SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
If you have a small scale, you can weigh it to get a good estimate of how much filament is left. I know that one of our filament spools weights 226g without filament, so I just subtract that from the total weight and have a good idea of how much I can print with it.
What a difference a day makes >< Finished the PLA that came with it so started a new roll and it's been nothing but misery. I can't get it to stick despite leveling, releveling, rereleveling, adjusting temps, and then one print I did get the base to stick, it warped later on. I think I may have a bed warp issue as it does seem to perform better on the edges, its in the center of the print bed where things really go wrong. I'm trying a print now where it's just printing the model in the corner to begin with. Ordered a glass bed, which I was going to do anyways but hopefully that will help.
So uh... the PLA I've been fighting and cursing and despairing over the past few days turns out to be PETG haha fun times
After we updated the firmware on our printer at work, the menu options to change the filament were different. The old ones were pretty user-friendly and automatically heated up the nozzle to the appropriate temperature, then ejected the filament or ran the new stuff through, depending on if you hit unload or load. Anyway, the new one does not do this, and I did not adequately explain this to my one coworker that I've trained. She mentioned how hard of a time she was having changing the filament now and how it just wouldn't come out of the nozzle when she loaded a new one in. Turns out she was heating it to only about 180C before changing out the filament. I explained where she went wrong, but now I'm wondering if this may have been the cause of our recent issues that required changing out the heatsink entirely.
If I knew what I was doing, I'd compile my own version of the firmware that added the old options to change the filament, but that's waaaaay outside my ability at the moment. The best I can do is have some scripts on the SD card. In the end, it doesn't matter since it's pretty much just a beginner's way of changing the filament.
So uh... the PLA I've been fighting and cursing and despairing over the past few days turns out to be PETG haha fun times
Yeah, petg absolutely refuses to stick to the residue from pla, even purging pla out of the nozzle when switching, i have to run like 100mm of filament through it, or it will have crazy layer adhesion issues.
Anyone have experience with 3d printing in a small space for mostly making miniatures to paint?
I'm thinking about getting into this stuff and it looks like the photon s is on sale. Assuming I get my stimulus sometime soon I might think about getting one.
That is probably fine. Though I don't have an sla printer. But I have an fdm printer and a glowforge in a room smaller then that. I just have one window that I vent out of.
" I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.”
― John Quincy Adams
+1
Options
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Small printer for small miniatures?
Yup, pretty much exclusively. I bought an Anycubic Photon when it was on sale last September, along with their Eco resin.
Here's my setup:
This is a basement room, approximately less than 10x10, with no windows but open doorways in several directions. I have found, as expected and delightfully, that sticking to the Eco resin has resulted in minimal odors and much less worry about toxicity (I have a 3 year old in the house, toxic resins are pretty much a non-starter). If you go with the traditional resins, you'll definitely want to have that window cracked and maybe a small fan running to circulate fresh air.
I have thoroughly enjoyed learning and using my Photon. My advice is, if you're interested in spending the time to learn the basics, dive in! It's really not a difficult process, you can pick up a lot as you go, and there's a metric ass-ton of free models out there to print out and play with.
I'm happy to answer any questions I can, or give any advice you'd like to hear.
SLA printing in my experience is far simpler than FDM but a lot messier. Masks and gloves messy. I have my setup out in the shed and can't speak to EcoResin but the Elegoo stuff I use stinks (and that's supposedly a mild one) - as do the various solvents I've used to clean the prints afterwards.
If you're setting up indoors good ventilation is key. I've seen air scrubbers sold by Elegoo that go inside the printer hood but don't know how effective they are. Could be worth looking into.
Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe
0
Options
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
@Nips Yay a fellow Glowforge owner! Where do you have that venting if you don't have any windows? I see the duct going up...
The space is an interior basement room, adjacent to a bathroom, that's adjacent to the laundry/utility room. So I ran some solid ducting along the floor joists above and installed an additional in-line vent fan that can handle exhausts, and I pipe the output out the back off the house. It works, but it doesn't entirely eliminate the after-odors from running jobs on it; I'm pretty sure those are an effect of the Glowforge not being properly sealed (by design; I try to seal the obvious seams (lid, mostly) with painters tape) and just the after-burn degassing/smoldering that comes with BLASTING THINGS WITH A LASER. *shrug*
I really like my Glowforge, but after a few months of working with it I came to realize it didn't 100% cover my desired work-goals (make very tiny, detailed objects). So, the Anycubic Photon to the rescue (several years after...)!
