My Adventures with The Biqu BX 3D printer.

The Biqu BX 3D printer was apparently a kickstarter project in August of 2020, and delivered in early 2021.  I was unaware of this printer, until I saw it at Microcenter on deep discount.

It's Oct of 2025, I bought the printer maybe a year and a half ago, maybe a little bit longer, as I said it was on closeout - and marked down to $60 dollars.  At the time I was in the market for a Anycubic Kobra 3 - but I couldn't pass up this printer for that price.

Actually, Microcenter was closing out another Biqu printer which I also bought - The B1 for $50. That one is still sitting in the box, brand new.

The printer features a 250x250x250 mm build volume, direct drive feed system, a 7" touch screen, is Rasperry PI compatable, can print PLA, ABS, TPU, PETG, Nylon, mine came with a Auto Bed Level system, power loss recovery, an optional filament out sensor. I'm not sure what print head they used, but I like how easy it is too load/remove filament. I'm sure there are other features. The biggest problem with it seems to be that they used HDMI for controlling the hot end, sensors.  It had Marlin 2.0.6.1-BX (Mar 19 2021 10:07:47) firmware pre-loaded (This will be important to know later).

Sorry for the blurry picture.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to hooking up the BX, and I just could not get the Auto Bed Leveling to work, it failed to bring the hot end temperatures up, it just wasn't working.

After doing some searching, I found that the HDMI cable could be the problem.  And I reset it, sure enough that was the problem.  

I still couldn't get the bed to level correctly, but I was able to print the benchy boat. And it was a wonder print - took about an hour and ten minutes (which seemed very reasonable).  I was able to get a few other prints, but for some reason each of the other prints failed if I tried to print them again.

This printer is very frustrating to say the least. I spent a lot of time manually leveling the bed, only to have the ABL to still fail. I unplugged the z limit switch (knowing that when I added a BLtouch sensor to my Ender 3 I needed to remove that.)  Only to have the printer fail to home to the print bed at all.

So what does that mean (?) I wasn't sure, plug the limit switch back in - and it would home no problem.

Without using the ABL I was able to print benchy boats without any problem. As soon as I tried ABL it would fail.  I spent hours/days on this only to have the same problem no matter what I tried.

It became a running joke in the house - I have a printer that can print nothing but benchy boats - if I was in business doing nothing but benchy boats - this would be the printer for that.

I came across this firmware - https://github.com/looxonline/Marlin/tree/BIQUBX_ALMOST_STOCK in one of my searches for answers to the problem.  But from the readme file, it looked (at least to me) to be the same version that was already on the printer (2.0.6.1) so I didn't try it. 

I walked away from the problem, and left the printer sit for a few days, I didn't think about it, didn't look at it, didn't do anything.

When I came back to the problem, I decided to look at this firmware again, sure enough I was right the z limit switch - only I didn't go far enough the readme file says to remove the switch completely. So I did.  

And the printer failed to home.... wait it's the same firmware right?  Right?  I attached the wire back to the z limit switch but didn't put the switch back in place.  Well, now the head crashes in the print bed - but the firmware says it uses the ABL probe....  it's the same firmware right?  Right? I spend probably another hour or so thinking it was the same, why isn't working. 

Turns out, no it's not the same firmware, doing the firmware upgrade was super easy. I even missed a step, and it worked without an issue.  I did have to invert the X endstop, and turn the machine off a couple of times - I cleared the settings as suggested. And now it will complete the ABL.

I tried a couple of other prints - all of them small, they all worked, and I was even able to repeat those prints. 

Something that I found was that when G-Code tell the printer to home, it turns off ABL, so I modified the G-code to tell the printer to turn it back on.

I'm using Cura 5.9.0 - and the original G-Code for the printer had some called "Z Dance" that seemed to cause a lot of issues with the new firmware, I'm not sure what that does. It also attempted to do ABL and not use the stored ABL data.  I modified the Cura code, so that it doesn't do ABL, Z Dance, and turns on the ABL with the stored data. (Was this the right thing to do? I'm not sure, but it seems to work for me.)

