FlashForge Dreamer: Upgrades and Ideas

“The known is known to few…”

Sit down, my children, and listen to a story from an old, old 3D maker, who lived at the time when Makerbot printers were open source and abundant, and Thingiverse was a website made by the people who loved it, and where you would want to bring your 3D model to publish.

Umm… wait, I am not that old… and maybe not that experienced as a 3D maker. But never mind the minutia, let's continue.

A Chinese company FlashForge came up with a printer they called “Dreamer”, using a lot of Makerbot ideas and G-Code. It was a nice printer that looked like a white microwave oven. Especially if you liked to print ABS and flexibles, Dreamer was almost your dream printer. It had:

1. All-enclosed chamber, with a reasonable build volume
2. Heated bed
3. Direct drive, capable of printing a variety of filaments, including flexibles
4. Dual extruder, if you ever needed it
5. Touch-operated, color, modern user interface
6. Good quality prints

Unfortunately, there were drawbacks too:

1. Proprietary spool holders only took special 0.5 kg spools
2. Lack of removable bed
3. Lack of variable extruder fan speed: it was either off or 100% on
4. No manual control for two rear fans (if your model came with them)
5. No filament runout sensor
6. Somewhat slow max speed due to the heft of two extruders with step motors
7. The rather weak proprietary slicing software, FlashPrint 

It is with a heavy heart that I will address these issues. It is hard to find information on the Dreamer, limiting the possibilities of its upgrade and repair, and shortening its lifespan, as the consequence.

Spool holders and wire clips

One of the first prints a Dreamer owner needs to do is the new spool stands for the printer. There is a wonderful OmniStand project by Baron Williams on Thingiverse. I have parameterized and updated his excellent design, which you will find here: https://www.printables.com/model/328497.

You might also need wire clips to tame the X-axis motor wires on the right side of the printer. You will find them here: https://www.printables.com/model/328504.

Removable bed

There is a soviet sculpture called “Cobblestone – the weapon of the proletariat”. To FlashForge, a scraper was the weapon of the 3D maker: the Dreamer came with it. After a moderate fight with your finished print, the bed would end up unlevelled, and if the fighting turned heavy, a chunk of the blue bed liner material could have been taken off.

There are several ways to add a removable bed, mine is BuildTak's 6.25" x 9.25" (159x235 mm) "complete FlexPlate system". It has a heat-transferring plate that is glued to the bed and contains built-in magnets to hold a spring steel FlexPlate. You will then glue your FlashForge blue surface to a removable FlexPlate, rather than the bed. Removing and flexing the plate is the best way to get hard plastic prints off the bed.

FlashForge started selling one too. It is called “Flexible Buildplate Kit for FlashForge Creator Pro”, and fits the Dreamer.

Another benefit of a removable bed is effortlessly changing the print surface. If you purchase more spring plates, you can glue more surfaces onto them. Here are some of the possibilities:

• FlashForge's blue surface. I like it for hard plastics, ABS/PLA/PETG and more rigid TPUs, such as NinjaTek Cheetah. For ABS, this is the best surface by far, in my opinion. With a glue stick, it can hold the prints starting at 85℃.  However, be aware of fakes. They are sold everywhere and cost half as much, but bubble and peel off quickly, leaving almost all glue on the bed. To tell which one is the original, look at the peel-off backing. The original surface has 3M letters written in red and no other words. The fakes have letters in gray and say “3M 9080A Double Coated Tissue Tape”.
• BuildTak's black “original 3D printing surface”. I find it useful for flexibles. I print a lot of gaskets from NinjaTek NinjaFlex filament, and I find FlashForge's blue surface a bit too rough and sticky for this purpose.
• Smooth PEI surface is available from several sources, including BuildTak.
• Textured PEI. Partsbuilt 3D has one that comes with its own flex plate to fit the Dreamer (theirs is 154x232 mm). Personally, I do not use PEI surfaces, smooth or textured.
• Borosilicate glass can be glued to a FlexPlate with 3M's 468MP double-sided transfer sheet. If you decide to go the glass route, you will need hairspray to hold the prints and a Z-axis shim to compensate for the glass thickness, such as https://www.printables.com/model/328502. This is old school, before printing surfaces were widely available.

