Official Creality Ender 5 Plus 3D Printer with BL Touch, Tempered Glass Plate and Touch Color Screen, Large Build Volume 350X350X400mm

It came a day early. Amazon delivery is scary good. This is my first 3d printer. Its super fun and my 8yo son is getting excited about it which is really the best part. I designed a few parts in blender and there are also tons of free sites to get stl models.

Setup: Setup was simple aside from the diagram explaining where the spool goes but eventually figured that out. The one really (and I mean really) anoying thing was leveling the bed which needs to be done manually for the first time. It took a while to figure out that the glass plate is ever so slightly bowed up in the middle so dont strive for perfection. The bigger issue is the 4 knobs underneath the bed used for raising/lowering the corners to level the bed as pictured in the screenshot. They should have used a hex bolt or something because when you turn the nob in the attached image it also turns the screw making it impossible to tighten with the glass pane covering it. You need to insert a screwdriver while tightening but you cant level the bed without having the glass in place. I ended up putting metal shavings under the screw head to get some traction and that made life much easier.

Prints: Prints are as good quality as you can expect. Took a few trials to get good bed adhesion. Im using hairspray every few prints. Now I cant get the prints off the bed ;). Not a creality issue just a general 3d printing issue I guess. It helps that the bed is heated and there are separate controls for bed and nozle temperature.

Noise: Its a bit noisy but Im guessing that is just a general 3d pritner thing so not taking any stars away for it. Imagine the noisiest PC you ever built with several fans running 100% of the time. Thats how it sounds. Some of the prints take 12+ hours so keep that in mind you will have something whirring away in the background while you sleep. Maybe sure you have a separate room. Unfortunately its in the room I work in and cant have it running while on conference calls.

All I can say is that I just got this thing to do one large print that my other printers couldn’t do. The quality blows my other printers away and one of them is a qidi. The speed is blistering too.
look, I read all the bad reviews and those situations suck. you are always gonna get a damaged product once in a blue moon. But this printer is blowing my freekin mind! I am going to ungrade it with some parts for convenience, but not cause it needs it, only cause I want to. Adding a magnetic plate is a must.

The Ender 5 plus is a very good 3d printer, that’s not to say it doesn’t have its problems cos it does. I started with the ender 3 then got the cr10s which I’ve had for a few years and have upgraded them both in that time. All the extruder on these printers have been crap and when I order a creality printer I know the extruder will need to be changed, you can get upgraded ones for around 15 so just order one when you order the printer and then you can fit it when you build the printer and then it’s done and it will save a lot of heartache in the future with failed prints, with a few upgrades on the ender 5 plus it is now an amazing 3d printer, I have printed a 5.5ft groot with this printer it is great, the box in the video was the first thing I printed with the ender 5 plus, I built the printer, leveled the bed downloaded the file and set it printing and was very pleased with the first pri

The Ender 5 plus is a very good 3d printer, that’s not to say it doesn’t have its problems cos it does. I started with the ender 3 then got the cr10s which I’ve had for a few years and have upgraded them both in that time. All the extruder on these printers have been crap and when I orde

Dopo un lungo epistolario con il supporto della Creality e della Comgrow per la sostituzione (a pagamento) delle barre filettate dell’asse Z mi stato comunicato che il ricambio AL MOMENTO NON DISPONIBILE PER L’EUROPA.

I received my printer and had a bad part after set up but the company was amazing at helping me to trouble shoot my issue and sending me a new part. Love my printer!

I have upgraded parts over time, but with a little effort we were producing pretty quality parts right away. The large print volume isn’t used often but it is nice to not have much limitation.

Last year I made my first 3d printer purchase. The ender 3, which is a great printer for beginners, IF you like to tinker with stuff. Over the past year I heavily upgraded the ender 3 and I love it. It’s fantastic, however, I soon realized I’ve out grown my ender 3. I started printing helmets, predator masks, etc and I had to cut them up in order to print them. It was a lot of work, but doable.

FLASH FORWARD to the ender 5 plus!! After selling several of my prints, I finally had some cash to spend on a bigger printer. I took a look at the artillery sidewinder x1. Almost pulled the trigger on that but I saw some major flaws in it that reviewers didn’t like. So I got this printer. Let me tell you coming from an ender 3.. This printer was a dream to set up. Took less than 30 minutes (because I had experience from the ender 3) and I was up and running. First prints are these mugs in silk pla 0.4mm nozzle, 60 speed, 8%infill about 26 hours each. No estep calibration, no flow calibration, no glue or anything (glass bed is amazing!) just bed leveled using the auto bed leveling and z offset. As you can see, they look amazing.

