SilverTriple's printing stuff...

[silvertriple]

Hello all,

I mentioned few days ago I would create this thread in one of my numerous thread where I actually speak about 3D modeling and 3D Prints in middle of vintage cars...

I currently have an Ender 5 Plus, which is stock beside the full metal extruder, the capricorn ptfe, the fan shroud (printed in PLA at this stage), and the silent board. I have this printer since May 2021. And within two years, I spent more time fixing it than printing with it. It was quite frustrating until I found out that wire connectors were not sold on the said wires, and sometimes loose... And this explains easily why the behavior was quite impredictible. That solved, I still have time to times frustrating issues, but overall it works... With the limitation of a bowden tube printer, but it would require many mods to do what I'd like to do at home...

I prepared my wife to the fact I would change or add a printer at home for the last year... And planned for a lot of bucks. What I had in mind in terms of requirements for the second printer :
- closed printer
- ability to print a lot more materials than what I can print currently
- Idex or multimaterial. I toyed with the Prusa XL dual head idea (and set the budget based on that in my mind), but it appears to be a vaporware (as after more than a year it is still unreleased). I could wait, but I was set to decide by early march this year.
- bed size : I intend to get some upgrade for the Ender 5 plus still, so it could be smaller...

Based on the budget I set in my mind, if I get to lower cost, I could eventually think about a resin printer for other uses cases than FDM (Flex, transparent resin, dimensionnal validation of very small part)... Therefore I'm thinking about changing my approach... And I'll talk more about this in the next few weeks, which is the reason to share about this, because I think it could be interesting for many of us...

[GoMachV]

One thing to consider, as I have learned from my own personal experience- dont buy a printer and expect it to do everything the best. My best, cleanest prints are made on my smallest cheapest printers, a pair of Kingroon KP3S’s. With a 180x180 shaker bed, a good portion of my designs won’t fit on them. Because of their size they were very easy to enclose. I use them for my nylon and ASA prints. My ender 5 and 5 plus are awesome (after replacing/upgrading everything on them lol) but pretty large for enclosed prints so I use them for pla and PetG. My Pulse is enclosed as well and has a bed size similar to the ender 5, but being a bed shaker and also a Prusa style machine it is rarely used. This was also my most expensive printer and my least favorite. My next printer will be a Bamboo Labs. They are quite expensive but I am really tired of replacing everything on my machines to get a good print. The Creality machines are a decent frame but that’s about it.

If you decide to do upgrades on the ender 5, I am happy to provide all my info and designs. The latest upgrade I did was the mks pwc to switch the machine off automatically when the print finishes. My ender has a push button start like a car

[silvertriple]

Well... Thanks for the feedback ! After a first bumpy experience, I think I've learned to mitigate my expectations... I'm for sure going to upgrade my Ender 5 plus: the big bed will be usefull in some cases where whatever I choose next is not going to help that much... My brother is a Creality Ender 3 user, and he is using it with satisfaction, but like you, he almost changed everything on it, except the frame... I'm clear about this.

I had the Ender 5 plus upgrade in mind for quite a long time now... But the only reason I did not start the project is that if I do start it, I have nothing else to print with. I really need a second printer for this to be a possible project.

I've spent the last few evenings to search about IDEX and multimaterial solutions and what I can expect from both solutions : there is prints where I definitely need supports. Until very recently, I thought IDEX was the only way to do this... But actually, a single head and a multi material solution can work as long as the materials are in the same temperature ranges... And some materials can act as support for others as they don't stick too much together due to different plastic properties (for example PETG can be used as support material for PLA and vice versa). That is changing the game for me and make me rethink the potential list of candidates very differently...

[GoMachV]

That would be a cool setup for home printing.

I have looked at the enraged rabbit carrot feeder (great name lol) and I think if I didn’t have a job it would be a fun project to consume all 25 of my hours each day

[silvertriple]

Well, I had a look as well in the past... So far, beside the IDEX solution, if you want to print multimaterial, there was :
- Prusa MMU solution. It requires a a Prusa printer, so it is out of question for me currently. And additionally it works more or less as per all the feedback I saw.
- Mosaic Palette : the unit take controls of the printer, and insert filaments they slices together at what is expected at the right place. It apparently works well, however there is one limitation : due to the nature of the slicing process you have to work with material of the same nature. I don't think this would work by mixing PLA and PETG (because adhesion is not very good, making PETG a good breakaway support material for PLA) or other materials... Plus it is limited in temperature it can work with...
- the one you quote : the name by itself suggest it needs a lot of TLC to work

Saying this, my take until recently was : IDEX is absolutely needed for mutimaterial.