Pausing the print

There are two ways to pause the print on the FlashForge Dreamer. The first is to press the Pause button on the LCD, after which the bed drops, the printhead homes, and the printer goes into the pause mode and gives limited access to the Tools menu. It will be possible to place an insert and/or change the filament. 

The second way is to place the “M25” command in the G-Code. This will have the same effect as pressing the Pause button. When ready, you will be able to exit the pause mode by pressing the Resume button on the LCD.

Rear fans (case fans) and lid risers

Early models of the Dreamer did not have rear fans. Thankfully, mine does. I use them, only not as intended. I dislike the automatic operation of the two rear fans. They are supposed to turn on when the temperature inside the case reaches 45℃ and turn off when it drops to 35℃.

The trouble is, sudden temperature changes in the middle of the print may cause "banding" – a horizontal streak of filament that is different in appearance from the rest of the model (more matte looking). For ABS, they may also add to warping and loss of bed adhesion.

It is possible to turn off the rear fans in the Tools→Setting menu, accessed from the front LCD. You need to do it every time you turn on the printer: this setting resets once the printer is off. However, the question is: will the Dreamer overheat without these fans? The answer is “yes”, unfortunately. I was made aware of this by reading this Thingiverse page by Baron Williams, the Omnistand creator. He managed to warp his extruder carriage (X-axis carriage) trying to print ABS with the lid closed and without the rear fans: his older Dreamer did not have them.

His answer to this problem was 7 mm lid risers, to leave a gap between the printer’s lid and the body to allow for ventilation. I made some improvements to the lid risers, installed them almost right after I bought the printer and never took them off. You can find my version here:
https://www.printables.com/model/373401. I can report no problems printing ABS without the rear fans.

There is a firmware patch that allows for variable speed of the extruder fan as well as on/off control of the rear fans from the G-Code. This is a wonderful ability, I will talk about it in detail below. Have you seen youtube videos where people installed extra case fans for their Dreamer? But now you can simply turn the existing rear fans on for the entire duration of the print for PLA or turn them off completely for the ABS prints. 

The variable extruder fan speed and rear fan control

As you probably know, Dreamer's stock firmware makes the extruder fan blow at 100% speed or not at all, and there is no user control of the rear fans during the print. Finally, there is firmware that allows fine control over the speed of the extruder fan and on/off control for the rear fans: https://github.com/moonglow/flashforge_fan_fix. It also does away with some extruder temp limits, so be careful when setting the temperature: make sure not to use some crazy numbers.

I will go over how to install third-party firmware in the next section, but for now, let's see how it works. Without the patch, there are no G-Code commands to control the rear fans, and the two G-Code commands for controlling the extruder fan are as follows:

With the patch, you can have a few additional arguments:

As an example, you will be able to issue these G-Code commands for the extruder fan (notice compatibility with the previous G-Code):

Let's now take a look at the commands for the rear fans. Logically, there are only two possible choices as the rear fans are on/off only:

Once the patch is installed, editing the .gcode file manually is one option to add arguments to the “M106” and “M107” commands. But you have two more options: the second is to use a compatible slicer that can output variable fan speed G-Code for the Dreamer, and the third is to use G-Code post-processing commands in the slicer.

Simplify 3D (mine is v.4.x.x) is an example of the second option. This is the most convenient way: you set your fan speed as some percentage of the full speed in the slicer, and this is what will be put in the resulting G-Code. 

Unfortunately, not all slicers can do this for Makerbot clones. In particular, PrusaSlicer will not produce Makerbot-compatible G-Code for variable fan speed. There are work arounds, however. I will talk more about the PrusaSlicer in the corresponding section.