SLA printing in my experience is far simpler than FDM but a lot messier. Masks and gloves messy. I have my setup out in the shed and can't speak to EcoResin but the Elegoo stuff I use stinks (and that's supposedly a mild one) - as do the various solvents I've used to clean the prints afterwards.
If you're setting up indoors good ventilation is key. I've seen air scrubbers sold by Elegoo that go inside the printer hood but don't know how effective they are. Could be worth looking into.
SLA printing is only messy if you're clumsy or not careful. Spills are absolutely a thing to avoid (and once you spill once, like I did, you quickly learn how to avoid doing stupid mistakes like that again!), and there's always a bit of excess resin that tends to not end up where it belongs (I have paper towels handy 100% of the time now). Once you get a little muscle memory and a process down though, it's easy to keep the amount of errant uncured resin to a minimum.
That all said, using the Anycubic Eco resin which is nontoxic and extremely low odor means I don't bother with masks or gloves. I handle harsher materials just cleaning the house periodically, the resin doesn't even register in that regard. And since I'm using Eco resin, I don't need hard solvents for cleaning prints; I use a small ultrasonic cleaning machine filled with Simple Green (a mild but effective household cleaner), and it gets the prints 95% clean. A little toothbrush/soap/water scrubbing takes care of the rest.
0
Options
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I've suspected the 3D printer we have at work has a warped build surface for a while now, so today I finally looked into getting a readout of the bed levelling mesh data and plugged it into this web visualizer.
Doesn't seem great! But it explains why stuff wasn't adhering well when printing on the left side. I played with the Z-offset a little and it seems to be working better...for now.
Also, I started a ~3 and a half hour print job today after making those corrections. About 10 minutes in, I realized that the laptop I used to get the mesh data was still connected via USB, so I disconnected it. I figured if there were any issues, the printer would just stop altogether. It continued to go through its printing motions, so I moved on, satisfied that it didn't have a negative effect. 2 hours later I returned to find that my manager had aborted it. He told me that the nozzle was about an inch off the build plate and not extruding anything. It seems that disconnecting the printer from the PC mid-print disabled the extrusion motor, but everything else kept going as normal. Oh well, I've certainly had worse disasters, and the only thing we really lost there was time. It printed fine when I restarted it.
Yeah, its crazy. I print things at 150mm/sec now, on my ender 3. Still with the same accuracy as before. I still have a bit of tuning to do for the corners but it produces perfectly usable prints right now.
I have a mars 2 arriving today, along with water washable resin and filters. Anyone have recommended test prints? I've found the Amerilabs town calibration model which looks good, anything else?
Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas. Just 1 extra work cycle twice a week will give you the spending money you need to make this holiday a very special one.
Finally upgraded my resin printer. My Photon Mono SE should be in today. Its like the big sibling of the normal photon, and its suppose to print twice as fast. Very excited.
Mars 2 trip report. Holy shit that was easy. Default settings of 2.5 exposure appear to be marginally too high, depending on how strictly you read the validation matrix. Amerilabs town is printing now.
Highly recommend a Mars 2 and water washable resin for a first printer.
Edit - The town came out ok, but not great. Lots of missing details. Printing again at 2 seconds.
Edit 2 - 2 seconds is too short. 2.5 is pretty damned good now the first print has dried properly, so I'll stick with that. Next up, something useful.
Chrysis on
Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas. Just 1 extra work cycle twice a week will give you the spending money you need to make this holiday a very special one.
Ok, I'm really rather tempted to get a 3d printer (as well as a desktop CNC machine but that's another story). I don't really need either of these things especially as I have access to industrial kit at work but a) I wouldn't have to join the queue at busy times and ii) it'll teach me some skills I can apply at work. I was hoping to pick your brains for some advice.
I work at a UK university in the engineering department (I'm a technician) and we have an array of 3D printers along the lines of raise3d n2 plus, Fusion3, Form2 & Makerbot Replicator 2x. I spoke to the two technicians who mainly run the 3d printers for a recommendation with the proviso that I've not got mega budget to spend on this but I don't mind paying a bit more if it results in a big step up in quality. I'm wary of "buy cheap buy twice" after all.
They both recommended Prusa, one pointed me at the MK3S+ and the other at the MINI+. Both look very good and have pretty good reviews. I was at first leaning towards the bigger one (espeically as it has the 5 material upgrade) but as was pointed out, dip your toe in with the mini and see how much you actually use it (I do sometimes go down rabbit holes of novelty that wear off after a bit) and then maybe later look at upgrading/expanding. You mind spend more overall but then you had two printers to run jobs in parallel.
