kd8bxp's blog: October 2025

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.