But during last year, Bambu Lab landed in the market with their AMS solution. All the reviews I saw and read, and exchange with or between users makes me think this is a great product. And their X1Carbon printer is very very interesting. Over the last few weeks, I did a lot of research, and also compared with my use cases, to see if it was absolutely required for me to work with solvable material and IDEX (solvable material with high difference temperature with the printed material is among the case where the BambuLab solution would not work), and I fail to see case where I absolutely need this among all the thing I did or intend to do. There is one exception however : TPU prints (aka Big Bear tire example) where solvable support could help, in addition to AMS solution from BambuLab marked as not working with flexible filament. But frankly, I have so many doubts on the TPU filament at this stage I'm not sure it is worth trying, so I put the case on the side...

What left is that I put the IDEX idea on the side, and Bambu Lab X1 Carbon/AMS combo looks to be the right solution for my current needs (and it is a very fast printer which will come handy as well).

And since it is way lower than the budget I had in mind, it opened another worm box in my mind: SLA resin printer. The use cases I can foresee at this stage:
- transparent resin for very specific parts with no mechanical involvement
- flexible materials (tires enter in this field)
- injection moulds (I still have this in mind and I'm willing to try, and I feel FDM is not precise enough)
- other dimensionnal validation for very small parts
- further use cases belonguing to my son and my daughter I would not quote here as not at all related to rc...
I identified some target resins few months ago, and I' definitely want to try printing tires and running them to see the result. If this works, I will have a solution to share with everyone...

In terms of resin printer, I will go with a low cost 4K printer as there is fewer problems for those than for FDM printers as there is less parts moving. I'm probably jumping on an Anycubic Photon M3 4K(7+ inches screen).

At this stage, I've not ordered anything yet. I need to do some space in one of the room where I will set my fablab. The Ender 5 plus which is currently in my desk will also move there. I will have to order some furnitures as well. I'm probably not going to model anything within the next few weeks as I need to set the place right for being able to work my hobby space right. I still have some interogations about the resin printer about how much it is disturbing when running, and I'm also searching information of active carbon filtration for this reason... Anycase, this promise to be very interesting within the next few weeks..

[Dadio]

I was recently looking at new printers for a friend and the new Ender 5 S1 seemed interesting , direct drive, all metal hot end , filament run out sensor , 32 BIT board and bed leveling sensor all standard , if they do a Plus I might be very tempted as it ticks a lot of boxes .
Resin printers ..... I have one but I very rarely use it for anything RC related , great for detailed ornamental stuff but I have to say after the initial novelty wore off I rarely used it any more . The other thing is the printer is just part of the ecosystem , you need to think about post print clean up and curing and the stuff for that takes as much space or more than the printer itself , not sure if knowing what I do now I'd have ever got one and I have no plans of getting another ever where as I could easily think of another FDM printer .

[morrisey0]

Every six months or so I get to thinking about getting into resin printing, then after about 30 minutes of e-learning about all the PITA aspects of it, I just stick with FDM. The toxins, the fumes, the enclosure, the heating, the cleaning, the curing, etc etc. Just too much for me. If I could dedicate an area in my garage / workshop, and if that space was environmentally controlled, maybe, but 90% of my RC'ing is done in the house, and I just don't think resin printing works well there.

[Dadio]

Every six months or so I get to thinking about getting into resin printing, then after about 30 minutes of e-learning about all the PITA aspects of it, I just stick with FDM. The toxins, the fumes, the enclosure, the heating, the cleaning, the curing, etc etc. Just too much for me. If I could dedicate an area in my garage / workshop, and if that space was environmentally controlled, maybe, but 90% of my RC'ing is done in the house, and I just don't think resin printing works well there.

yup , not nice inside but it has to be warm for good results ....

[silvertriple]

I hear what you say about the post processing being cumbersome and use limited in RC... And I'm curious and still willing to try, even with what I learned about post processing, because I have some specific use cases to tackle..
And for the new printers, if you have not, have a check at the Bambulab P1P and X1C including or not AMS solution...

[silvertriple]

Morning activity :
Shuffle things from the zone my wife already nicknamed "Home fablab". It remains a trademill that was usefull in the past (and very useful during the lockdowns when it rained): no one is using it anymore at home... Need to find a solution to get this out of the home ASAP.

Also started to think about how I will organize the area with cabinets and a desk to put the printers.

The Ender 5 plus is going for some upgrades... At this stage, the only things I did was :

• silent board

• cparicorn tubing

• full metal extruder

Due to the place it is installed (under the side of my desk), there was no room to set it as direct drive. This will be a first quick modification I'll do, before thinking about next ones. I've been in the past considering changing the motherboard, the power unit, and get a light Biqu H2 direct drive extruder/hotend. It is small, able to do reach the temperature I target and would not require much change in the printer structure (except hot end assembly fixation, and rethink the cooling elements). @GoMachV , it would be great if you can share pictures of your Ender 5 plus setup as it may be interesting for me to see how you got the thing organized on your side...

