REVIEW - Ender 5 Plus (Creality) - Large Format FDM Printing on a Budget

it's time for the ender 5 plus review let's go so i've now had this printer for a couple of months and i've been putting it through its paces both with tests and also just regular printing actually i've got two of these so i feel now i've had enough time to properly decide whether or not i would recommend this machine and discuss the pros and cons so you know whether it's the sort of machine you would want to buy let's get the negativity out the way and start with the cons of this printer firstly it's sizing it's a very big unit and i know obviously to have a big build volume you need a big unit but it's bigger than it could be the size of this printer is 632 by 666 by 619 millimeters that's off the creality website and the build volume you get out of it is quoted 350 by 350 by 400 millimeters the actual build volume is slightly different but i'll discuss that later and that's a space efficiency of about 19 so you get 19 build volume out of the maximum outside space which isn't horrific but you could do a lot better now why i found that somewhat of a problem is because it needs a big space to put it and because of the way the printer is designed and the access to different features it makes it quite difficult to use if you put it up against a wall so if this was a wall here and you had to only access this from the front it would be quite tricky to use i have found anyway and that's how i have one of mine set up this one i leave on an open surface but that's a bit of a pain so if you're easily annoyed by things then that might bother you but it is perfectly usable as it is so there we go one of the main reasons for the inefficiency of the space is this massive chunk at the back which is sort of the designated spool holder space but the spool holder design isn't very good it's sort of stuck in the back here and only allows you to fit a one kilo spool obviously if you're doing large prints you're probably going to want to be using two kilos balls and the standard sort of 2.3 2.2 kilo size doesn't fit here spools are getting more efficient in their sizing so it will fit some two kilo spools but a lot of them it won't which is annoying a few of the parts of this printer particularly where the belts are concerned are designed in a way that encourages but certainly doesn't do anything to protect part wear you've got elements where the belts themselves rub onto the metal like here and after prolonged use you end up with dust falling at the bottom of your printer [Music] the original stock extruder drive gear is all plastic and that is just going to wear down with continual filament rubbing through it and you know you could probably see maybe 1000 hours use of it before it is completely worn through and the reason this sort of thing annoys me is because it would take such a small change to counteract it for example with this element here if this was raised just by a couple of millimeters then this belt wouldn't rub on the metal and you'd have much more longevity if you know me you know i love my eco-friendly things and reliability and long-term use is a massive feature if something like this just breaks unnecessarily after a short time of use then it's just irritating isn't it and it's it's an unnecessary problem that could easily be avoided credit where credit's due though the printer does move quite nicely once you've got your eccentric nuts set correctly you get some pretty smooth movements [Music] as you can see here smooth movement results in smooth prints so thumbs up there but we're still on cons setting the eccentric nuts on this machine is quite an important step it is on any machine but this i found quite sensitive to how they are tightened and was getting a few skipping steps to begin with where it was either too loose or too tight another problem i've noticed quite frequently is the reliability of the bl touch sensor i know a lot of people love bl touch sensors but personally i find them really really annoying i've always been someone that prefers and is happy to manually level a bed anyway so i find them a bit slow and a bit unreliable and because of the bltouch's unreliability and the fact that sometimes it just might not work and leave your print starting way off the build plate you have to watch this printer when it starts and again you know this is this is a cheap printer so you can't complain too much but normally with a printer that doesn't have a bl touch i can get it to the point where i get so confident with it that you could almost just leave it walk away and know that prince gonna have started okay in the same breath though even the standard end stops are a bit temperamental and i've noticed that sometimes you'll the printer will move along and trigger before it's even touched the end stop when it's setting that home position on the hole though it's okay on the subject of end stops as well the x-axis is actually set up wrong so there's 16 millimeters of lost spacing it triggers here and across to here and that distance is 344 millimeters whereas the bed and the firmware would have allowed 360. they only quote 350 so you've technically only lost six millimeters from what is being advertised but it's a little bit annoying particularly because you're always 16 millimeters off the final con i want to talk about is the stock extruder drive gear that comes with this printer it's one that creality have had on their machines for ages and it really is crap it's plastic it's single drive gear and it's just rubbish when you're printing with a big printer like this you don't want to have to print a painfully slow speeds uh because your extruder drive gear can't keep up with the flow rate so if you are gonna buy this printer then definitely change it i purchased one of these bond tech style dual extruded drive gears for 15 pounds again off amazon and fitted it in about half an hour but even if you out allowed an hour it's just an absolute game changer and makes this printer a really powerful workhorse without it it's not great with it for 15 pounds it's just brilliant so that would be a change i massively recommended and if