Other factors tilting me that way are there is a 3-4 week lead from Prusa and with it coming from EU-->UK I'll also be hit by customs and import charges, and possibly delivery delays (thanks Brexit! Pffft). The Ender 5 - if I order within the next eight hours - I can have in my hands by tomorrow!! I know patience is a virtue but still...
My main question is just how much better is the Prusa over the Ender? Am I heading towards buy cheap buy twice or is this a case where I can spend ~1/3 of the money and get something nearly as good?
I don't mind a bit of tinkering to get it going well, don't want to go mad though - I'd like to to work fairly well out of the box after a bit of setup. And I do have access (albeit sporadically at the moment what with Covid) to the work printers and a full machine shop for sorting out little problems/upgrading.
I have a Raspberry Pi as a media centre at the moment but I'd not adverse to getting another to run Octoprint if that helps/changes matters?
I've lost track in all my googling and review pondering - can a Ender 5 be upgraded to handle multi filament/multicolour prints?
I chose an Ender 5 Pro (I think it might be the exact specifications in the one you linked!) over the Prusa and I'm very happy with it. There's definitely a little tinkering to do but not all that much needed (emphasis on need, there's a LOT of optional stuff you can do). The main thing from a beginner standpoint seems to be bed leveling which the Prusa does automatically and the Pro you do it yourself (at least out of the box, you could buy an auto leveler addon if you wanted). I can't say I enjoy manual leveling, but I was printing same day and I've had it running almost nonstop since then and other than the occasional on the fly tweak at the start of a print it's been basically fire-and-forget.
I dont think you need to upgrade at all for multicolor of the same type of filament, that type of thing you'd handle in the model slicer/design etc. IE print first color part, set next model to begin where color change takes place, swap filament, etc etc. I havent tried it myself yet though, a more experienced user could probably give a better answer.
I was considering starting straight out with an autoleveler as there's one next to the printer on Amazon for another £50, seems like an obvious upgrade though the earlier work printers when I had some training were manual level and it didn't seem that bad.
I went from a Monoprice Select Mini to a Prusa MK3, and haven't regretted the extra expense, because from playing around with the MPSM I knew there were already enough variables to worry about that I wanted to not have "is there any chance this is caused by a skipping belt / crooked axis / non-flat bed" as a concern, and only have to worry about "am I extruding filament at the right speed / temperature / places". I already get that wrong often enough that it's nice only having myself to blame when prints don't work out, I guess.
I think you can get the same quality of prints out of them both in the end, it's just a matter of how you get there. (also, the prusa mk3s really does come as a box full of motors and wires and nuts and bolts and stuff, it's like putting together a big complex Lego set -- which was actually a positive from my perspective because I wanted to know what was going on in case I had to disassemble things -- ymmv there, of course)
(one other thing to consider is the physical size of the final printer -- I had a very specific amount of width / depth / height spare in my workspace where a printer could go, and the fact that the mk3s is 420x420x390mm (plus spool but that literally hangs over the front of a shelf above it) meant that I _could_ put it somewhere. The ender 5 is 552x485x510mm (plus spool on the side), and that just would physically not have fit.
Technically you can do multicolour printing with a single-extruder printer, you would just go crazy doing it. If you're printing something where the colours only change at layer boundaries then that would be fine, but if you want a result like this where it's changing filament multiple times per layer, it would be an awful lot of work to swap back and forth all the time.
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Whatever person has the time to do that should just get a part time job with all the time they're using just sitting next to their printer and then just buy something that has dual extrusion. Or like...learn to paint seems much easier.
First thing I 3-D printed specifically to help out with my other "making stuff" hobby:
It's the remixed version (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1420341) of the helping hands (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:824711) tool for PCB soldering, but in my case it's for stained glass soldering. I hate putting the hanging rings on frames, because it really needs a 3rd-hand (one hand for the soldering iron, one hand for the solder, and one hand to hold the ring in place). The original design is meant for alligator clips that have a long round handle, but the ones I bought don't, so I also had to TinkerCAD up an adapter for the clip hands.
Well, for good or ill I've gone and hit order in Amazon. Annoyingly just as I made a decision the "order within 45 minutes to get it tomorrow" changed to "order in the next six hours to get it Wednesday" despite me only refreshing the page a couple minutes prior. It's ok, I can wait another day, just.
