How To Flash Firmware to the CR6 printer - CR6Community/Marlin GitHub Wiki

WAIT! If you prefer to watch videos - you might prefer to go here, instead:** https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfDSKnF0RNcYDkxM5mYtyuvlTfMAMD-Nr

NO, WAIT!! If your intention is to install the Community Firmware to "try", expecting to be able to revert to Creality stock firmware if you change your mind, please read the last section on this page first! We cannot guarantee that there will be a way to revert your printer to the "as-received" condition.

First, figure-out which "variant" of printer you have!

Creality has delivered multiple variants of CR6 printer and they do not all work with the same pre-compiled Community firmware. Some of the modifications you make to your printer may also require you to compile your own "flavour" of this firmware.

Only you - the owner-operator of your printer - can determine with confidence to which machine you are flashing. If you can not make this determination with confidence, you should not try to flash any firmware to your printer. You may instead just render your printer unuseable...

e.g. Kickstarter CR6-SE printers were delivered with Creality v1.x firmware and a DGUS2 kernel which they did not include on the SD card and copies of which have not been found online. If you flash the DGUS kernel upgrade files to such a printer, there may be no road back to restore those printers to stock.

Identify the Model

You probably know this one - CR6 is available in two models:

  1. CR6-SE
  2. CR6-MAX

Identify the Motherboard

Yes, you probably have to open the control board case to inspect the board for this one.

See this page for more details: How To Identify the Motherboard in your CR6 Printer

(NOTE: If you decide to just guess which board is probably in there, and you guess wrong, you may plough the nozzle into the bed when you home, your heaters will not work, and the part cooling fan will not work. Your call.)

Look for the latest pre-compiled firmware specifically configured for your printer/motherboard/display variant in the Releases section of the CR6Community/Marlin repository

The Marlin software on which the CF is based requires that some configuration "switches" be set before compiling the firmware. The Community Firmware developers maintain a limited set of basic Community Firmware configurations in the Releases section of the repository.

If you have a modified printer that needs an unsupported configuration, you will need instead to learn how to compile your own firmware.
NOTE: Download and unpack the Compilable_Source.zip file, if you decide to "roll your own" version of the motherboard firmware. Copy/Paste the two files in the 2-configs folder into the Marlin folder, and edit the platformio.ini file, to point to the correct board settings in Marlin.

Now install the Firmwares bundled into the applicable .zip file

Install the motherboard firmware

Copy the firmware*.bin file from the 1-Firmwares/Motherboard Firmware folder to the root directory of an SD card that has been formatted FAT32, 4096 allocation units/sector. 8Gb cards work best. Up to 16Gb cards can be formatted FGAT32/4096 in a single partition. If you use larger SD cards, it helps to create an 8Gb or 16Gb partition on the larger card and work with that.
CAUTION: If you have multiple partitions on an SD card, the bootloader on the printer can only see the first partition.

NOTES:

  1. If you know how to connect a terminal program to the printer's USB port, you can send the gcode command M115 to determine which firmware is currently flashed to the motherboard.
  2. If you try to flash a Creality motherboard and the flash fails, you will need to change the filename before trying again. The Creality bootloader memorizes the name of the most recent firmware*.bin file. It only memorizes the last name, so you don't need to maintain a "blacklist" of names you can never use again. Just edit one or more character of the last name used and try again.
  3. Once flashed, the display will no longer boot to a menu screen until you also flash the matching DWIN_SET as instructed below.
  4. The CF6.1 motherboard firmware will flash the nozzle LED if you power up with CF6.1 flashed to the motherboard but have not yet flashed the CR6Community Display firmware to the display.

Install the Touch screen Firmware

There are two options for flashing the display firmware:

  1. The conventional method is to copy the DWIN_SET folder + contents to a micro SD card, formatted FAT32/4096.
  2. MACOS users tell us that the T5L...CFG file in that folder is corrupted by MACOS file manager, if they just copy the folder. We suspect that it is replacing CRLF end of line characters with LF characters. The Bootloader then cannot read the CFG file and the flash results in a corrupted display.

