also assumed that I needed to update my firmware accordingly. I proceeded to go to Creality's site and get the firmware for the Sprite Pro, this is where most of my issues began.I followed the firmware installation process and then my board was refusing to boot up, I would receive an error stating "Loading took longer than expected, the bootloader might be confused. Please try formatting the SD card, renaming the .bin file, or try a different SD card.” I proceeded to attempt the same installation process with several different micro-SD cards that include: 2 128GB, 3 64GB, a 2GB and a 1GB. After attempting the installation several different ways with all the cards, I finally contacted F1RST LAYER via their Facebook.(The issue with SD cards larger than 32GB is they cannot be formatted to FAT32 by default, so I was using Disk Genius and Raspberry Pi Imager for formatting the larger cards and creating a partition. Through my attempt to use larger cards I wasted a lot of time trying to install the firmware, I cannot stress enough the use of a card 32GB or smaller card for this reason.)I explained the situation as thoroughly as possible, so they knew where I was, they responded to me within an hour with possible solutions. (The following took place over the course of a few days because I have 16-hour workdays Monday-Thursday.)James from F1RST LAYER got ahold of me and we got to work. He proceeded to walk me through flashing the screen, then verifying the wire connections to the board (hint: if you are installing a Sprite Pro with this board [V4.2.7 Silent Board] do not connect the 2 wires without labels, one 3-pin one 1 2-pin wire) and lastly flashing the board.(It is also important to note that when updating the firmware on your board with this setup you must use F1RST LAYER’s open-source community firmware unless you use a different screen. It is pre-installed on the screen and in the installation guide it does direct you to Creality’s official website.)James provided me links to their google drive with the .bin files for flashing the screen and the board. (This is where I am currently) He also provided the update for the Sprite Pro and CRTouch’s X & Y-axis offsets, then proceeded to inform me that the screws in the mounting bracket of the Sprite needed to be replaced. The standard ones it comes with M5 x 30 screws, this creates an interference preventing the X-axis from traveling past 180mm, by changing the right most and bottom screw with M5 x 25mm screws with a 1mm washer between the screw and mount plate it eliminates this interference (this applies with the Ender 3 and Ender 3 pro, the bracket design is different on other models.)Thank you, James, for your fantastic customer service/support and assisting me get everything squared away, I could not recommend this team and more highly.