Got the Ender 5 Pro, and a kg roll of black filament.
Got a glass bed off the bat as a lot of review reckoned that's a day one upgrade. Held off on the auto-level and it wasn't entirely clear to me if the mainboard on the printer I'm getting supports it or not. Looks like it's only ~£30-40 to upgrade the board if I have to so I'll see how I got and push some upgrades back to next month. Ease the hit on the dredit card a little at least!
I've already got an idea of half a dozen things to print. Admittedly five of those are for the printer itself and only one for my bike but eh. It's all good.
Yeah, I recommend proceeding right to the glass bed, Ash. I solved a nontrivial amount of adhesion problems by using it instead of the more flexible bed my Ender 3 came with. It takes longer for it to warm up and cool down, and it therefore takes a bit longer in-between prints (longer to get some prints off the bed when they're done), but it's worth not having to deal with failed prints.
Another plus one for the glass bed, I have one with a pei sheet on it (actually for less adhesion, petg likes to tear chunks out of glass) and its been quite nice to just not have to worry about it.
Lots of Dungeon Tiles. I've been printing them two or three at a time but since I've installed a BL Touch sensor on my CR-10s and now have a PEI sheet on my bed I'm no longer worried about a piece detaching and causing destruction and chaos (as happened before). The bed is big enough for 25 at a time, so I figured I'd fill it up and, not having to worry about downtime between prints, crank them all out quicker.
Ok, xyz cal cube dimensions vary from 19.96mm to 20.17mm which isn't too bad I think for an off the bat print. But before I start messing with steps per mm. I'm sure in the software the cube has the x on the front face and the Y on the right face. My print had the x on the back and the y on the left. Z was on top as expected.
Before I completely dyslex does that mean x and y are reversed?
Or, as the end stop switches are on the back right corner does that just mean that's the way the printer prints and all is well?
Aaaand I printed a benchy as well, not perfect, bit of stringing on the cabin and some stepping on the deck rails but not too bad at all for a default suck-it-and-see print. I also printed it on half scale on all dimensions because the Creality Slicer (Cura based I think) gave a 1+ hour plus estimate whch turned into 17 minutes with the shrink and it is nearly bedtime after all. Will print a full size one first thing tomorrow but so far it's all good.
I was pleased that the included reel of filament is 200g - I was expected a far more miserly sample.
Oh and I didn't put the glass bed on yet because I wasn't entirely sure what to change to prevent the head running straight into the bed due to the extra thickness.
If your printer homes to 0,0 in the back right corner, then yes, that is "opposite" of most that have 0,0 in the front left corner, but don't worry it's still printing normally. It's exactly the same as someone picking up their whole printer and turning it to face backwards. It prints the same, you're just now looking at the "back" of the object.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Posts
My Backloggery
After we updated the firmware on our printer at work, the menu options to change the filament were different. The old ones were pretty user-friendly and automatically heated up the nozzle to the appropriate temperature, then ejected the filament or ran the new stuff through, depending on if you hit unload or load. Anyway, the new one does not do this, and I did not adequately explain this to my one coworker that I've trained. She mentioned how hard of a time she was having changing the filament now and how it just wouldn't come out of the nozzle when she loaded a new one in. Turns out she was heating it to only about 180C before changing out the filament. I explained where she went wrong, but now I'm wondering if this may have been the cause of our recent issues that required changing out the heatsink entirely.
If I knew what I was doing, I'd compile my own version of the firmware that added the old options to change the filament, but that's waaaaay outside my ability at the moment. The best I can do is have some scripts on the SD card. In the end, it doesn't matter since it's pretty much just a beginner's way of changing the filament.
My Backloggery
Yeah, petg absolutely refuses to stick to the residue from pla, even purging pla out of the nozzle when switching, i have to run like 100mm of filament through it, or it will have crazy layer adhesion issues.
DJ_Khalid.jpg
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm thinking about getting into this stuff and it looks like the photon s is on sale. Assuming I get my stimulus sometime soon I might think about getting one.
Hey, Cap’n, this one’s for you! *points up*
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
― John Quincy Adams
I think my room is 10 by 15 with one window near where I'd have space to set it up? Is that too small you think?
― John Quincy Adams
Yup, pretty much exclusively. I bought an Anycubic Photon when it was on sale last September, along with their Eco resin.
