Creality Ender 5 - Printing Issues

[Darkrealmx]

Hello all,

I am new to the 3d printing world and I am having an issue with my Ender 5. When I print i get a warped result. This is when its facing length ways towards the front of the printer.

I've tried levelling the bed numerous times but still seems to be an issue. If anyone has some tips it would be greatly appreciated


Cheers

[Alan]

It could be a number of things. A couple of things to check, particularly for things involved in that axis of motion:

• Clear the printing path of your carriages from any obstructions.
• Confirm end stops are in the correct spots and that the frame is built correctly so that when you home the nozzle it is in the furthest part of the corner that it can be.
• Make sure belts are tight enough (but not too tight).
• Reduce your acceleration and/or speed.
• Check to see if your stepper or drivers are malfunctioning or overheating.
• Make sure your pulleys are attached tight to your stepper motor shaft and cannot spin freely.

Let us know what you find!

Cheers

[Ender5r]

Alan That looks like an axis skewing issue to me, especially since it's always in one direction. What do you think?

Darkrealmx, I suspect you have a mechanical issue. Like Alan said, check all the mechanicals: drive belts, pulleys, print bed, and especially the overall frame (tight corners, the printer is square both horizontally & vertically). Then, run DrVax's bed levelling test; see how it prints.
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Check your Z axis stepper value. If it's 400, you almost certainly need to change it to 800, at least if the printer is new. The clue is if you get prints that seem to be only half as high as they should be.
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Also, which version of Creality Marlin did it come with? My Ender 5 Pro came with Creality Marlin 1.1.8. It was defective. With 1.1.8, the Y axis stepper motor would simply stop moving, as if it was no longer receiving commands from the controller board, and it did it randomly. I fixed it by updating the firmware to TH3D Unified.

[Alan]

Alan That looks like an axis skewing issue to me, especially since it's always in one direction. What do you think?

Agreed! Sorry, I should have been clearer that my first thought is something mechanical (I pared down my checklist with that in mind). A buggy Marlin also makes sense!

Cheers

[Darkrealmx]

Hi Guys,

Thank you for the replies. I believe its Marlin 1.1.6.3. If i am correct and that the version when i select About Printer. I had a look at all belts etc and seem ok.

i did the test print and it seems the front of the outer square with curves is flatter.. and less material?

[Ender5r]

1.1.6.3?? That was released in 2017. How old is this printer?

Do you have a caliper? If not, consider getting one. If you do have one, mark the front of the 2 lines with a felt marker, then remove them from the bed and measure their thickness. Take & record multiple readings on all 4 sides of both squares.
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If it's thicker on 1 side than it is on the opposite, I believe that means the bed is closer to the nozzle on the thinner side ( Alan, help me out here please). You can also measure the widths of the lines to help confirm. In any case, to me it would indicate that the bed is not levelled properly. You do have to do the bed levelling 2 to 3 times in a row to get good level.
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All that said, I don't think an unlevel bed would cause the print you first posted, but bed levelling is the first step is getting the printer dialed in.

[Darkrealmx]

its brand new, i got it off a sight called catch of the day. I assume they must of got some really old stock to sell for cheaper. ill get a caliper today and give that test a try.

[Darkrealmx]

i did a measure of all areas.. i assume the caliper isnt 100% but i can still see a trend. Interesting when i level the bed i do change it to get the friction point on the paper. maybe a few more goes is required.

[Ender5r]

Interesting results. For sure you can see variations from side to side. Now, I may be mistaken, but I suspect the differences between 3 squares is because the lines are deliberately printed at different thicknesses. That's why the width and thickness are important.
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What I find often happens is that you adjust the height at all 5 points (4 corners, 1 center) then go back to the 1st corner and you find that changing the other corners has thrown if off again. So you readjust it, then the others and, often enough, you find the 1st corner has gone off again; not as bad as the 1st time but still, it's off. You do it a third time and all is well usually.
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Thinking on that just made me wonder something: do the automatic bed levellers change things so that the Z axis is adjusted dynamically during a print, to keep the head the exact distance above the bed that it should be at the point in the print? This would, of course, require the firmware to be aware of the hills and dips in the bed, but that may be part of what's involved when adding ABL support to a printer. It would be a great argument for having ABL.

