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JoiWiki » Maker » 3D Printing » Ender 5 » Ender 5 Upgrades Ender 5 Upgrades

Ender 5 Upgrades

I've got a lot of plans for the Ender 5, in total it will end up being quite an expensive machine but a lot of fun in the process, here are a few of the ideas that I've currently got in mind for it:

Contents:   

 



Printables



 

 

These should actually improve the quality of print that can be expected.

Aluminium Hotend
This one is a bit of a no-brainer as far as how it improves print quality. At around £65 it's one that will cost more than a lot of the others but try something like the micro swiss all metal hotend.

 

TL Smoothers
TL Smoothers are essentially boards with a few diodes on to 'smooth' out the signal being produced and are widely accepted to correct the "salmon skin" issue that is associated with the Ender 5 (although not all suffer) and they're very cheap at about a tenner for 4. I already have some from triangle lab, upgrading the board and stepper motor drivers will make this redundant though... worth it?. £12 Amazon link.

 

BL Touch
The BL Touch is a physical probe that enables the printer to create a "mesh", a map of the topology of the heat bed which gives the printer the ability to compensate for an uneven bed and helps provide and even first layer.  and here's a tutorial on how to install it.

 

Board Upgrade
This will increase the size of the board allowing for more marlin goodness, obviously this will necessitate a firmware upgrade.

MKS Gen-L V1.0 Integrated Mainboard MKS Gen L Amazon LinkYT Instructional

 

Stepper motor drivers:
Stepper motor drivers are necesarry for an upgraded board where the oem board has them soldered on. When installing there will be a bit of math needed to figure out the target voltage output for each but that's not tough. There are a few options, here's a quick youtube instructional and breakdown:

  • A4988
    • Same volume as oem
    • These are the standard stepper motor drivers that are directly installed on the standard Ender 5 board. no real changes needed to accommodate them.
  • TMC2100 - £25
    • Almost Silent
    • These are interesting beasts with 3 modes to them, probably not the ones that I'd buy but interesting nonetheless
      • Modes
        • Direct A4988 mirror
        • something else
        • crazy UART which feeds information back to the board for bed levelling
  • TMC2130 - £28
    • Very slightly louder than 2100's
    • Good, pretty simplistic, doesn't offer the same intelligence as the 2100's, not for me.
  • TMC2208 - £26
    • Almost Silent
    • A lot more of the functionality presented in the 2100's without so much wiring for the intelligent 3rd mode - this is probably the model to go for. Amazon Link
      • Modes
        • Direct Mirror
        • something else
        • super intelligent, needs a bit of wiring

 

Core X/Y
It looks as though it would be entirely possible to convert the Ender 5 into a core x/y machine, meaning that both x and y stepper motors control the motion of the hotend in both axis. To visualise here's the reprap wiki page to see what I mean. At the moment there aren't really any tutorials on anyone doing this but it doesn't look too hard so I'm sure someone will soon.

 

 

 

Created by JBaker. Last Modification: Sunday September 8, 2019 14:16:11 BST by JBaker.

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