Below you will find a giant list of everything I have ever done with and to my Ender 5 Pro, and order I did it.
There will be links to other parts of the website where you will find more details on the calibration and mods.
Where useful, an image of the matching CAD model with mods and changes highlighted will accompany any photos
(original CAD from barnabyQ on GRABCAD).
| Thing |
Notes |
Link(s) |
| Build and calibration |
- Lots of content available online for this so head over to TeachingTech's calibration page to find out more
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| Manal bed levelling |
- The first step after building and the only thing you need to do before your first print
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| Broken hotend |
- The first issue I faced right after my first test print, a heating error on the lcd screen
- Warning: be careful, there's 240V in the electronics box when the printer is turned on
- Broke out the multimeter and found out that the hotend thermister had an acceptable resistance of ~72 kΩ, so that wasn't the culprit
- The board was also sending 24V to the heating element, but it didn't get hot, so that was clearly the issue
- I ordered a generic Creality-type hotend from Amazon for £15, one day and four solder joints later and we're back up and running
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| Overall test print |
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| Creality glass bed |
- Didn't have any adhesion issues with the magnetic bed, but the glass bed was definitely flatter with no noticable warping. Attached with picture-frame clips instead of the classic bulldog clips as they're a much lower profile and take up less space on the bed.
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| E-steps calibration |
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| Retraction settings |
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| Iterative test print |
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| Hotend clogging |
- Hotend is clogging during the retraction test with any values (tested from 4mm upwards)
- Changed to a new Capricorn tube and fittings with no improvement
- Likely cause is repeated retractions with very little continuous extrusion in between to clean out any melted filament
- Seems like the only real way to fix this is to reduce extrusion distance, but I can't do that without introducing overwhelming stringing
- To reduce retraction I either need (hopefully) a shorter bowded tube, or direct drive. Let's start with the minimally invasive shorter bowden tube
- Need to move the extruder for this, but there's a few things I want to do first. Luckily all the next set of mods won't require many retractions with combing turned on so I'll crack on with those and get to the extruder mount soon
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| Bed supports |
- The absolutely necessary first print/upgrade/mod for the Ender 5 as the cantiliver design, whilst great in almost every way, does flex
- I went with the 'compressive super strut remix' as it seems like the simplest and strongest one out there
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| Tool holder |
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| Filament dry box |
- A necessary addition to keep your filament dry during use.
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| Bed strain relief |
- Personally I don't think this is entirely necessary, especially with the bed supports/super struts, but everyone seems to class it as necessary so...
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Lead-screw stabiliser |
- So the main reason people do this is to remove 'wobble' in the bed (that manifests as z-banding) due to a non-straight leadscrew
- I was thinking however, that when you see wobble in the top of the leadscrew, it's because the bed is tracking straight because of the linear glides
- If then you constrain the top of the leadscrew, any wobble present would act aginst the linear glides and try to move the bed
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| Overall test prints |
- Checking for consistency, especially in the z-direction now the bed is supported and stiffened
- 3D Benchy
- Calibration cube
Micro all-in-one test - waiting until I can fix the retraction issue before tackling this print
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| Corner stabilisers |
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| Front bar relocation |
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| Electronics rear mount |
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| Extruder top mount |
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| Retraction settings |
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| Overall test prints |
- Checking for consistency, especially with all the changes
- 3D Benchy
- Calibration cube
- Micro all-in-one test - can finally do the ultimate stress test and see what else can be improved upon
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| Lead screw and anti-backlash nut |
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| Creality (4.2.7) 32-bit silent board |
- After changing the leadscrew I went to change the z-steps from 800 to 1600, but turning the control knob changed it by 0.01
- Clearly this would have taken hours to turn it all the way to 1600, so I decided to do it through the firmware
- However, my Ender 5 Pro shipped with a 1.1.5 8-bit board, and I don't have an arduino on hand to flash a bootloaded (well I do, but it seems like a lot like hard work)
- I had already purchased the 4.2.7 silent board so it made sense to install it (easy drop-in replacement) and configure and flash the latest version of Marlin
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| Overall test prints |
- Theoretically layers should be even more consistent with the finer leadscrew
- Calibration cube
- Batman bust
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| PSU Upgrade and mounts |
- Silence baby silence!
- Check out more detail on the mods page, but I basically replace the stock PSU with a 600W passively cooled unit.
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| Bigtreetech GTR |
- Future upgrades include triple z-axes which will require more steppers, so I took the opportunity now to add and configure a Bigtreetech GTR to replace the stock silent board.
- I designed an adapter to allow it to fit in the stock electronics enclosure, and after (quite a lot) of troubleshooting, got everything working perfectly.
- I chose to configure the TMC 2009 drivers in UART, without sensorless homing
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| Bigtreetech TFT Screen |
- A common upgrade along with a BTT board, allowing for both classic Marlin and touch-screen modes. I tend to stick to the stock Marlin mode, as it's easier to configure
and use (at least for me) but touch screen is appealing to many.
- Super easy to install and update the firmware, any youtube guide will get you up and running in no time
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| PID Auto Tune |
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| Test prints |
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| BL-Touch |
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| Test prints |
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| Electronics mounting overhaul |
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| Marlin Update |
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Hotend |
- So I'm tempted not to do this as I only really plan on printing with eSun PLA+ because it is brilliant
- However, I will probably need PETG for ABS or some carbon-fibre nylon nonsense for strength at some point
- I'm still tempted to leave the Ender 5 hotend as stock and buy/build another printer purely for high temp filaments...
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Hot-end fan duct |
- I can print almost perfect overhangs up to 75 degrees facing forwards, backwards and left. I really don't need much more than that.
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| Triple z-axis |
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| Test prints |
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| Linear Advance |
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| Test prints |
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| Direct-drive + all-metal hotend |
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| Limit testing |
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| PETG |
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| TPU |
- I needed to print some soft-jaws for my whetstone sink bridge and TPU seemed to be the best material for this
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| Polycarbonate |
- Since I plan to enclose the printer all of the printed parts needed to be more heat resistance that PETG. The Prusament PC Blend as stiff as PLA, as strong as PETG and more temperature resistant and easier to print that ABS so was my choice.
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| Re-design triple z-axis |
- My first design can mostly from the Jubilee 3D printer, and it (mostly) works great. The only problem is that to get it work flawlessly I would have to spend quite a bit on good quality leadscrews. I have decided to therefore move to a belted z-axis.
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| VzBot Core-xy |
- The VzBot is argualby the best implementation of a core-xy motion system on a 3D printer
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| Klipper |
- Required for your printer to really reach its maximum potential, and in my opinion Mainsail looks better than Octoprint.
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| Filtered Enclosure |
- So I can print large parts out of the polycarbonate and finally print some ABS.
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