I have run into a serious problem with my Ender 5 Pro and, apparently, I’m not alone.
Exactly what is the cause is not known, but the effect is ruined prints.
What happens is, randomly, the Y axis stops responding. It doesn’t move at all, usually part way through a job. If you try to turn the Y axis axle, surprisingly, you can! This is not normal for a stepper motor. Normally, you would feel pretty strong resistance if you try to turn the axle. The reason is that the motor is working to keep the axle in its current position - you shouldn’t be able to turn it.
The effect of this is that the print starts to build up only in the X and Z directions. However, because the Y axis isn’t moving, way too much filament gets deposited in the same spot. Eventually, the nozzle has to plow a furrow into the deposited filament.
Since I’m brand new to 3D printing (at least in a hands-on sense), I had no idea my printer has a problem. This issue showed up on my first print attempt. One of the biggest issues is that it doesn’t occur consistently. I have had good prints; not as many as bad ones - probably 30% to 40%.
I gather this issue has not been a problem on the non-pro version of the Ender 5, presumably because the non-pro version uses the 1.1.4 motherboard. It would be very interesting to try a 1.1.4 board in my machine, to see if the problem goes away. Of course, the 1.1.4 board uses older, noisy stepper driver chips. One of the features of the 1.1.5 board is it has the TMC2208 stepper chips, which cause the motors to make much less noise. However, they run a lot hotter than the old ones. That leads to the first possibility for a cause: hardware failure/overheating.
If the Y axis stepper driver chip gets too hot, it may go into thermal shutdown, effectively refusing to respond to commands. I’ve tried a couple of things to see if I can isolate the cause: [LIST=1]
When I said I’m not alone, I was referring to a forum thread I discovered on octoprint.com. A number of people in the forum have exactly the same issue. The common issue seems to be the Silent 1.1.5 motherboard. I’m not sure about the firmware everyone is running, but one poster said he’s running Klipper firmware and still has the problem. Here’s a link to the specific thread: https://community.octoprint.org/t/y-…nder-5-silent/. In that thread, user silver65 posted a link to a Marlin 2.0 firmware he compiled and posted to github: GitHub - silver65/Ender-5: A project to share a working Marlin 2.0 firmware for the Ender-5 Silent Edition with users without the need to compile their own. From the readme file he included in his package, he indicates the 1.1.5 motherboard already has an onboard bootloader, so that could save a ton of work.
OK, this is already way too long. If I think of or recall anything else to do with this, I’ll make new posts.