Now for the bad stuff… Well not much that can’t be fixed.
1: It’s loud… Like.. Really loud. My ender 3 had a silent board and it’s a huge difference. My printers stay in a spare bedroom so it’s not that much of a problem. I may end up getting a bigtreetech skr mini e3 with touch screen at some point. But it’s not necessary right now.
2: no strain relief for the heated bed cables. Easy fix is to print one out from thingiverse. Super easy but it would have been nice if creality included that.
3: plastic extruder. Really? They can’t spend the 10 bucks to put an all metal one in these? For 600, I would expect that to be included. Got one and swapped it in. No biggie
4: the spool holder. I hate them I have a spool holder with bearings I use on the side. Again, not a big deal to me but still should be mentioned.
4: Bed leveling springs.. Terrible. Switch to silicone bed leveling mounts. With the glass and bl touch you’ll never have to mess with it again.

If you’re looking for your first 3d printer, the ender 3 is great, however, think long term about what you want to print. The amount of money you’ll put into an ender 3 you’d be better off getting this printer. It has the bl touch, glass bed, dual z, 350×350 print size, and a sturdy frame. I love it and creality knocked it out of the park.

UPDATE:
I still love this printer, however, I can’t understand why you pay so much money for them to put a plastic crappy extruder. As I always do, I was swapping it out with an all metal one. Not surprisingly, the plastic one was already cracked. I maybe used this printer for about 50 hours so who knows if it came like this or broke as I was using it.

These are amazing printers with great print volume and were easy to set up I had high school students build them calibrate them and run prints all a single day with no issues. You’re not gonna find a better picture out there for the money.

I have been printing with this machine for over three months and have had barely any problems with it. I don’t know if this is just for my printer or if it’s a common issue. So far the only problems are the runout sensor activating randomly (thus I removed it) and having to have the print bead slowly rise in temperature (ie set it at 60, 70, 75, 80, 85, etc), if you don’t you will get a temperature to fail and have to restart the machine. (probably due to not being able to heat up the bed quick enough but this was to get temps 75 and up on the heat bed).

Other than these issues it works flawlessly. I have done multiple 200 hr+ prints with no errors or layer skipping. It does heat up the ambient temperature of the room a lot. The design and sturdiness of the machine mean reduced ghosting in prints and reduced print failures due to a shifting bed.

I highly recommended leveling the bed every time you mess with the Z lead screws. What I do is lower all 4 corners of the build plate and manually level using the Z lead screws first using a level. This ensures both sides of the build plate are level since when you mess with the Z lead screws with power off it can become unlevel. After you do this you can do your usual manual leveling with a heated bed, then auto-leveling.

Also, your bl touch sensor will blink red sometimes if you start the machine in a position that the sensor’s probe cannot fully extend/retract.

Overall it’s a great machine and would buy it again. Just be aware of the slight issues and get familiar with troubleshooting filiment failures more then machine failures.

As a quick overview, this is my first 3D printer and I’m sharing my overall experience. In general, this is a great technology with a ton of potential, but is new enough that the products aren’t as mature as you’re probably accustomed to and the result is the feeling like you’re doing an elaborate and expensive science fair project, filled with trial & error and the frustration/disappointment/excitement that go along with that. We can hope that someday getting a 3D printer will be like getting a new fridge, except that instead of plugging it in and watching it make stuff cool, you’ll plug it in and watch it make cool stuff. From my experience with the Ender 5 Plus, there’s a long way to go before we’ll get there.

Packaging: The box was larger than I expected, which isn’t bad but you should keep that in mind in case you’ve got tight space constraints or may need help moving it (I moved it alone). The printer was packaged very well inside high-quality, precision cut foam. I like it when companies put a lot of thought into the way their products are packaged, though sometimes I wish they would invest more effort into the product itself than showing off with a fancy single-use box. It takes some space just to unpack all the parts, and it is important to have enough room to keep things organized while you’re putting it together.