Here's my setup:
This is a basement room, approximately less than 10x10, with no windows but open doorways in several directions. I have found, as expected and delightfully, that sticking to the Eco resin has resulted in minimal odors and much less worry about toxicity (I have a 3 year old in the house, toxic resins are pretty much a non-starter). If you go with the traditional resins, you'll definitely want to have that window cracked and maybe a small fan running to circulate fresh air.
I have thoroughly enjoyed learning and using my Photon. My advice is, if you're interested in spending the time to learn the basics, dive in! It's really not a difficult process, you can pick up a lot as you go, and there's a metric ass-ton of free models out there to print out and play with.
I'm happy to answer any questions I can, or give any advice you'd like to hear.
― John Quincy Adams
If you're setting up indoors good ventilation is key. I've seen air scrubbers sold by Elegoo that go inside the printer hood but don't know how effective they are. Could be worth looking into.
The space is an interior basement room, adjacent to a bathroom, that's adjacent to the laundry/utility room. So I ran some solid ducting along the floor joists above and installed an additional in-line vent fan that can handle exhausts, and I pipe the output out the back off the house. It works, but it doesn't entirely eliminate the after-odors from running jobs on it; I'm pretty sure those are an effect of the Glowforge not being properly sealed (by design; I try to seal the obvious seams (lid, mostly) with painters tape) and just the after-burn degassing/smoldering that comes with BLASTING THINGS WITH A LASER. *shrug*
I really like my Glowforge, but after a few months of working with it I came to realize it didn't 100% cover my desired work-goals (make very tiny, detailed objects). So, the Anycubic Photon to the rescue (several years after...)!
SLA printing is only messy if you're clumsy or not careful. Spills are absolutely a thing to avoid (and once you spill once, like I did, you quickly learn how to avoid doing stupid mistakes like that again!), and there's always a bit of excess resin that tends to not end up where it belongs (I have paper towels handy 100% of the time now). Once you get a little muscle memory and a process down though, it's easy to keep the amount of errant uncured resin to a minimum.
That all said, using the Anycubic Eco resin which is nontoxic and extremely low odor means I don't bother with masks or gloves. I handle harsher materials just cleaning the house periodically, the resin doesn't even register in that regard. And since I'm using Eco resin, I don't need hard solvents for cleaning prints; I use a small ultrasonic cleaning machine filled with Simple Green (a mild but effective household cleaner), and it gets the prints 95% clean. A little toothbrush/soap/water scrubbing takes care of the rest.
Doesn't seem great! But it explains why stuff wasn't adhering well when printing on the left side. I played with the Z-offset a little and it seems to be working better...for now.
Also, I started a ~3 and a half hour print job today after making those corrections. About 10 minutes in, I realized that the laptop I used to get the mesh data was still connected via USB, so I disconnected it. I figured if there were any issues, the printer would just stop altogether. It continued to go through its printing motions, so I moved on, satisfied that it didn't have a negative effect. 2 hours later I returned to find that my manager had aborted it. He told me that the nozzle was about an inch off the build plate and not extruding anything. It seems that disconnecting the printer from the PC mid-print disabled the extrusion motor, but everything else kept going as normal. Oh well, I've certainly had worse disasters, and the only thing we really lost there was time. It printed fine when I restarted it.
My Backloggery
Highly recommend a Mars 2 and water washable resin for a first printer.
Edit - The town came out ok, but not great. Lots of missing details. Printing again at 2 seconds.
Edit 2 - 2 seconds is too short. 2.5 is pretty damned good now the first print has dried properly, so I'll stick with that. Next up, something useful.
I work at a UK university in the engineering department (I'm a technician) and we have an array of 3D printers along the lines of raise3d n2 plus, Fusion3, Form2 & Makerbot Replicator 2x. I spoke to the two technicians who mainly run the 3d printers for a recommendation with the proviso that I've not got mega budget to spend on this but I don't mind paying a bit more if it results in a big step up in quality. I'm wary of "buy cheap buy twice" after all.
They both recommended Prusa, one pointed me at the MK3S+ and the other at the MINI+. Both look very good and have pretty good reviews. I was at first leaning towards the bigger one (espeically as it has the 5 material upgrade) but as was pointed out, dip your toe in with the mini and see how much you actually use it (I do sometimes go down rabbit holes of novelty that wear off after a bit) and then maybe later look at upgrading/expanding. You mind spend more overall but then you had two printers to run jobs in parallel.