you'd like to see a video on how you can do that then let me know anyway that's the cons out the way and i'm quite nitpicky so that's not too bad a list in fairness now we move on to the pros and what i actually liked about this machine firstly the price it is for its size an incredibly cheap printer i bought this one at 480 pounds off amazon which is as most people will know not the cheapest place you could buy a printer i always prefer to buy off amazon because if you do get stuck with a bad one which can happen then i would rather have that security for the extra 50 pounds or whatever it is to know that i can send it back and it not be a problem secondly the movement system of this printer is really good it's a h-bot design so you have the x-axis moving across this way and then two belts down either side that control together the control collectively the x and y movement and that works really nice to reduce some of the weight it's not the lightest this system could be as you've got quite a heavy 30 by 30 extrusion along the middle and quite a heavy head unit but it is bowden so it is fairly light and in fairness the prints i've been getting off this machine i'll show you a few in a minute have been quite good the most important benefit of this movement system is the vertically moving bed the bed moves up and down that means unlike the traditional i3 printer where the bed moves backwards and forwards like this you're not getting artifacts introduced by bed movement which is the heaviest part of the printer and the thing that should be as stationary as possible so that works really well and was actually the main reason i bought this printer despite the less than perfect space efficiency of this printer the build volume you get on it is actually really good the effective build volume what you actually get is 344 millimeters in the x-axis 360 millimeters in the y-axis and about 400 in the z-axis so you are getting technically a little bit more than you're quoted which is always a plus the the glass build plate itself is 370 by 375 millimeters so there's a nice bit of room around the outside and even at your max printing ability you're not at the edge of the build plate which is again quite nice for actually getting reliable prints at your mac size i know i'm moaned about the bl touch but the other thing i really like about this printer is its firmware's ability to finely set the z-axis and that when the bl touch works makes for really good repeatability you can lower in 0.1 millimeter increments the distance between the nozzle and the bed which also helps when you're changing your nozzle because you will between nozzles have slightly different z heights and that allows you to just finely tune in exactly where you want the printer to home which is a feature i really like okay so that's the pros and cons before i give my final verdict i'll show you a few example prints we've got this one here which is just completed [Music] nice sturdy big prints this is a case completed in 22 hours with a one millimeter nozzle and as you can see obviously it's been set up quite well but it's a really nice print and the artifacts ghosting are minimal which is great other examples we've got vase mode prints which again i think have come out really nicely and show the benefits of that movements in system this printer has last but not least this little julius caesar bust printed in 3d tomorrow pla age granite cotswold limestone so i don't know if you can tell but i would recommend this printer well actually there is a caveat to that i would recommend this printer if you're prepared to upgrade the extruder drive gear without the extruder drive gear upgraded it's a little bit crap but for 15 pounds a little bit of your time it is then a phenomenal phenomenal printer and one that i wish i bought sooner and in fact i probably will buy more of them i've been really impressed with it it's on the whole very reliable produces great quality prints and is probably in my opinion one of the best printers you could get under 500 pounds if you're willing to do the little upgrade which still brings it in at 495 my purchase price anyway you could get it cheaper so yeah i would recommend this printer what do you think of the printer have you got one would you buy one are you going to buy one let me know and if you do get one then also let me know what you print with it i'm always interested to hear what you guys think about printers that i've reviewed as well anyway that's it for me as always if you enjoyed the video do give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe i finally hit a thousand subscribers which is great thank you very much for that uh it's been a long road but uh i will be continuing to post more content in the future as some of you may know i do run 3d tomorrow filament which is uk filament manufacturer and we are currently ramping up production so you might see a bit more of us out and about on social media if you're in the uk and would like to try the filament i'd love to hear from you uh we're not a big company so all support is massively appreciated here's a role here as you can see we're 100 cardboard spool it's made from recycled material the cardboard spool and all of our main pla colors are round matched which means that if you're selling as a print service which is something i've got to mention on this printer actually it's already paid for itself you know a couple of times over so it is it is a printer that if you're looking to print as a print service i think is is a good buy but yeah back to the filament it's great stuff and uh if you want to try it drop me drop my line and uh i'd love to hear from you anyway so that's that but uh also coming up other than filament we've got the zortrax inventure review which is another great little printer and uh i will give my full pros and cons list on that soon also going to be doing some tutorials i'm just trying to start doing a few more time lapses and all the usual stuff really so yeah see you next time

Channel: Callum Coles

Views: 1,569

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Id: Y9EuMZ0BFYE

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021