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New Printer - Ender 5 plus

Brent Dowell

Brent Dowell

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Creality Ender 5 Plus

After seeing Ryan's build, well, I've been wanting a bigger printer for a while. That project I did for Vaughn pushed my printer to the absolute limit of size.
Also I really liked the design where the bed goes up and down instead of back and forth.
So this has a 350x350 build bed instead of the 220x220.
Might get some time later this week to work on it.

ender5plus.jpg
 
Seems like you got up and running pretty darn fast to me.

I'm probably going to go a bit slower as I'll be adding a few upgrades as I go:
1) All Metal Hotend
2) Capricorn Bowden tubing
3) Will probably do cable chains for cable management
4) Adding a Raspberry pi with Octoprint right from the get go.
5) Not sure what else, but that will be a start.
 
We have the Capricorn Bowden as stock on the pro.

The all metal print head, I think maybe later the stock is working to play around with anyway.

Looks like we have octopi working pretty well on a stock Linux machine so not having a collection on Pi's sitting around :rolleyes: we'll just use that for now. If we start adding things that need gpio hanging a pi zero off it as a passthrough device for the Linux machine looks real easy (note however that both people in my house have pushing 25-30 years of Linux admin experience each do easy is relative).

We just got in some PTFE for printing some sturdier bed supports. That plus better strain relief, abrasion protection and cable management are on our short list.
 
So, you'd go printer -> pi -> linux box? Seems a little redundant. You guys really need to get a pi and play with it. It's just a very, very small linux box.
or am I misunderstanding?
 
No for just printer control it's printer directly into the Linux box via usb. The pi would be just a dumb pass through if we need more complex gpio like enclosure sensors or control. No os on the pi at all in that case just running it as a USB slave.

The thing is we already do (or in not my case.. did) a lot of Linux sysadmin daily, so capable.. yes... desirous of having yet more computers to actually manage.. not so much. Also this puts a ton of processing power (in relative terms) at the head end which might be interesting for some things (yeah I know not needed yet still..). If power actually cost us anything I might make different choices.
 
Ok, That would be one way to do it, but it just seems a bit redundant to me.

I guess as I see it the main advantage of using a pi with octoprint running on it is that it completely removes the need of having a computer attached to the printer to do anything. The pi (ok, it is a computer) with the octoprint web interface lets you control and monitor the print jobs through a web page.

Just upload the gcode file to the pi and click print and thats it. So I can sit at my desk and keep an eye on the print jobs that are running in the garage remotely and I don't need to be connected.

If I had a computer connected directly to the printer, I wouldn't even use octoprint, I'd just use the machine control panel in my slicing software to run the job.
 
Well octopi gives us the the advantage of sitting in the living room with a laptop and shoving the print job over to the printer :) We already have a computer in the room with it.. so adding another one (pi) didn't seem to add a lot of value. And yes we can also run a slicer on that computer as well so that's a nice option. We're not actually planning to add the pi until I get "around' to building an enclosure :rolleyes: (soon I'm sure)
 
Potato, potataaa, can run it on both. Which ever, but octopi adds a lot of good value. I do have pcs in the area, but have stuck with using a pi on each as I want them to be portable. The pi is attached and can be connected to as an access point or connected to an AP to be used where ever i carry the printer to consistently.
 
I like the form factor as well. For the ender, I'm going to print up a little holder for the pi that will just mount directly to the frame of the printer. Bada Bing, Bada Boom. All done.

I think Octoprint also has a cura slicer plugin you can use to just directly upload stl files, but I'm not sure how well that would work. Most things I print require a bit of futzing around in the slicer. I.e. fill percents, supports, rotations, layer heights.
 
Had to go open up the box and look and wow, I'm impressed with the packaging.

And most of the parts are already put together in major assemblies.

If I wasn't sick and it wasn't cold as heck in the garage, I'd probably go put it together. Instead I'm just going to read through the assembly instructions.

ender5plus packaging.jpg
 
Unless the instructions you got are more complete than the ones we did it's basically just a bunch of pictures.

Ours had 2 extra screw holes and screws for the bed so we used them even though the instructions only showed 4. Assumed that was a print mistake. There were a couple decent videos but they aren't really needed imho. I'd be surprised if assembly took you more than 20-30 minutes tops.

Check the voltage!

Side supports have the extra screw hole on the top.

The rest is pretty much obvious looking at it.
 
Well, Couldn't take it anymore so spent 15 minutes doing the mechanical assembly. Really impressed with this so far.

ender5plus assembled.jpg
 
Oooh two Z steppers sweet.. That's a bit beefier than the smaller 5.

I'm also wondering what power supply yours actually has. The 5's were originally sold with a MeanWell but the one we bought came with a Landry which appears to be generally considered a step down.
 
Brent Dowell said:
...Instead I'm just going to read through the assembly instructions.
Click to expand...

df7b2c073f171b5100ed175b57b6c0d3c991cd55e46517bfac3dbd11ebc6f518.jpg
 
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