IDEX Klipper Conversion Kit Install for J1S?

J1/J1s IDEX
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A little history…

I wanted, absolutely wanted to love this printer and was willing to put in some extra time to get it to work without some of the issues you see posted to these forums. However, after much experimentation, I could never get my J1S working well enough that it would produce a good print without an extreme amount of handholding, babysitting, and sometimes it seemed, just straight up luck. I bought it last Christmas, worked with it for about 2 months and finally gave up, so it sat collecting dust since then.

A few weeks ago, printing on my Qidi Q1 Pro that is Klipper native out of the box and doing some maintenance on my other somewhat finicky printer, my Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus (which I had moved off of the Elegoo firmware completely and installed OpenNept4une Klipper), I thought about the possibility of moving the J1S off of the standard Snapmaker firmware and on to a Klipper-based system. The J1S has an excellent physical build, in my experience, it was the firmware/software that was the huge obstacle.

Did some research and found an Innocube3D IDEX Klipper-based Conversion Kit ( Conversion Kit Link ) that I think just might fit the bill. I went ahead and bought it, and it arrived a few weeks ago. If I can get this working correctly for the J1S, it would be my dream come true (all three of my printers running off Klipper, one unmodded slicer software instance that works across them all, remote monitoring and control w/ camera support, etc…)

I was wondering if anyone else on the forums has attempted to use this kit (or a comparable one maybe I don’t know about) and if so, any results, roadblocks, lessons learned, etc… they might be willing to share. I’m sure I’ll have to do a bunch of modifications software-wise, I started a Github Repository to keep track of everything at InventedTiME/J1S-Klipper and will start populating it this coming weekend (07/12/2025).

If you have any thoughts, insights, compliments, hatemail or otherwise feel like verbalizing something to me, feel free to message, comment or contact me through Github.

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2025: The Year in Review
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This has been asked/discussed, I believe.

The closest thing was @Mechanikus converting his unit to a Duet main board. It was a large undertaking. There’s some sensors on the J1 including the runout sensor that don’t use standard interfaces.

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Yes, but it was so worth it if I read through what has been posted here in the meantime - the printer… simply works. And as soon as the Duet team updates their calibration plugin for phase stepping which has recently been implemented into the latest firmware version, I very much hope that stuff does the same wonders for the J1 it does for the Prusa XL :slight_smile:

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I still owe you a write up on the vibration analysis. I started working on it again this month.

It actually helped to take a step back from that for a while. But I’m very interested in tighter stepper control.

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No worries! I have been well over my head been in other work since well over half a year now with almost zero time for my J1, apart from a quick print now and then.

But thanks a lot that you still have it on your list :slight_smile:

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Same, honestly. If I had waited any longer I would have started to forget what all these notes meant.

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Thanks for the info!

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Blockquote Yes, but it was so worth it if I read through what has been posted here in the meantime - the printer… simply works. And as soon as the Duet team updates their calibration plugin for phase stepping which has recently been implemented into the latest firmware version, I very much hope that stuff does the same wonders for the J1 it does for the Prusa XL :slight_smile:

If you have any info or notes that you’d be willing to share with me from when you moved to the Duet board, ie… what sensors maybe were not standard interfaces, other roadblocks you face, etc… it would be greatly appreciated.

Whatever you could pass along, no matter how small would probably be a great help.

If this Innocube3D stuff doesn’t work out, I’ll have to look into the Duet. I just know all my J1S is doing right now is collecting dust, so I want to do something useful with it.

Thanks!

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@InventedTiME the link to the german Drucktippps3D forum @Wombley posted contains the basic data collection and a link to my website where the rework itself is described in greater detail - the latter is also linked here in this forum: Things to do first with a new J1 - #47 by Mechanikus

If you have trouble accessing it, drop me a line including from which country you are. I have a quite restrictive access filter running to keep spammers out.

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Any luck? Im considering this

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I am also interested in getting my snapmaker J1S the help she desperately needs! Currently I am ready to pack her bags and tell her to hit the road, but alase her physical form, really is a thing of beauty to me :slightly_frowning_face:and the potential for her to outshine all other printers still exists in my mind(our relationship is still young). I just need her to run better and be more reliable, so has any gotten klipper installed or upgraded the firmware to do this yet? My fantasy is to open the interwebs and peek in on my girl to find that she is knocking out another perfect multicolor print with no issues, and I can have full access of all her goodies from my keyboard, one extra request more nip… I mean nozzles or whatever you call them. It’s seems to me that a duel extruder head could be configured in place of the 2 heads making is a 4 tool IDEX printer, and you don’t have to stop there …..I would love to see an AMS system feeding 4 colors into each nozzle! Weird Science here I come!!!

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I am actually going to be picking back up on this conversion over the coming weeks. I got really busy at work, got a few new Qidi machines and bought a desktop CNC, so I had my hands full with all that for awhile. I plan on really diving in this weekend, I’ve already cleared my schedule so I can play with the J1S and watch football undisturbed.

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