If you are using a Windows PC, you can safely follow the conventional method. If you are using MACOS (and possibly Linux), you can download and use Balena Etcher to burn the RMimg.img file in the FOR MACOS USERS folder, to make the transfer. User-validated on 8Gb and 16Gb cards. May work with larger cards.

CAUTION: If you are installing this firmware on a CR6-MAX printer, the animation sequence on the Automatic Bed Leveling screen is less "elegant" in the Re-Factored firmware than in the original design.

  • The original DWIN_SET displayed a dot as the probe samples bed mesh points between the displayed mesh values.
  • The Refactored version does not.

On the other hand, the Refactored version adds a "Leveling Settings" button to the SetUp menu AND adds a display of the last-reported thermistor values to the thermal error shutdown warning screens, in an effort to help you determine whether the problem lies with the nozzle or the bed.

Why is the Display Firmware called "Refactored"?

This Wiki page used to contain a lot more detail about:

  • finding out which version of DGUS2 is installed on your display before you start flashing
  • choosing between two different versions of the display firmware based on the DGUS2 version
  • instructions for recognizing when you had flashed the wrong version and how to recover

The original display firmware ONLY ran on DGUS2v3.5.

It was distributed with the DGUS2 v3.5 OS kernel file and the flashing instructions said to be sure to flash that kernel to the display.
Then, around Dec21/Jan22, we started hearing from new Community members who followed those bundled instructions and suddenly had blank display screens.
Research later revealed that Creality had started shipping displays with DGUS2 versions higher than 3.5 and that the firmware was not loading/running on those displays.

That was when we Refactored the display firmware, in a different version of the DGUSTools app, producing a version of display firmware that now runs on all versions of DGUS2 OS. We named this new version "the Refactored Display Firmware" to distinguish it from the original bundled 3.5-only version, which was still being distributed with the CF6.1 motherboard firmware, together with those same - now problematic - flashing instructions.

Our first approach then was to continue offering two versions of the display firmware, but to add a lot of cautionary notes and guidelines to help steer users away from using the wrong version. With that approach, we also then needed to provide additional guidance and resources to help folks realize when they installed the wrong combination and how to recover. It turned-out that although the Refactored firmware did indeed run on all DGUS2OS versions, displays that ran DGUS2v4.5 or higher were now also having their touch screens calibrated differently from previous versions. That resulted in users finding that flashing the CF6.1 display firmware resulted in a screen with buttons that did not respond to touch. We responded with more guidance about how to recalibrate touch screens and how to flash back and forth between DGUS2 OS versions.

In short, things got exponentially more complicated.

In Dec 2024, we removed the original display firmware from the zip files.
In Sept 2026, we have bundled the Refactored display firmware into the zip files.

The name "Refactored" remains, for historical continuity with long-time members. Someday, we may not need to retain that term, either, but for now... Now you know.

HELP! - Flashing did not work!

Rats!

While we know the firmware flashes just fine on all of our machines, we sometimes find that Creality has modified their design (e.g they changed from 4.5.3 to 1.1.0.3 motherboard, they started flashing different variations of DGUS (1.4, 3.4, 4.1, 4.5, etc.), they moved some of the pins and connectors... So we sometimes learn there really is a new problem to be debugged. A lot of the time, though, a user has just not followed the documented instructions. Your first best bet when flashing does not work is to go back over the instructions and figure out whether you skipped a step or did something we caution against.

The second most likely culprit is the SD card. Sectors do go bad, bootloader routines are "touchy", motherboards may work with cards that displays will not, or vice versa. If all else fails, try deep-formatting the card or simply use a different one.

Hopefully, the troubleshooting FAQs on this page will help you figure out what happened and how to recover: FAQs

I want to flash my printer back to Creality stock - how do I do that?

Well, as they say, "We are sorry to see you "go"."

To the best of our knowledge, the instructions on this FAQ page will enable you to revert your CR6-SE or CR6-MAX to the Creality stock firmware.

Please let us know on the Discord #firmware-flashing channel, if you have any problems when following those instructions.