If you want to manipulate the rear fans, then no slicer will be able to produce such commands. Editing the .gcode file manually or post-processing the G-Code are the only two options.

To give you an example, let's say we are printing PLA and want to turn on the rear fans at layer 2. We can just open the .gcode file, find the start of layer 2, and add:

I do not like editing the G-Code manually: although it is not hard, I tend to forget to do it, since you need to do it every time after slicing a model that needs it. I'd rather use post-processing of the G-Code in the slicer. Then, it will become a part of the printing profile and will be performed every time the model is sliced.

In Simplify 3D v.4.x.x, I can achieve the same result as above by going to Scripts→Additional terminal commands for post processing, and entering:

This works because when generating G-Code, Simplify 3D precedes every layer with a comment containing the layer number and its Z-height. So, if you open the G-Code file, you will see something similar to:

The REPLACE command was instructed to find "; layer 2, Z = “ and replace it with "M106 P1 S255 ; turn on the rear fans\n; layer 2, Z = “. The ”\n" means a new line. So the resulting G-Code will be:

Other slicers will have a different way to do the substitution, but the process is similar: first find, then add/replace.

Firmware upgrades and the secret microSD card

A “normal” way to upgrade Dreamer's firmware is via FlashPrint. There is a GUI command, currently “Tools→Upgrade Firmware”, that downloads the latest firmware and sends it to the printer. 

You need to be able to use the firmware version you need, including firmware patched by a third party, for example for enabling variable fan speed for Dreamer's extruder fan (I will talk about it in detail in the section below).

FlashPrint keeps downloaded firmware files in a subfolder, currently “C:\Program Files\FlashForge\FlashPrint<version>\firmware\FlashForge Dreamer”. The actual firmware is a binary file with a .bin extension, such as “dreamer_v2.15.20200917.bin”. But there is also a descriptive text file with a .intro extension and a partially matching name, such as “dreamer_v2.15.20200917_en_US.intro”. The content of this text file does not matter for FlashPrint, it can even be empty, but both files need to be present, and their names match for FlashPrint to recognize this pair as firmware.

Thus, to upload another firmware, make sure that the naming convention is followed, and that both files are present in the firmware folder. Then, connect the printer to the computer via a USB cable, start FlashPrint, do the “Tools→Upgrade Firmware” command to open the dialog window, and pick your firmware from the list of available firmwares. If you do not see your file, you probably did not follow the naming convention or do not have the matching .intro text file. Be sure to restart FlashForge Dreamer after a firmware upgrade.

Behind the scenes, FlashPrint sends the firmware file to the Dreamer's internal microSD card. And so there is another way to change Dreamer's firmware if the preferred “normal” way is impractical. This is also a way to bring the Dreamer back to life, in case something happened to its internal microSD card or its contacts, and the printer hangs on start-up.

Dreamer's microSD card is located on the same board where the regular-size SD card slot is. Unlike its bigger brother, the holder for the microSD card is not a “push in and out” type, but rather a “slide and flip” type. To access the card, you will need to remove the metal bottom plate of the printer, held by six machine screws.

The microSD card has two folders at the root, “user” and “sys”. The “user” is empty for me, the “sys” folder contains six files. Among them is “dreamer.bin”, which is the actual firmware. It is the same .bin file as before, only renamed. As always, make a backup of your microSD card before replacing the files on it directly. 

I once left the printer in a damp basement for a few days, and could not start it afterwards: the microSD card contacts had oxidized. Therefore, it is important to be able to recreate the microSD card. The exact firmware version does not even matter: as long as the printer can be started at all, it can be later upgraded to the current version. For this purpose, I will include my own backups of the microSD card, it will have both the stock and patched versions. Look for the “FFDreamer Internal microSD.zip” file.

Using Simplify 3D

When it comes to raft and support material separation, I still think that Simplify 3D (S3D) is superb. Version 4 feels better and more familiar to me than version 5. FlashForge Dreamer is one of the supported printers, but I will include the profile for it just in case. To load it, go to “File→Import FFF profile”.

