Warning
This is a public beta release. While it has been tested and is considered stable enough for regular use, some features may still behave unexpectedly and there may be cosmetic issues.
This beta will receive updates only within the beta branch. Once the final 1.4.2 release is published, you’ll need to reflash using the final release image to switch back to the stable update channel. Your Forge-X settings and user configuration will be preserved — this is simply an extra step required when moving from beta to the final release.
Even so, I strongly recommend creating a backup with the TAR_BACKUP before installing the beta and downloading that backup to your computer as well, just in case.
By installing this version, you acknowledge that it is beta software and use it at your own risk. No guarantee is made that everything will work perfectly on every printer or configuration.
Highlights
- Introducing Feather — a new interactive touchscreen experience, now enabled by default.
- A completely new Feather dashboard, with dedicated interactive screens for printing, calibration, material changes, network setup, and printer settings.
- Built-in theme support with ready-to-use themes and a local Theme Editor, launched with the
THEME_EDITORmacro, for creating and applying your own themes.
What’s included
- Touch controls for choosing files, starting and managing prints, selecting and changing materials, heating, movement, lighting, and printer settings.
- Guided Z-offset and extruder feed calibration, including safeguards for custom nozzle and bed setups.
- Manual movement controls with joystick-style movement and safety limits, plus classic button-based controls.
- Integrated network setup in Feather, allowing both Wi-Fi and Ethernet to be configured directly from the touchscreen without relying on the stock firmware.
- Background Forge-X update checks, on-screen update notifications, changelogs, and a guided update process with progress reporting.
- Configurable display ECO mode, chamber-light controls, and optional automatic chamber lighting during prints.
- A fully reworked print-recovery flow designed to be more reliable and responsive, with recovery checkpoints preserved across pauses.
- Safer pause and filament-change workflows, including toolhead parking and lowering the bed to a configurable safe height.
- Customizable material presets and material-change workflows.
- A Feather file browser with pagination and automatic refresh.
- Categorized Mod settings with clearer labels and descriptions.
- An on-screen keyboard with cursor navigation.
- A themed splash screen and improved Feather startup experience.
- A macro for downloading firmware updates directly on the printer.
- Dynamic USB storage detection and more reliable USB initialization.
Help shape the future of Forge-X
Recently, we started talking about bringing Forge-X / Feather to other printers, so I made a few polls to get a better idea of how much real interest there is.
Before organizing any fundraising, I’d first like to understand whether moving in this direction makes sense for the community.
The basic idea is simple: to support another printer, I need access to the hardware first. But buying the printer alone doesn’t mean a full port will appear immediately — the biggest limitation is development time.
For some perspective, Forge-X 1.4.2 has already taken me around 250 hours of work. For a completely new printer, I’d roughly expect 2–3 months of focused development, possibly more, depending on the platform and how much needs to be adapted.
So there are really two separate parts: funding the printer itself, and ongoing support that would allow me to spend enough time developing, testing, and maintaining the port.
For now, I just want to measure interest:
FlashForge AD5X:
https://strawpoll.com/e6Z2A1G08gN
FlashForge Creator 5 (Pro):
https://strawpoll.com/Dwyo3Oxz0yA
Forge-X development support:
https://strawpoll.com/kjn1D1P0LyQ
Please also share these polls with friends, other communities, or anyone else who might be interested. A large part of the potential user base probably won’t see this post directly, so wider participation will make the results much more useful.
For now, this is only about understanding the level of interest. If there’s enough support, we can figure out the next step from there.