On the whole, getting the Ender 5 up and working was actually a fairly painless experience. The printer comes with most of the parts prebuilt but there are some minor integrations you need to do to put the pieces together. I spent probably most of the time ensuring that I had things turned around the right way and that all of the wires connected correctly.
One video that I found really helpful is the one below that discusses the setup process as well as common tips to adjust the machine before use. I think this saved my setup a lot of headaches and I think they do a pretty good job showing everything. The filament they recommend was pretty good as well.
Configuration
The first test print worked about 80% until the base of the sculpture moved off of the surface of the printer. This resulted in the printer spending time printing in the air which just produced a tangle of filament.
After reviewing this with TJ and the internet, I was able to resolve this problem by increasing the base temperature for the print bed to 55 degrees and using stick glue on the surface of the printer where the print is going to occur. After around a dozen prints this seems to have worked really well :D
After this, a couple of prints seemed to work well but then I had another issue: the nozzle of the printer seemed to get jammed up and wouldnāt correctly output filament. I searched around quite a bit for what might be the culprit here. Hereās a list of things I did:
- Increased the printing temperature by 10 degrees Celcius
- Tried to take apart the nozzle completely to check but didnāt find a way to get the nozzle off (needs to be hot to come off)
- Was still able to check the Bowden tube to ensure that it was tight against the nozzle so that no buildup of filament was able to occur.
Some combination of these changes appears to have helped quite a bit. And I no longer have issues where printing simply stops occurring.
However, looking at the result, I am still seeing small pimples and deformations on the flat surfaces of objects as shown below:
