Creality Ender-5 Pro

M76

[H]F Junkie
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Jun 12, 2012
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I've been planning to get a 3D printer for a while, but so far I could find a printer that was affordable or didn't seem junk.

But finally it happened. Got this for $389. It arrived today.

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TeeJayHoward has asked to share my impressions after it is dialed in. But as far as I'm concerned it already is.

I'm a complete noob to 3D printing haven't even seen one in person yet.

It comes half assembled, like IKEA furniture. The packaging is interesting, you think there are parts missing then you realize there are two more layers of foam you need to remove to get to some parts.
So you can't really assemble it from the box, you need to take out everything and lay it out somewhere to begin as the screws and tools are all at the bottom.

Yes they include all the tools needed for assembly, but I didn't use those, I used my power screwdriver.
The "pros" say it can be assembled in 20 minutes, well it took me about 90 with the power tools. I can't imagine anyone fully assembling it in 20, unless they did it a hundred times before.
You have to be careful with cable routing not to get in the way, but also still leaving enough slack for the end positions.
At first the amount of cables seem intimidating but they are all marked with letters and the manual shows clearly which letter is to be connected where.

After assembly it powered on without a hassle. I was expecting a minute long boot and self test procedure, instead the unit is ready in like 1 second.

First task bed leveling. There is an option in the menu to move the bed and the nozzle to the home position, after that there is another option to disable the stepper motors.
So you can freely move the hot end anywhere above the bed. This is how you do the leveling. I used 80g printer paper for it. There are four knobs on the four corners of the bed to adjust height.
it took me about 4 or 5 full iterations going round and round until the tension seemed right on all four corners. But it took no more than 5 minutes.

The menus of the printer are a bit confusing it takes some time until you get used to what option is in which menu.

On my first attempt at printing the filament wouldn't adhere to the bed, so I immediately stopped the print before it even completed half of the first layer.
I adjusted the leveling a bit closer to the nozzle, and increased the default bed temperature from 60 to 65 C° .
Then tried again. And it worked perfectly. The finished print doesn't just looks better than I expected, but even better than I hoped.

This is my first print, as it came out. There is absolutely no touch up done on this.

doghouse1.jpg doghouse2.jpg

This is not the highest quality setting but the normal preset.

Of course the speed is what it is. They tell you that 3D printing is slow, but you really don't realize how slow until you try it. This tiny 4x3x2cm doghouse was done in 70 minutes.

Of course the real test will be printing something bigger, but that'll have to wait for now. I just wanted to try it to see if it even works.
There are all kinds of horror stories and most "experts" claim that 3D printers cannot be treated as a tool but as a hobby as there is a lot of trial and error, because they never work out of the box. Well it did for me.
 
OK, here is my first problem. The creality slicer doesn't seem to work on more complex models with high poly count. It loads the model, but the export button is not active. And nothing seems to be happening.

Tried Ultimaker Cura, but it doesn't have the feature to generate rafts or supports, so it cannot be used for models that needs either.
Also tried Mattercontrol, but it crashes when trying to export gcode. It says it cannot access some file because it is being used by another process. A file clearly generated by mattercontrol itself.

Any ideas?
 
I am not that in depth on the 3d printing, but is it possibly because of the high poly count, and the nozzle diameter selection that it can't export because the math is not divisible by the nozzle diameter? Is this a small model or just a large complex? I have always used Cura...and have never had an issue honestly.

EDIT: Cura does have rafts/support options. It is under the support tab in the print settings:

1594673287703.png
 
I am not that in depth on the 3d printing, but is it possibly because of the high poly count, and the nozzle diameter selection that it can't export because the math is not divisible by the nozzle diameter? Is this a small model or just a large complex? I have always used Cura...and have never had an issue honestly.

EDIT: Cura does have rafts/support options. It is under the support tab in the print settings:

View attachment 261367
Thanks haven't found that menu.
 
After one night of sitting, well actually make that 6 hours of sitting. The filament got stuck in the nozzle, had to manually feed it in again for stuff to come out. It was stuck in there hard really had to push it to force out the gunk. But after that it works fine again.
 
After one night of sitting, well actually make that 6 hours of sitting. The filament got stuck in the nozzle, had to manually feed it in again for stuff to come out. It was stuck in there hard really had to push it to force out the gunk. But after that it works fine again.

Weird. What temp do you have setup for your nozzle when printing?

TIP: When changing filament I manually turn the nozzle on to the operating temp then hand feed the filament forward to push through nozzle, then pull the filament out backwards quickly so that I dont have much filament trapped in the hotend/nozzle. You should end up with a long thinning line of filament.
 