Simplify 3D version 4 holds printer bed .stl's in “%LocalAppData%\Simplify3D\S3D-Software”, and version 5 in “%LocalAppData%\Simplify3D\S3D-Software-V5”. If not there already, copy your printer bed .stl file into that folder and name it “FlashForge_Dreamer.stl”.

Another benefit of using Simplify 3D is variable extruder fan speed support. If you request, say, 30% fan speed, Simplify 3D will issue the correct G-Code for it: 

Of course, without the firmware patch, FlashForge Dreamer is going to ignore the S77 argument and just blast the fan at 100%. With the patch, however, the Dreamer’s fan will behave as expected. 

Other slicers (I am talking to you, PrusaSlicer) may not do that. Since Makerbot printers do not support variable extruder fan speeds, no matter what fan speed you set in the options, the command will be:

which will make the fan blow at 100% with or without the firmware patch.

With a simple fan profile (say, 0% fan at layer 1, 30% fan at layer 2 and on), this is easy to correct in post processing or manually, but with a complex fan profile this will become hard to remedy. (Actually, the command issued by PrusaSlicer for Makerbot printers will be M126 and not M106, but unlike the missing argument this is easily remedied in post processing.)

I recommend being familiar with at least a couple of slicers and choose a more appropriate slicer for the job.

Using PrusaSlicer. Getting Started.

A normal way to set up a printer with PrusaSlicer is to go through its Configuration Wizard. I advise against doing so for the FlashForge Dreamer. The Dreamer is not one of the Prusa printers and does not have a pre-configured profile. Nor, as of today, it is a printer from one of the “Other Vendors” for which a pre-configured profile exists. There are too many parameters to set up and it is best done with configuration files.

PrusaSlicer configuration choices have confusing names. One is called “Config”, and the other is called “Config Bundle”. They are both text .ini files, and both contain some configurations. “Config” is a file with a set of parameters used to make a particular print. If you save and later reload it, you will see what parameters were used for the previous print. This is not what we want. What we want is a set of parameters to set up a particular printer. This is done via one or more files that constitute a “Config Bundle”. I will include two.

PrusaSlicer separates parameters in configuration bundle files into three categories: “Printer Settings”, “Print Settings”, and “Filament Settings”. If you open PrusaSlicer, you will see tabs with these names on the screen. The same three categories exist in configuration bundle files. If you open them in a text editor, you will see at least one of these sections:

By filling in parameters under these sections, you tell PrusaSlicer about your particular printer, particular print job, and particular filament. For example, to describe the bed size and the origin of FlashForge Dreamer, the following parameter needs to be added under the "printer" section:

It would be also nice to add a model of the Dreamer's bed to PrusaSlicer. I will include two .stl files for this, “buildplate1.stl” and "buildplate2.stl". You can choose the one you like better (as a note, I do not own these STL files). Then, we have:

Note the syntax for the comments and path. Lines that start with “#” are comments. This comment lets you know that you need to provide an absolute path to the .stl file, and “\\” is how folders in the path are separated.

It is possible to have the inheritance. For example, this is how I can configure my printer:

Do you see what I just did? I configured a hidden (note the asterisks before and after the name) printer “FFDreamer Baseline”. I then configured “FFDreamer 0.4mm nozzle” printer to inherit the configuration from “FFDreamer Baseline”, with an additional parameter of nozzle diameter for both extruders.

If you want to know more about configuration bundle files, try https://muppetlabs.co/3dprinting_prusaslicer_profiles.html.

However, you do not need to be an expert on them to get started. Try the included “PrusaSlicer FFDreamer.ini” and “PrusaSlicer Filaments.ini”, they will give you a starting point.

