Firmware Retract

Molten filament extrusion is an inexact science at best. While 3D printers can perform XYZ movements with incredible accuracy and repeatability, extrusion continues to be one of the most challenging aspects of 3D printing due to its inherent slop. Many factors can influence extrusion latency and ooze, including the volume of the melt chamber, the hotend temperature, the viscosity of the material, the diameter of the nozzle, ambient temperature, and so on. As a result, tuning extrusion can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of printer calibration.

To help deal with latency and reduce ooze, almost every extruder needs to apply some amount of retraction in between continuous extrusions, then an equal amount of recovery when starting the next extrusion. In a retract move, the extruder pulls the filament up out of the hot end to create negative pressure and (hopefully) prevent the filament from oozing during the next travel move. The recover move reverses the retraction to restore pressure before starting the next extruded line. Proper length and speed of retraction can vary widely, so it helps to experiment.

Slicer Retraction

Normally you configure the retraction length and feedrate in your slicer software, then all retract and recover moves are baked into the resulting G-code. This works well if you know the best length and feedrate to use and don’t expect a lot of variability, but it makes experimentation and configuration changes much slower going since any changes in retraction require re-slicing all of your models. All of them!

Firmware-based Retraction

With Firmware-based Retraction, Marlin manages all the details of retraction and recovery. Instead of generating extra E moves, the slicer just outputs G10 for retract moves and G11 for recover moves. Before doing a tool-change, the slicer outputs G10 S1 for a swap-retract, and then the next G11 for that extruder will automatically be a swap-recover.

In addition to producing a smaller G-code file, firmware-based retraction allows you to tune your retract/recover settings during a print and save them to EEPROM for all future prints with the same material. This means you never have to re-slice your models for a different material or new filament spool. Just run a test print to recheck and fine-tune retraction settings, save them to EEPROM, and get on with more printing.

Enable Firmware-based Retraction with the FWRETRACT option in Configuration_adv.h. Default lengths and feedrates may also be set there.

See M207 Set Retract and M208 Set Recover for available runtime settings.

Automatic Firmware Retraction

Marlin includes Automatic Firmware Retraction (aka “Auto Retract”) to convert slicer-based retraction to Firmware-based Retraction on the fly. When Automatic Firmware Retraction is enabled (e.g., with M209 Auto Retract) Marlin converts all retract/recover moves (G0 E moves over a configured length) into firmware-based retract/recover moves, using the length and feedrate values set in the firmware instead of those specified by the G-code.

AFR Caveats

Currently, the M209 state is persistent and the state is saved to EEPROM. The expectation has been that once you’ve settled on a preference for firmware retraction you’ll set the machine and keep it on or off. This behavior may change so that auto-retract is disabled most often, as it is safer to always leave it off. For legacy G-code, just add M209 S1 to the starting code and M209 S0 to the end.

Auto-retract uses the settings MIN_AUTORETRACT and MAX_AUTORETRACT to determine the range of E moves that should be converted to firmware retract/recover moves. When Auto Retract is enabled, long G0 moves (e.g., for a manual filament change) will be done as retract/recover moves. Turn off automatic firmware retraction with M209 S0 before doing any manual E moves.