Weird. What temp do you have setup for your nozzle when printing?

TIP: When changing filament I manually turn the nozzle on to the operating temp then hand feed the filament forward to push through nozzle, then pull the filament out backwards quickly so that I dont have much filament trapped in the hotend/nozzle. You should end up with a long thinning line of filament.
The default is 200C° haven't touched it yet.

I was just printing a 10 hour model now and when about 75% done filament stopped coming out. It didn't run out, just stopped. IDK why. By the time I noticed it was too late it was printing nothing in air at least 5mm above. So I had to abort the print. I'm now trying to print the remainder of the model seperately and maybe glue it together, to salvage it. Worth a try.
 
The default is 200C° haven't touched it yet.

I was just printing a 10 hour model now and when about 75% done filament stopped coming out. It didn't run out, just stopped. IDK why. By the time I noticed it was too late it was printing nothing in air at least 5mm above. So I had to abort the print. I'm now trying to print the remainder of the model seperately and maybe glue it together, to salvage it. Worth a try.

Sounds like the hot end and the nozzle are not at the right tolerance. This youtuber is a great source of info, I have linked a section about the clogs:
 
Sounds like the hot end and the nozzle are not at the right tolerance.
I don't know what that means. What tolerance?
When I tried printing again it did the exact same thing at the exact same point, even though I started from 3/4 of the model. So it might be an issue with the model itself. Or the slicer.But I suspect the model as it wasn't optimized for 3D printing.
 
I figured out why prints were failing midway through. The retraction value was too high and when moving the head it retracted the filament so much that when there were multiple retractions close after one another the filament never came out.
After drastically reducing the retraction distance I can print larger models without issue, but now I actually went too low and get a lot of stringing but will figure out the right value.

However I Have another issue. now when printing large models. The higher the model the more uneven the layers become. As the head moves around it has zero damping so the jolts actually slightly oscillate the print itself thus causing the imprecision. I could reduce print speed, but I'm already at 80mm/s and a 24cm figure takes 16 hours, I don't want to go even slower.
 
I figured out why prints were failing midway through. The retraction value was too high and when moving the head it retracted the filament so much that when there were multiple retractions close after one another the filament never came out.
After drastically reducing the retraction distance I can print larger models without issue, but now I actually went too low and get a lot of stringing but will figure out the right value.

However I Have another issue. now when printing large models. The higher the model the more uneven the layers become. As the head moves around it has zero damping so the jolts actually slightly oscillate the print itself thus causing the imprecision. I could reduce print speed, but I'm already at 80mm/s and a 24cm figure takes 16 hours, I don't want to go even slower.

I think a lot of your problems would be solved by getting changing the software you use. I use simplify3d and it's awesome.
 
I think a lot of your problems would be solved by getting changing the software you use. I use simplify3d and it's awesome.
There is no demo available. I don't buy blind, especially this expensive. It would really have to be very awesome to worth that much over the free alternatives. The software almost costs 50% of the price of the printer, that's really not in proportion. For $30 I'd consider it. But for $150 I can't take it seriously.
 
So what slicer are you using?

Do you have pictures of the failed models?

What settings?

What is the exact brand/type of filament?
 
I realized the problem was with the Cura slicer. If I use that the model will always stop printing halfway through. But if I use the Creality Slicer it works as expected.
 
I realized the problem was with the Cura slicer. If I use that the model will always stop printing halfway through. But if I use the Creality Slicer it works as expected.

Are you using the memory card ?
 
Check the temps recommend for the filament vs what you maybe using.

Looks like that is a red aluminum extruder bit so shouldn't be plastic wearing down.
 
Check the temps recommend for the filament vs what you maybe using.

Looks like that is a red aluminum extruder bit so shouldn't be plastic wearing down.
It works using the same temps with the Creality Slicer. Actually that slicer is quite good, I don't really need the Cura anyway.
 
I'm starting to regret buying the pro instead of the plus. Build space is such a limitng factor for projects.
 
I was thinking about getting the Ender 5 Pro for my 12 year old son for Christmas. I would use it too of course, but I think he would use it quite a bit more given his interests.
In your experience do you think this printer is a good candidate?
My previous 3D printer experience is from a Makerbot Replicator 2X and a Dimension Stratasys for work.
 
I been eyeballing the Ender 5 Plus as a next printer. According to the YT videos I been watching for a little while now the reviewers are generally saying Plus is a better printer than the Pro. Its not that the Pro is a bad printer but the Plus is just much better is all. I dont know if this is all true but if the reviewers are generally saying they like the Plus better it does catch my attention.
 
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