However, I was also looking around at other options and I've seen the Creality Ender 5 Pro (https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Creality3D-Pro-Mainboard-Pre-installed-Capricorn/dp/B07ZPCBD5N/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=ender+5&qid=1617615784&sr=8-5) on Amazon for £387 and it's got me very tempted (vs ~£400 for the Mini and ~£900 for the MK3S+). Bigger build volume (not that I necessarily need said volume) for about the same price as the Prusa Mini and I like the full cage design, feels like it'll be more stable. Plus it's got the power loss recovery feature which I don't think the Mini has.
Other factors tilting me that way are there is a 3-4 week lead from Prusa and with it coming from EU-->UK I'll also be hit by customs and import charges, and possibly delivery delays (thanks Brexit! Pffft). The Ender 5 - if I order within the next eight hours - I can have in my hands by tomorrow!! I know patience is a virtue but still...
My main question is just how much better is the Prusa over the Ender? Am I heading towards buy cheap buy twice or is this a case where I can spend ~1/3 of the money and get something nearly as good?
I don't mind a bit of tinkering to get it going well, don't want to go mad though - I'd like to to work fairly well out of the box after a bit of setup. And I do have access (albeit sporadically at the moment what with Covid) to the work printers and a full machine shop for sorting out little problems/upgrading.
I have a Raspberry Pi as a media centre at the moment but I'd not adverse to getting another to run Octoprint if that helps/changes matters?
I've lost track in all my googling and review pondering - can a Ender 5 be upgraded to handle multi filament/multicolour prints?
Cheers all.
I dont think you need to upgrade at all for multicolor of the same type of filament, that type of thing you'd handle in the model slicer/design etc. IE print first color part, set next model to begin where color change takes place, swap filament, etc etc. I havent tried it myself yet though, a more experienced user could probably give a better answer.
I think you can get the same quality of prints out of them both in the end, it's just a matter of how you get there. (also, the prusa mk3s really does come as a box full of motors and wires and nuts and bolts and stuff, it's like putting together a big complex Lego set -- which was actually a positive from my perspective because I wanted to know what was going on in case I had to disassemble things -- ymmv there, of course)
(one other thing to consider is the physical size of the final printer -- I had a very specific amount of width / depth / height spare in my workspace where a printer could go, and the fact that the mk3s is 420x420x390mm (plus spool but that literally hangs over the front of a shelf above it) meant that I _could_ put it somewhere. The ender 5 is 552x485x510mm (plus spool on the side), and that just would physically not have fit.
Technically you can do multicolour printing with a single-extruder printer, you would just go crazy doing it. If you're printing something where the colours only change at layer boundaries then that would be fine, but if you want a result like this where it's changing filament multiple times per layer, it would be an awful lot of work to swap back and forth all the time.
This is a discussion thread about how to do it with an Ender 5, it definitely looks possible, if not simple.
It's the remixed version (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1420341) of the helping hands (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:824711) tool for PCB soldering, but in my case it's for stained glass soldering. I hate putting the hanging rings on frames, because it really needs a 3rd-hand (one hand for the soldering iron, one hand for the solder, and one hand to hold the ring in place). The original design is meant for alligator clips that have a long round handle, but the ones I bought don't, so I also had to TinkerCAD up an adapter for the clip hands.
It's basically a tiny wine bottle.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Got the Ender 5 Pro, and a kg roll of black filament.
Got a glass bed off the bat as a lot of review reckoned that's a day one upgrade. Held off on the auto-level and it wasn't entirely clear to me if the mainboard on the printer I'm getting supports it or not. Looks like it's only ~£30-40 to upgrade the board if I have to so I'll see how I got and push some upgrades back to next month. Ease the hit on the dredit card a little at least!
And then solidify, it's hard to print otherwise.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
So far so good.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
This was at 12 hours - all still in good order.
IT APPEARS TO BE DOING THE THING!!
Before I completely dyslex does that mean x and y are reversed?
Or, as the end stop switches are on the back right corner does that just mean that's the way the printer prints and all is well?
Aaaand I printed a benchy as well, not perfect, bit of stringing on the cabin and some stepping on the deck rails but not too bad at all for a default suck-it-and-see print. I also printed it on half scale on all dimensions because the Creality Slicer (Cura based I think) gave a 1+ hour plus estimate whch turned into 17 minutes with the shrink and it is nearly bedtime after all. Will print a full size one first thing tomorrow but so far it's all good.
I was pleased that the included reel of filament is 200g - I was expected a far more miserly sample.
Oh and I didn't put the glass bed on yet because I wasn't entirely sure what to change to prevent the head running straight into the bed due to the extra thickness.