After jerry-rigging an old i3 to work with a spare e3 mainboard, I have a lot of very useful information on setting u a marlin printer from scratch. Firstly, you want to make sure all the hardware is configured correctly and wired properly. This is mainboard-dependent, so make sure you reference relevant documentation for your mainboard of choice.

Some relevant reading material:

• Marlin Configuration Docs
• Marlin Troubleshooting Guide

1. Install vscode (ew) and make sure you have the following extensions installed:
   • Patformio
   • Auto Build Marlin
2. Clone the repo then open in vscode
3. Open Auto Build Marlin
4. Navigate to Marlin Firmware Configurations and pick a configuration that is similar/matches your hardware
5. Copy the relevant *.h files to Marlin/ in the repository.
6. Build using auto build marlin.
7. Verify It Builds

The following is a list of steps to take when setting up the configuration for your printer. Generally speaking if you have any calibrated values (i.e. extruder Esteps, hotend/bed PID parameters) you should get the values and then edit the ones in firmware so that your calibrated values are the defaults. There also may be need for post-firmware configuration (such as home offsets and zprobe offsets). The following is a general list of stuff to setup and make sure are present (I would hope the printer you are targeting has most of these features).

At a baseline, identify the following characteristics of the printer and change the configs to match:

• Motion System
• Mainboard make/build
• Number of Extruders
• Motor Driver type
• Probes
• Termistors/Heaters
• LCD or display

Generally speaking, if you are running some commercially-available board, there will be a configuration in the examples on the marlin repository. If you are running a custom mainboard, why are you reading this?.

Configuration Checklist:

1. Motion System:
   • Style (ie corexy or cartiesian?)
   • XYZ Steps/mm (use values derived from datasheets FIRST)
   • E Steps/mm (usually a post-flash calibration value, favor undershooting if you dont know)
   • Sensorless / Endstop Homing (sensorless usually requires setting jumpers on the mainboard)
   • Stepper Driver Type (ie TMC2209)
2. Print Volume / Travel
   • Bed Size
   • Home offsets
   • Min/Max XYZ motion
3. Z-Probe
   • Type (ie inductive, bltouch, etc)
   • Probe is endstop?
   • Probe XY Offset to nozzle (Z is usually configured later, keep it at 0 for now)
   • Z Safe Homing (this is basically a requirement if your Z endstop is also a probe)
   • Temperature Compensation?
   • Offset config wizard?
4. Thermal Performance / PID
   • Max Hotend & Bed Temps?
   • PID control enabled for both Hotend & Bed (i.e. not PID for hotend and bang-bang for bed)
   • Autotune PID menu option (otherwise use gcode)
   • Thermal Runaway tuning? (only really consider this if PID tuning still causes inaccurate thermal runaway and you have CONFIRMED it is not a hardware issue)
5. ABL
   • Bilinear vs UBL
   • min 3×3 grid, 2 probes per pt (2nd slowed, grid ideally is 5×5)
6. Miscellaneous Items
   • SD Card Reader Functionality
   • Printer Stats
   • Input shaping (though you should probably just use klipper for this)

Additionally, these are things you want to put in firmware after calibration:

• Probe z offset
• E steps/mm
• Hotend/Bed Kp, Kd, Ki PID values

This is for OrcaSlicer because I like it and it gives you the most granular settings control for the most general set of printers.