Prusa’s new firmware adds comfort features and a “Linear Advance” algorithm that will give you better print quality. 

Prusa Research are known for selling excellent 3D printers and 3D printer kits. Also, they are constantly evolving the capabilities of their 3D printer range. As these firmware updates are free, you get an instant benefit out of your unit (which is nice).

4 months after the release of the latest firmware release, here’s another update: FW 3.1.0 with Linear Advance and Drivers 1.9.2. Josef Prusa claims in a blog post it‘s “the biggest update in 2017”.

The update is already published, so download the drivers here and start the update process as mentioned.

The Linear Advance Feature Makes Prints Better Instantly

The “Linear Advance” feature (see image above) is probably the most important feature of this firmware release.

In case you are wondering what‘s “Linear Advance”, here’s a short explanation.

On most 3D printers, the extruder motor moves in a linear proportion to all the other motors. This doesn’t take into account that extruders aren’t a linear system. This deficit can be compensated: “The linear advance, on the other hand, takes nonlinearity into account and maintains the correct pressure in a nozzle during movements. Basically, the prints will have sharper corners at the same speed and when increasing the print speed defects and artifacts will not show as much as without Linear advance.”

Here are more feature updates:

• First layer calibration has been included in the firmware – you can run it without having to insert an SD card.
• Host keep alive messages for better compatibility with the popular OctoPrint
• Auto power mode: In auto power mode, stepper currents depend on Z height. Current starts low when Z height is minimal and increases slowly with the object being printed.
• You can now sort files in SD card menu
• The software will automatically check if a file (.gcode) is complete
• The self-test and autocalibration wizard will be more suited to new users

As the company is known to operate on open source, here are the files on Github – just in case you want to dive deeper.

(Source: Prusa Research)