While I was waiting for the printer to arrive I spent time watching YouTube videos on how to assembly the printer. I picked up several helpful tips and tricks. The Assembly of the printer was quick and easy.
My first challenge came in leveling the bed. The blame for the challenge is all my fault. I didn't read the documentation carefully. I am made a bad assumption about how the software worked and what steps I needed to perform. Once I did read the documentation and watched a couple of videos, it took about 20 minutes to level the bed. I went through the AUX leveling steps twice just to make sure the bed as fairly level. For leveling, I had the build plate heated to 70 C and the hot-end to 190 C. The Auto-leveling sequence was run.
For the slicing program, I am using Cura 4.6.1. For my first print, the calibration cube was used. I took the defaults that Cura has for the Ender 5 Plus and send the gcode to the SD card.
Here is where my second challenge appeared. When I put the card into the SD slot the printer didn't find the file. Turns out that the gcode needs to placed at the root level on the SD card and the file name can't be longer than 15 characters.
Once the file was renamed, the printer recognized the existence of the file. I was then able to get the print started. When the hot-end starting moving from the home position to the starting point of the priming line the extruder sent filament to the hot-end. The priming line printed without issue. The skirt and cube printed without issue.
I noticed during the print that the heated build got turned off or set to 0. I didn't manually adjust the bed's temperature settings. I also noted a strange noise when the infill was being printed.
Took several measurements on the X, Y, and Z faces. I got a reading of +/- of .05 mm for most of the cube. The exception was the first two layers which were - .2 mm in the X and Y direction.
This seems like a reasonable first print.
ToDo
- Examine the gcode for purge/prime sequence, to determine if I can get rid of the line the prints from the home position to the start of the purge/prime line.
- Examine the gcode for changes to the bed temperature to determine if the gcode is turning off the bed or if the firmware is turning off the bed.
