Ender 5 S1 with Sonic Pad

I recently added a Sonic Pad to my Ender 5 S1. It was discounted at Microcenter and they price matched B&H Photo pricing of $118. Although I had a RPI 4 and all I needed for a DIY klipper upgrade, I knew it would take a while to get it right. The community documentation was fragmented and not as straight forward as the upgrade I did for me Ender 3 V2 (which I did after 4 days of tinkering).

I am posting this because some of the older Youtube videos on the Sonicpad highlighted quite a few issues. Creality has made enough updates to eliminate those complaints and the upgrade was quite easy. Only one undocumented screen popped up and i left the default, and all went well. I did see a more recent Youtube video done by Embrace Making (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRdYLZXPCYk&t=596s) which was really helpful. I replace the extruder cover to reduce the wieght as he suggested. I will also print the stand he designed at some point (both files are on printables.com).

My current challenge is to figure out how to get the print settings right in Orcaslicer or Prusaslicer to take advantage of the resonance tuning and other features.

I posted this for anyone who might have an E5S1. If i figure out some good slicer settings, I will post again in the other topical forum.

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Thanks for the review! If by ‘resonance tuning’ you mean input shaping and pressure advance, I believe these are set in Klipper’s printer.cfg file. Am I missing something?

Cheers

Resonance tuning is the Sonic Pad’s term for input shaping. That gets set with the provided accelerometer and is an advanced option on the Sonic Pad. The Embrace Making maker created a replacement fan cover that reduces the extruder weight and provides a place to attach the accelerometer. It was easy to print and worked like a charm. The right size M3 x 8 screws are provided with the Sonic Pad.

Pressure advance seems to be a setting in the slicer. With Orcaslicer, it is found as a filament setting option and it defaults to off, so it seems you need to option it on before slicing. I did not see any reference to pressure advance in the printer.cfg file.

I am still fiddling with this setup since I am not 100% sure what is automatically handled in firmware vs. the slicer. Also, I want to see how far i can push the speed without a significant degradation in quality.

Hi,
I have an Ender S1 pro with a Sonic Pad. I have fully tuned my printer and use Cura 5.6 as my slicer.
I saw advice somewhere on YouTube (probably one of Ricky Impey’s videos on Sonic pad set up) to ensure acceleration control is unchecked as it may clash with the firmware settings in Sonic Pad.
Mine S1 Pro / Sonic Pad combination works well.

Thanks for this. I am using orcaslicer, but i certainly can return to Cura if i can’t get it to work to my satisfaction.

No problem rmazzi. I just wondered if there is a similar function in Orcaslicer that you may be able to disable. Hope you get sorted

FWIW, in PrusaSlicer, you can manage this per-filament by putting SET_PRESSURE_ADVANCE ADVANCE= in your custom filament g-code, according to the Ellis Print Tuning Guide. I’d be curious if anyone knows how significant a difference there is visually in the pressure advance values between PLA and PETG filament types.

Cheers