[GoMachV]

My ender 5 plus never printed very well out of the box. I fought so many things, from the loud grinding linear bearings to the constantly clogging hot end. After replacing the linear bearings with some quality units from xyltech and the hot end with a stock replacement I was able to get decent prints. My first mod was to get rid of the touchscreen and stock board and add a BLTouch. This allowed for easier tuning during first layer and unlocked the ability for me to write my own firmware around my usage. For example, trimming the Z axis. I run a tram on that every single print. Only takes a couple minutes and it aligns both Z motors automatically. I was still limited in the hot end so I went to a e3d v6 hot end and ruby nozzle. You can buy a cheap ruby nozzle and they work fine, but do not cheap out on the v6. I have a stack of clones that are absolute rubbish. You will fight them thinking there is no way such a simple part can cause grief. They do. I was still using the Bowden tube at that time but I did upgrade to a bondtech bmg extruder. This was a decent setup and lasted me a long while. After upgrading a couple of my other machines to the orbiter v2.0 I added one to my ender 5 plus and now it has gone from my least favorite machine only used for large prints to my go-to for just about anything. I tried using the hero me gen7 setup but didn’t like the way he built the clamp for the v6, so I made my own version. I then added the mks pwc module which lets the machine power off when finished. I put these on all my machines now, I really like them. I just recently added the smart filament runout which is really cool. It detects snags which occur more for me than runouts and will park the nozzle until you tend to it. When the nozzle clogs it will also park the head and wait.

I have all the cad files for the gen7 with all the different direct drive mounts and hot end mounts. Just lmk and I’ll get them to you. I would be happy to provide my marlin documentation as well, I keep a list of the lines that I change and what it does. Might help as a reference even if you are using different items on your build.

So here is a list of my current configuration on my ender 5 plus

SKR v1.3 board
Mks mini12864 lcd
Mks pwc auto power off module
Tmc2209 drivers
Orbiter 2.0 extruder
E3d v6 hot end
Amazon $30 ruby nozzle
BTT smart filament sensor
Hero me gen7 hot end mount and ducts
Led light strip on the front frame
Custom drag chain mounts

[silvertriple]

You really have changed a lot of things, it looks like... It's a long process of thinking I'm just starting now. I'll report about my progress here. I'm not even there yet : I'll order and start the new printer first, so I have something to work with while getting the Ender 5 plus in parts...

By the way, I'm surprised you added the BL Touch, as as far as I remember it was included on the Ender 5 plus from the start (and sometimes not really working well due to the loose cable harness connectors out of the box)... I forgot one single modification I did, which is to insert a PLA printed part behind the run out sensor so it works (cheap microswicth with a bendable part). I celarly envision a lot of work until I get there...

[GoMachV]

You know… I think you are right about the bl touch. I was thinking I had added it but that would have probably been on my regular ender 5.

If I had it to do over I wouldn’t have bought the 5+. Until I made all these changes it really wasn’t a great printer and now I have so much invested- its just not worth it. But I did it over time and that made it easy.

The bamboo labs machines are the way of the future imo. Especially the carbon, that would fit all my needs. I also could see myself building a voron just because it would use up a lot of spare parts I have and would not be terribly expensive.

[GoMachV]

I will also add this- if you want an incredibly cheap machine that makes stunningly good prints out of the box- the Kingroon KP3S (and the original KP3, as well as the newest KP3S Pro) are great and very affordable. They are only 180x180x180 so quite compact and portable. If you wait, you can find them for around $140, and they come with a titan style extruder, v5 style hot end (not the best, but quite ok) and a linear rail X and Y axis. I modified mine with a ruby nozzle, genuine v6, genuine titan, and designed my own gantry to add linear rails on the Z axis. None of those were required. I use these enclosed and print nylon and ASA with great results.

[silvertriple]

I will also add this- if you want an incredibly cheap machine that makes stunningly good prints out of the box- the Kingroon KP3S (and the original KP3, as well as the newest KP3S Pro) are great and very affordable. They are only 180x180x180 so quite compact and portable. If you wait, you can find them for around $140, and they come with a titan style extruder, v5 style hot end (not the best, but quite ok) and a linear rail X and Y axis. I modified mine with a ruby nozzle, genuine v6, genuine titan, and designed my own gantry to add linear rails on the Z axis. None of those were required. I use these enclosed and print nylon and ASA with great results.

I take note of this, not for me, but for my son... He asked me about a small 3D printer to learn and to do some stuff, this may be the perfect spot in terms of price for this purpose...