[Mr Doohickey]

#Darkrealmx Once you get the levelling dialled in and the layer drift sorted, please update your firmware, as the early versions had NO THERMAL RUNAWAY PROTECTION. Meaning that the printer is a fire hazard. There are lots of vids on how to fix this flaw in early Creality printers.
MrD

[Ender5r]

Good catch Mr Doohickey. And that will be a bit interesting as well I bet, as I doubt his controller has a bootloader on board (most likely, .Darkrealmx. you have the 1.1.4 controller board.
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Darkrealmx. you kinda have 2 choices:

1. buy some components (like an arduino and cables) that will allow you to install a bootloader onto your controller board, after which you update firmware without having to re-do the bootloader or;
2. buy a newer controller that already has a bootloader on board. There are quite a number from which to choose:
   1. the genuine Creality 1.1.5 Silent board like (the one that came with my printer);
   2. or a 3rd party board such as the TH3D EZ Board Lite, which has a 32-bit processor and a lot more memory available to store firmware.

An advantage of newer boards is that many of them, including the 1.1.5 Silent and the EZ Board Lite, have updated stepper motor drivers which run way quieter than older ones. The noisiest thing on your printer suddenly becomes the cooling fans. If you are going to get a new board, I would highly recommend a 32-bit board. 8-bit boards are rapidly running out of room to hold all the features and capabilities of newer firmware, and I suspect that is only going to get worse over time. DrVax loves the EZ Board Lite (and the company itself); it's probably what I'll upgrade to in the fall or early next year.

[Alan]

Darkrealmx Can you find a straight edge/metal ruler and run it over the bed of your printer? Look for light under the edge to see the low and high spots on the bed to see if they match your measurements. For your print, do all the lines stick to the bed?

[Darkrealmx]

Thanks for all the updates guys. I find it really interesting they would sell a device which is a fire hazard, requiring additional components to fix the issue. Could be warranted for a refund, i might email them and ask.

Alan, so far i haven't had an issues with the prints sticking to the bed... more just funky shapes unfortunately.

[Alan]

Alan, so far i haven't had an issues with the prints sticking to the bed... more just funky shapes unfortunately.

One thing off the list. Did you check the bed with a straight edge? I'm concerned about the results you posted in Post #8. Thanks!

[Ender5r]

re: fire hazard. Here's the typical way it could happen.

1. the heater core in the hotend starts up to bring the nozzle up to printing temperature;
2. the controller board monitors the temp through the thermistor attached to the hotend's heat block;
3. unfortuantely, the thermistor has failed or 1 of its wires is broken or the screw has come loose and the thermistor isn't reading properly;
4. the controller doesn't detect that the temperature is at, say, 200C, so it keeps the heater going;
5. the heater, unconstrained, heats up way past its maximum limit & starts to burn the filament and set fire to the insulation on the wires close to the hotend;
6. if no human is nearby, the whole printer could start to burn, especially the filament, perhaps all the way to the spool.

This all happens because the firmware has no provision for defective thermistors and such. More recent firmware has thermal runaway protection. This isn't anything fancy. All it does it monitor the temperature increase over time. If the firmware has sent a command to turn on the hotend heater and not detected a temperature change for 20 seconds, it goes into emergency shutdown mode, cutting power to just about everything I believe. It's simple, but effective.

re: sloping prints. I presume the sloping is toward the front: i.e. the lower layers of the print are closer to the back of the printer and the layers get closer and closer to the front as the print progresses. If this is so, I have an idea. I've never tried it, but it might prove useful.
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Create a layout of single lines about 10mm apart. The lines should align with the X axis. I would think lines of 100mm length would be plenty for the test. So, starting at the back of the bed, print a single line, move the Y axis 10mm to the front, print another single line, move the Y axis 10 mm to the front, rinse & repeat until you reach the front of the bed. I should think you can simply make a layout in Blender, FreeCAD, F360, or whatever your fave creation program is. Save it as an STL and then slice & print it from your fave slicer.
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After it finished printing, use your caliper to check the space between the lines, both lines adjacent to each other, and also from the 1st line at the back. Let's see if it's actually 10mm or not.

@ Alan, what do you think? A reasonable test?