Ender 3 V3 Firmware Update Guide: SE, KE and CoreXZ

Any ender 3 v3 firmware update guide has to start with which V3 you own, because the three machines sharing the name update in different ways. The Ender-3 V3 SE is a Marlin printer on an STM32 mainboard: you flash a .bin from a microSD card, and the knob screen has its own firmware on a second card slot. The Ender-3 V3 KE and the CoreXZ Ender-3 V3 / V3 Plus run Creality OS, a Klipper fork on a Linux SoC, and take a 100 MB-plus .img either over the air or from a USB stick. Get the file and the slot right and the update is a two-minute job; get them wrong and you are reading unbrick threads.

Which machine, which file

	Ender-3 V3 SE	Ender-3 V3 KE	Ender-3 V3 / V3 Plus (CoreXZ)
Firmware base	Marlin on an STM32F103RET6	Creality OS (Klipper fork), model code F005	Creality OS (Klipper fork)
Current stock version	V1.1.0, May 11 2025	V1.1.0.15	V1.2.3.28, Apr 16 2025
File you flash	.bin (mainboard) plus tjc.tft (screen)	.img, about 113 MB	.img
Media	microSD, FAT32, 32 GB or smaller	USB stick, FAT32 4096, or OTA	USB stick, FAT32 4096, or OTA
Recovery path	Reflash from card	.ingenic image over MicroUSB with the Ingenic cloner	Same as KE

The versions come from Creality’s download pages for the SE, KE and V3, which also carry the release notes; the SE’s build target is in Creality’s platformio.ini. Ignore the “OTA Firmware Updates: Yes” line on the SE support page; the SE has no network hardware and updates from the card.

Ender-3 V3 SE: mainboard first, screen second

The mainboard update is a bootloader flash. Format a microSD card FAT32; the foro3d walkthrough caps the card at 32 GB, and forum moderators add a 4096-byte allocation unit. Copy the .bin to the root. The bootloader will not flash a filename it has already seen and struggles with long ones, so the Creality forum advice is a short name like Firmware.bin, and the navaismo firmware README renames it to something new every time. The card goes into the printer’s main slot, not the screen. Power off, insert, power on, and expect a black screen or frozen logo while it works: foro3d quotes one to two minutes, navaismo 10 to 15 seconds. Do not cut power. When the UI returns, pull the card and delete the .bin, or it flashes again on every boot.

The screen is a separate device with its own firmware, and this is where SE owners get stuck. The download ships a folder named TJC_SET containing tjc.tft. Creality’s instructions say to put “the file TJC_SET” on the card; a forum thread worked out that copying the whole TJC_SET folder to the card root is what the screen expects, though one user reported the bare .tft on the root also worked. The slot for this is on the left side of the screen housing. Power off, insert, power on, wait for the progress bar, then remove and clear the card. The same thread reports the 1.06 screen package was corrupt for one owner while 1.04 flashed cleanly, so if the screen hangs on “updating from SD card”, try the previous screen version before blaming hardware. Flash mainboard and screen as a pair; a mismatch produces blank menus and missing options rather than a clean error.

Ender-3 V3 KE and CoreXZ V3: OTA or a stick

Creality’s own KE release notes give two methods. OTA: connect the printer to Wi-Fi, open the update entry on the touchscreen and wait. USB: download the .img from Creality Cloud, put it on a stick, plug it in. The V3-series rooted-firmware page on the Creality Helper Script wiki fills in the detail Creality leaves out: format the stick FAT32 with a 4096 allocation size (exFAT works on some drives), copy the .img to the root with nothing else on the drive, and a popup announcing a new update appears on the screen. Press Upgrade, wait, and remove the stick only once the home screen is back. The CoreXZ V3 procedure is the same; when the November 2024 update landed, a forum post summarised the manual route as “Copy to an empty USB. Turn off printer. Insert USB and turn printer on.” The same build added Settings, System, Expert mode, Z Offset so the offset persists between prints; if your V3 still forgets its Z offset, an update fixes it without any tuning.

