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Creality K2 Plus Firmware: Download, Update, and Roll Back

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Wilson M
Maintainer
Mike Wilson
Founder & Lead Engineer

Creality K2 Plus Firmware: Download, Update, and Roll Back

If you are reading this, you probably did exactly what I did last night: I wasn’t paying attention, saw a green update button, and just pressed it.

Normally, updates are a good thing. But in this case, I immediately regretted it. I was trying to record a video and needed my K2 Plus for its enclosed chamber, but the moment I installed the new firmware, I had nothing but errors and couldn’t print a single thing. Specifically, it wouldn’t even get to the preheating stage before crashing out with stepper timing errors.

Since I don’t use Creality Print, it took me a while to figure out how to manually roll back the firmware to a stable version. If you are stuck in the same boat — or you just want to move to a specific version, up or down — here is the whole process without their slicer software.

Where the Firmware Actually Lives Now

Section titled “Where the Firmware Actually Lives Now”

This is the part that trips most people up, and it is the reason this post needed updating.

Creality moved the K2 series firmware downloads to Creality Cloud. The old product page on the main Creality site is still live, still indexed, and still lists older builds — which is why a lot of people think they’re on the newest version when they aren’t. My own K2 Plus was sitting on 1.1.6.1 and never prompted me that 1.1.6.4 existed.

The current download page:

Creality Cloud — K2 Plus

Scroll down and click Downloads. Every published version is listed there, so the same page works whether you are upgrading or rolling back.

Before You Flash: Back Up Your Config

Section titled “Before You Flash: Back Up Your Config”

Flashing firmware wipes your customizations. Bed probe tweaks, custom macros, anything you changed by hand — all of it. Back up first.

Log into your printer through the Fluidd web interface at:

http://YOUR-PRINTER-IP:4408

Go to Configuration and download each of these individually:

  1. printer.cfg
  2. printer_params.cfg
  3. motor_control.cfg
  4. box.cfg
  5. sensorless.cfg
  6. gcode_macro.cfg

The “Create ZIP Archive” button has never worked for me on this machine, so grab them one at a time.

Once you have those saved somewhere safe, I recommend running a factory reset before flashing to clear out anything left over. I walk through that whole process here:

Preparing Your USB Drive

Section titled “Preparing Your USB Drive”

If the drive isn’t set up correctly, the printer won’t read it.

  1. Insert a USB drive into your computer.
  2. Open your disk utility (I used a Mac, but right-clicking “Format” on Windows works the same way).
  3. Format the drive as exFAT. It is vital that you choose exFAT; otherwise, the bootloader likely won’t pick it up.
  4. Drag and drop the downloaded image file onto the drive. Use an otherwise empty drive — if there’s an old firmware image sitting on it, delete that first. A stale image is the most common reason the printer flashes the wrong version.
  5. Eject the drive safely.

Installing the Firmware

Section titled “Installing the Firmware”

The USB port is on the right-hand side of the machine as you face it.

With the printer running

Section titled “With the printer running”

This is the quicker path and what the current firmware does:

  1. Leave the printer on.
  2. Insert the USB drive.
  3. The screen prompts you to upgrade to the version on the stick. Hit Upgrade and confirm.

If it doesn’t prompt

Section titled “If it doesn’t prompt”

Fall back to a cold boot:

  1. Turn the printer off.
  2. Insert the USB drive.
  3. Turn the printer back on — the bootloader picks up the image and offers the upgrade.

After the Flash: Recalibration

Section titled “After the Flash: Recalibration”

Once the install finishes, the machine reboots and comes up wanting to recalibrate before it will print.

  1. Remove the USB drive.
  2. Hit OK at the recalibration prompt to reach the calibration page.
  3. Run cutter calibration and input shaping at minimum. Belt tension is usually fine after a firmware change, and I leave auto-leveling for the next time I actually print.
  4. Restore the config files you backed up earlier.
  5. Slice a small test file and send it to the printer to confirm everything is working.

If you’d rather not dig up every calibration formula and test procedure from scratch, I put my whole set of calculators and calibration tools in one place: go.minimal3dp.com. Free, no signup. I built it so I’d stop re-deriving the same numbers, and figured you might want it too.

Watch the Full Walkthrough

Section titled “Watch the Full Walkthrough”

Downloading from the new Creality Cloud page and flashing in either direction:

And the original rollback video, if you want to see the drive formatting and menu navigation in detail:

Hopefully this saves you the frustration I dealt with.

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