--- title: Putting Some Zig In A Linux-Based 3D Printer | daily.dev description: A hands-on account of cross-compiling a custom BusyBox binary for a Flashforge AD5X 3D printer running a stripped-down MIPS-based Linux. The author uses Zig as... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/putting-some-zig-in-a-linux-based-3d-printer-mhp7sbx1z twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Putting Some Zig In A Linux-Based 3D Printer | daily.dev og:description: A hands-on account of cross-compiling a custom BusyBox binary for a Flashforge AD5X 3D printer running a stripped-down MIPS-based Linux. The author uses Zig as... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/putting-some-zig-in-a-linux-based-3d-printer-mhp7sbx1z og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/mHp7SBx1Z.png og:image:alt: Putting Some Zig In A Linux-Based 3D Printer og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Putting Some Zig In A Linux-Based 3D Printer **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A hands-on account of cross-compiling a custom BusyBox binary for a Flashforge AD5X 3D printer running a stripped-down MIPS-based Linux. The author uses Zig as a drop-in C compiler to target the printer's mipsel-linux-musleabihf architecture with mips32r2 instructions. A key challenge was the printer's nan2008 floating-point ABI, which Zig doesn't natively support for that target — worked around by patching the ELF header byte directly. The result is a working BusyBox build that adds missing utilities like `less` and `more` to the constrained embedded environment. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Compile Here, Run Everywhere: Crosstool-Ng](https://daily.dev/posts/compile-here-run-everywhere-crosstool-ng-rrpfpu4sz) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [lopespm/zig-minimal-kernel-x86: Minimal x86 Kernel](https://daily.dev/posts/lopespm-zig-minimal-kernel-x86-minimal-x86-kernel-khtajhlzp) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#zig](https://daily.dev/tags/zig) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/putting-some-zig-in-a-linux-based-3d-printer-mhp7sbx1z) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Putting Some Zig In A Linux-Based 3D Printer","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/putting-some-zig-in-a-linux-based-3d-printer-mhp7sbx1z","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/putting-some-zig-in-a-linux-based-3d-printer-mhp7sbx1z"},"datePublished":"2026-07-15T14:12:55.198Z","dateModified":"2026-07-15T14:41:33.911Z","description":"A hands-on account of cross-compiling a custom BusyBox binary for a Flashforge AD5X 3D printer running a stripped-down MIPS-based Linux. 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