The KE’s GitHub release carries two assets: Ender-3_V3_KE_F005_ota_img_V1.1.0.12.img at 113 MB, which is the normal update, and Ender-3_V3_KE_1.1.0.12.ingenic at 124 MB, which is the full recovery image. Do not try to update with the .ingenic; it is for the cloner tool described below.

What an update wipes, and what to save first

The KE release notes are blunt about this. If you have installed Fluidd or Mainsail, the update overwrites their configuration, so save printer.cfg and any macros first. The update also unbinds the printer from Creality Cloud. And with the 8 GB internal storage full, uploading a file can freeze the system; the documented way out is a flash over the USB cable rather than a stick. Copy off any G-code you want to keep, and budget for recalibration, input shaping and reinstalling any rooted extras afterwards. If the notes list nothing you need, skip the update.

After any KE or V3 update, Creality’s notes say to open Settings, Self-check, tick Automatic Z Offset and Auto Bed Leveling, and run it. Root access, if you want it back, is Settings, Root account information, accept the agreement, wait 30 seconds and press OK; the SSH login is root with password creality_ender3v3 per the helper-script wiki. If the KE’s stock UI is your only reason for staying put, the Klipper vs Marlin comparison on KlipperLab covers what the rooted front ends add, and the ADXL345 input-shaper walkthrough is the same procedure you repeat after the update wipes your shaper values.

On the SE, the .bin flash can reset EEPROM settings. navaismo’s instructions end with “reset printer and run autolevel”, and that is the right habit on stock firmware too: re-run Level, then check the Z offset on a first layer using the steps in How to set Z offset on Ender 3 V3.

How to verify

On the SE, the definitive check is over USB: send M115 from any host and Marlin returns a FIRMWARE_NAME string with the build and date. If the board reports the new version but menus are missing or mislabelled, the screen firmware is the mismatched half. On the KE and V3, the update popup names the version it is about to install, and after reboot Settings should report that same number.

The functional test is a 20 mm calibration cube at 0.2 mm layers in PLA, 200 °C nozzle and 60 °C bed, printed straight after the self-check. A clean first layer proves the Z offset survived or was recalibrated; square corners without ringing on the KE prove the shaper values are back. If the first layer is lace or a smear, fix the offset before anything else. Which machine you would rather maintain in the first place is the subject of Creality Ender 3 V3 SE vs KE.

When it goes wrong

An SE that boots to a blank or frozen screen after a flash almost always has a card problem: wrong format, a filename the bootloader has already used, or a screen flashed from the file alone instead of the folder. Reformat FAT32 4096, rename the .bin, reflash, then redo the screen with the complete TJC_SET folder.

A KE or CoreXZ V3 that will not get past the boot logo needs the Creality Wiki unbrick procedure: a MicroUSB data cable (not a charge-only one) to the mainboard, hold Reset for 3 seconds and release Boot to enter the bootloader, install the “Ingenic USB BOOT DEVICE” driver from the cloner-win32-driver folder, load the .ingenic image in the cloner tool and press Start while pressing Boot. One caution from a forum recovery thread: the stock cloner policy can wipe the SN_MAC partition and leave the printer on the mountain boot image; the fix was adding ota.img and sn_mac.img entries at offsets 0x100000 and 0x200000 before flashing. Read that thread before you press Start.

Related across the network

• Common Mechanical Keyboard Problems and How to Fix Them — keyboardranker.com
• Klipper vs Marlin: Which Firmware Should You Run? — klipperlab.com
• OctoPrint vs Klipper: Which Print Host to Run — octoprintlab.com
• How to Level a Bed With BLTouch: Marlin and Klipper Guide — printlabguide.com
• Pressure Advance Calibration for Klipper and Marlin — printlabguide.com

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