Let's configure the printer together. Set up a folder for the buldplate STLs as well as the folders for the .ini files: one for the “PrisaSlicer FFDreamer.ini“ file and one for the “PrusaSlicer Filaments.ini“ file. You will probably end up with multiple versions of these, and it is nice to keep them in separate folders. Edit the “PrusaSlicer FFDreamer.ini“ file and set “bed_custom_model” to the correct path where your buildplate STL is located.

Start PrusaSlicer. If you have already set something up previously that you want to remove, do “Configuration→Configuration Wizard→Remove User Profiles”. 

Now, let's import a “Config Bundle”. Do “File→Import→Import Config Bundle”, and navigate to the “PrusaSlicer FFDreamer.ini“ file. You should see a message about the presets that were successfully imported. Click on the “Printer Settings” tab. You should be able to see “FFDreamer 0.4mm nozzle” in the printer list. Choose it. PrusaSlicer will ask about some unsaved changes, say "Discard". And there you go. Click on the “Plater” tab. Do you see the Dreamer's buildplate with the origin in the center? If not, you probably made some mistakes. You now know how to clear everything and start anew. But if all is well, let's import some filaments.

Do “File→Import→Import Config Bundle”, and navigate to the “PrusaSlicer Filaments.ini“ file. I have only a few filaments configured, but you can add more, for example by using my settings as a starting point. Also, there are some filament configuration files for PrusaSlicer that you can find on the Internet.

One important point: when slicing, make sure you are viewing the Sidebar ("View→Collapse Sidebar" is unchecked). For dual extruder printers, this is where you pick your filament for the given extruder, not from the “Filament Settings” tab. Also, I don't know if this is a bug in PrusaSlicer or an error in my filament file, but the slicer seem to choose its own filament when it first starts, no matter what is shown in the sidebar. So, for example, it will show “Fiberology FiberFlex”, while slice the model with PLA filament settings. This is a sneaky error, it is hard to see. I have to pick the filament from the sidebar myself for it to really register with PrusaSlicer.

Using PrusaSlicer. Advanced.

I have only briefly mentioned the stuff contained in my printer configuration file, and for the most part, you can figure it out easily. Once the file is loaded, corresponding fields in the “Printer Settings”, “Print Settings”, and “Filament Settings” tabs are populated, and you can see what values I set for them. Change them if you need to.

There are some obscure features that I'd like to mention. Be sure you are viewing the screen in “Expert Mode”. First, let's find a place where we ask PrusaSlicer to produce Makerbot-compatible G-Code. It is on the “Printer Settings→General” tab, under “Firmware”.

Next, click on “Print Settings→Output Options”, and find “G-Code substitutions” under the “Other” section. Notice that for the Dreamer, the fan and the bed temperature commands are different from Makerbot's, and must be substituted.

Now let's take a look at “Printer Settings→Custom G-Code”. I took most of what you see under “Start G-Code” and “End G-Code” from Simplify 3D, with little modification. The code is commented and readable. There are some absolutely necessary commands here, the printer will not print without them. There are some niceties too, like changing colors on warm-up and extruding a starting line to wipe off the nozzle.

Notice also that “Before layer change G-Code” contains one line:

This line adds a comment (G-Code comments start with “;”) at the beginning of every layer. PrusaSlicer counts layers starting with 0, but we, humans, like to start counting with 1. This is why you see that “1” is added to the “layer_num” variable.

If you later look at the produced G-Code file in a text editor, you will see that each new layer starts with a comment showing its number, making it easy to find:

For example, to add 12% fan speed starting at layer 2, slice the model with the fan disabled. Open the resulting G-Code file in Notepad, find “;LAYER:2” line, and add the line “M106 S31” right below it. Of course, for this to work, your Dreamer needs to have a firmware patch as mentioned earlier.