M117 Waiting for probe to warm! ; Wait another 90s for the probe to absorb heat.

G4 S90

M117 Post warming re-home

G28 ; Home all axes again after warming

M117 Enable Automation Bed Leveling

M420 S1 ;Enabled the saved mesh

;M117 Z-Dance of my people

;G34

;M117 ABL Probing

;G29

Adding M420 S1 after the 2nd G28, and putting ";" in front of "Z-Dance" message G34, and ABL Probing G29

Finally I adjusted the "Baby Steps" to -0.50, and ran the ABL saving both, this seems to be working at least for small prints.

Next I need to try a larger print, I feel like printing the Octopus is going to give me a problem no matter what, I did get one good print of this model but I think it was a fluke more then anything else.

(I also have problems with the Octopus on the Anycubic, thou it works more then it fails on that machine).

Here are some boats that I was able to print.

Three boats.

Castle Benchy Boat

Steam-Punk Benchy

Original Benchy Boat

Steampunk Benchy boat by volfera https://makerworld.com/en/models/1661324-steampunk-benchy-boat#profileId-1757478

Benchy Castle by 3DJunkie https://makerworld.com/en/models/1325661-benchy-castle?from=search#profileId-1362810

The original benchy boat by CreativeTools https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:763622 (but this model can be found in a lot of different places)

Now this isn't a fast printer but as you can see the prints it makes are great.

The biggest issue is getting the first couple of layers to stick (which is a fairly common problem with this type of printer)

Automation Technology Club South West Ohio - a brief history (from my view point.)

 The Automation Technology Club is a small group of people, mostly located in South West Ohio.

We are interested in various technologies, hobby robots, industrial robots, AI, ham radio, Arduino, ESP32, and other micro-controllers. 

The club has been around in one form or another for over a decade, I personally joined in 2014 - and the group was around before that. 

Meetings were held in person, every week on Thursdays, unless there was a holiday in that week.

It was all good fun, and I learned quite a lot about Arduino and micro-controllers. 

Some how during that time I became 2nd in charge of the meeting - I'm still honestly not sure how that happened. But we had one official leader, and it wasn't me.

But during that time, I created a repository for shared code on github. Started to record our meetings. Tried many times to get our members to use social media to help get the word out about the meetings. And I'm sure there was more, that either got added, or changed.

We even did a few group projects (we had a display for Star Wars Day 2015 that the library hosted).

Sometime between 2016 and 2018 the library started to loan out Arduino boards, they stopped doing this shortly after they started. And the group started to grow slightly.

In late 2019 the library added a maker space, this didn't affect the group, but we all liked the idea of having access a large format printer.

In 2018/2019 I even tried to get a spin off hobby robotics group started, and it was starting to take traction - then....2020. 

Things went good for a long time, making and recording videos, learning the ins and outs of streaming, getting people to join virtually. I think it was all preparing us for 2020.

2020 - Changed everything, thou not all at once.

Of course when we were all home bound, we switched to a virtual only meeting. 

And we tried Google hangouts, teams, and a couple of others, we finally landed on Zoom.

The library where we meet at changed how often people can book a meeting. And even getting a room was pretty hard to do after the pandemic was over.

Our leader left the group, but this was later - maybe sometime in 2021 Early 2022. And I took over as best as I could. I'm not even going to pretend that I know anything, but I didn't want to see the group just go away.

We lost some members of the group due to Covid, and during 2020 a few just didn't realize we were meeting virtually.  

During the time we were having a hard time booking the room, we found a 2nd library in Mason Ohio that could host us.... And did have a couple of meetings at that location, but Midpointe Library has always felt like home.

We now try to meet at least twice in person, and twice virtually (actually, even in person you can meet with us virtually).

We are trying to build membership back up, and trying to do a few projects again.

So if you are in South West Ohio, Westchester or Cincinnati area (even Dayton area) and would like to learn more, you are welcome to join us at Midpointe Library Westchester typically the 1st and 2nd Thursday of the month. (Subject to change, so reach out to me and I can get you the information needed for the meeting).

https://github.com/automation-technology-club

https://www.youtube.com/@automationtechnologyclub