New Creality Ender 5 pro 3D printer

[Ryan Mooney]

Well, I was more referring to cost of a Lutzbot TAZ or similar, which are in the $2200 US range.

Oh yeah definitely! The value on this is pretty impressive IMHO compared to the higher end stuff. I know folks who have printers that easily added an extra zero to the price and they're not getting any better prints any faster so

To clarify:

Ender 5 Pro $379 == Ender 5 (220*220*300mm) $319 with:

• Upgraded "silent" mobo with better drivers. After reading more I'm concluding that there are even better mobos than the upgraded creality one, but you do pay a bit more for them (say $120+- vs $60+-).
• Capricorn Bowden teflon tubing upgrade plus metal extruding unit. You save a couple bucks by getting this packaged in
• Maybe something else.. but that's the big stuff.

Mostly you're paying for the MOBO upgrade and get the better extruder thrown in. Which is why

Ender 5 Plus $570 = Ender 5 with:

• Larger print area 350X350X400mm (nice)
• BL Touch autoleveling pre-installed (mixed reviews on this, the Creality firmware is apparently a bit behind head but when it works it's pretty cool)
• Dual Z axis lead screws (super nice for bed stability)
• Filament End Sensor (default wired to the printer controller but easy to re-route to a PI or whatever if you're running it that way).
• I think some of the X/Y/Z motors were upgraded a smidge, mostly due to the larger size/weight. Might handle direct drive or other hacks like that better, I'm not sure.
• I might be missing something here also but those are the big ones.

The Plus does not have (Brent correct me where wrong here)

• Upgraded mobo (see above though.. imho if you're tech savvy you might do better dropping another $100 elsewhere).
• Metal Extruder and Bowden tubing - this is a super easy swap in and pretty cheap, so not a big deal.

We looked at what we were planning to print and decided that the Pro fit basically everything and also fit nicely into the space we had allocated for it. I probably could have squeezed in the plus but given our needs the extra didn't seem strictly worth it. I think the dual Z is a pretty big feature in addition to the size though so

So any of the three is still a pretty decent deal from my perspective. You do have to do a bit of leg work but it's not that much really, and it's also kind of a good way to learn the printer some.

I will be replacing the hotend fans with

... (trails off with a stack of printed parts)

 

[Brent Dowell]

• Upgraded mobo (see above though.. imho if you're tech savvy you might do better dropping another $100 elsewhere).
• Metal Extruder and Bowden tubing - this is a super easy swap in and pretty cheap, so not a big deal.

Yeah, I think I've got the 'noisy' board. I've been looking at getting a replacement. Should be an easy swap, but honestly that one hasn't been all that high on my priority list right now.

I already replaced the bowden tube with the capricorn tubing and it made a big difference in my stringing. The capricorn tube is supposed to be slicker and manafactured to a tighter tolerance so there is less room for the filament to flop around in.

I've got the metal extruder, but haven't gotten around to putting it on, again, probably a 10 minute swap.

The other thing I did was to upgrade the hot end with an all metal micro swiss hotend. The advantage there is that it gets the bowden tube away from the hotend, which can degrade and cause clogs at higher temps. It should help with doing PETG as that can require temps getting close to the temperature where the ptfe can break down. On my old printer I had actually seen that issue with a 'cooked' ptfe tube in the throat tube.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

We're running PETG at 245 which.. seems to work.. mostly.. I know it's doing bad stuff to the Bowden but that's fairly cheap so we'll address that when it turns into a problem I guess and maybe get a new hot end then if I'm annoyed enough hah. Plan is mostly to move back to mostly PLA pretty soon for a while anyway so we'll see how that goes.

 

[Darren Wright]

Plan is mostly to move back to mostly PLA pretty soon for a while anyway so we'll see how that goes.

Just be sure to heat up to 250c to 255c and extrude a foot or so of pla through the nozzle to push any left over petg out when going back to pla. I got some clogs early on not doing that, not had any issues since using that technique.