You can achieve the same result without editing the G-Code file directly, but by using G-Code substitutions under “Print Settings→Output Options”. This is my preferred way since it becomes a part of the printing profile and will be applied automatically every time you slice the model. Consider the substitutions below, for example. It could be appropriate for PLA prints:

I also want to mention that PrusaSlicer allows for putting some printing parameters in the resulting file name automatically. This is also done under “Print Settings→Output Options”, the variable that holds the output file name format is “output_filename_format”. For example, layer height or filament type can be part of the output file name. Consider this code:

If you slice a model named “my_model.stl” at 0.1 mm layer height, the resulting output file will be “my_model_0.1mm.g”. Search the Web for variables allowed in the output file name, and you can get really creative. Remember, however, that FlashForge Dreamer will not read files longer than 46 characters from the SD card. And this number includes the dot and the file extension.

Remote Printing and OctoPrint

While I do all my printing using an SD card, the ability to send and monitor your prints remotely is valuable and even indispensable in some situations (print farms, monitoring prints away from home, etc).

The Dreamer provides a built-in WiFi printing capability out of the box, although it is kind of backward, in my view. Instead of connecting to an existing WiFi network, the printer provides a new WiFi network (WiFi Access Point), as if it was a WiFi router. For my version of the firmware, the name of the WiFi network is USR-WIFI232-G2. You can enable it by going to Tools→Settings→WiFi from the printer’s LCD screen. You then connect to this new network with a computer capable of WiFi connection that has FlashPrint installed on it. This way, you will be able to control the printer remotely, as long as the computer is in range of the Dreamer’s WiFi.

You can work around this. If you connect the Dreamer to a computer with a USB cable, and then connect that computer to your network either by wire or wirelessly, then as long as you can control that computer remotely via a remote Desktop, you should be able to run FlashPrint on it from afar.

I was also interested in controlling the printer with OctoPrint software, instead of FlashPrint. I can report success, with caveats.

First, it seems that communication will be handled by a FlashForge driver, so there is a need to install FlashPrint, which installs the driver as well. If your printer is on and connected by a USB cable, then going to Device Manager on your PC should show the driver by Zhejiang Flashforge 3D Technology Co., Ltd, under 3D Printer→FlashForge Dreamer 3D Printer.

Second, you will need OctoPrint with all of its necessary components. I am a novice to OctoPrint, so I just chose the latest version of the bundled installer for Windows from https://github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-WindowsInstaller. It reported to be a version 1.10.2 with Python 3.10.5.

Third, you will need an OctoPrint plug-in to connect to the Dreamer. The URL for the plug-in is https://github.com/Mrnt/OctoPrint-FlashForge/archive/master.zip. The plug-in is abandon-ware, and the author says it may not work with some versions of the printer’s firmware. If you have read this article this far, you know the firmware I use is a modified V2.15 20200917 by moonglow. It works fine.

The Set Up

You will need to set up an OctoPrint server on a computer that will be used to control the Dreamer. If the OctoPrint installer has not started it already, go to the OctoPrint folder, and install/(re)start the OctoPrint service using the scripts in the “Service Control” folder. If all is well, then connecting to http://localhost:5000/ with a web browser should show you the OctoPrint page.

Go through the initial setup. When asked to create a printer profile, give it the following characteristics:

You can also edit them later by going to Settings→Printer Profiles in OctoPrint. 

There are several ways to install the FlashForge plug-ins, but if you have already downloaded the master.zip file above, the easiest is to go to Settings→Plugin Manager, click on “+Get More”, and choose “... from an uploaded file”. Once installed, you will need to restart the OctoPrint.

To Connect

Open FlashPrint, go to View→Connect Machine. It will show a window with available printers to connect to. Do not connect, just make sure that you can see FlashForge Dreamer in the list.

Now go to the OctoPrint main page (with a green octopus), where the “Connect” button is. Look under the “Serial Port” list. There should be something there other than just COM ports. Sometimes I see an ”unknown printer”, and sometimes “FlashForge Dreamer 3D Printer”. However, leave “Serial Port=AUTO”. I have trouble connecting if I choose something else. I leave “Baud Rate=AUTO” as well. Click the ”Connect" button. Hopefully, a connection is established and you can then start sending jobs to the Dreamer. Connecting is a bit finicky as you can see.