My biggest feedback with packaging is the box wouldn’t’ be that much larger if the printer were completely assembled and ready to go. If companies can produce other appliances like dishwashers, stoves, microwaves and dryers and find cost-effective methods of shipping them across the world ready to plug-and-play, then this ought to be something 3D printer companies could also easily do. I’d happily pay more for a ready-to-go product.
Assembly: The instructions provided were confusing, but there is a great video on YouTube which walks you through all the steps. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t even look at the printed instructions. I got myself very confused by sentences with obvious typos which said “use 4 screws” when there were 8 of them and 8 holes, and then said “once all 6 screws are tightened” Some of the diagrams really lost me also -especially the one about mounting the spool holder. Rather, I’d just put the video on and follow along, pausing as needed.

It would be simple for Creality to put a link to this video right on their product page, but they don’t. That’s a fail in my view. If you try to follow the written instructions, there’s a much greater chance that you’ll end up putting something together incorrectly.

Again, it would be great if you could just buy a pre-assembled version like you can with so many other tools and appliances.

Operation: It took me a while, but I eventually figured out how to make my first couple prints. The instructions here are definitely lacking -probably with the assumption that you already know what you’re doing. I eventually learned that you can’t just print the files provided on the SD card. You must first install the Creality software on your computer, then load the files into Creality, and save them as Gcode.

You will ultimately want to use 3D modeling software which can export your models as STL files, which then need to be run through the Creality engine in order to print them. It would be great if the instructions explained this somewhere. Initially, I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out why the printer wasn’t recognizing the STL files themselves. I assumed that since Creality put them on the SD drive, that they were “ready to print.” Why not just provide them in gcode format on the SD card?

Noise: It seems that some of the parts could be better lubricated, which might reduce the sound of printing. I haven’t seen any instructions relating to this, and am nervous to use the wrong kind of lubricant in the wrong spot.

The loudest part of the process is at the beginning, when the X and Y axis calibrate. After that, it isn’t too bad, but certainly not something you really want to listen to if you have it going for long prints right in the office you’re working in. I set mine up in another room where I can close the door and thereafter don’t hear it at all other than the initial calibration noises.

I know that a cover is available, but I get the impression that it wouldn’t reduce the noise significantly, and doesn’t appear to be as rigid/robust/protective as I would ideally like. I originally intended to build an enclosure for it with wood and glass, but haven’t gotten that far yet. In thinking about an enclosure, it is worth noting that a dishwasher comes with a layer of insulation which wraps around the outside of it. This contributes both to noise reduction and to energy efficiency. The insulation forms a thermal barrier which keeps the heat inside the dishwasher as it runs. As someone new to 3D printing, I’m not sure what impact it would have to keep the printer in an insulated box, but I imagine it would either reduce the energy needed to heat the base and the nozzle, or would prevent things from cooling properly and cause damage. It would be great if Creality either produced a printer which came pre-assembled inside a more robust enclosure, or if they provided customers with tips about building their own enclosures to improve performance, reduce noise, and protect against dust, etc.

Problems: The Creality filament which came with the printer appears to be very low quality. It breaks often, and as a result, I was only able to print one complete object successfully with my whole first spool. Although there is a filament sensor to prevent failed prints, it doesn’t always work. It is very frustrating to set up a print that will take 8 hours or more and come back to find that a bunch of filament and time was wasted on a failed print. The closer you get to having it completed, the more frustrating it is when you discover it failed. I also did not find instructions for what to do when the filament breaks, and ended up figuring that out through trial and error.

(1) The spool holder is very loose and the spool just hangs on it. With how precise the rest of the machine is, I can’t imagine why there isn’t a more exact fit to hold the spool in place -maybe a well lubricated wheel with ball bearings that has almost no friction and keeps the spool perfectly aligned with the feeder, reducing the possible side movements and filament breaks.
(2) When the filament feeds into the filament sensor, it can get stuck inside of the sensor itself. The filament has a curve to it after being on the spool, and although the filament sensor isn’t very long, the curve of the filament can cause it to bend before going completely out the other side of the sensor. During one of my prints, the filament broke inside of the sensor, and although the sensor correctly indicated that the filament was present inside the sensor, there was no filament going beyond the sensor itself. This caused the remainder of the print to occur without filament -a failed print.
(3) When the filament leaves the sensor and goes into the extrusion motor, it can be difficult to get it to feed into the tube leading up to the extrusion head. The curve of the filament really just doesn’t want to allow it to move in a straight line along the intended path, so it can get stuck between the wheels on that motor and the hole where it enters the tube. If the filament breaks between the wheels and the tube, the part below the break will get stuck outside of the tube, but the filament sensor will still indicate that the filament is present -leading to a failed print.
(4) When the filament breaks, and you need to re-feed the filament into the tube leading to the extruder head, I’m still not sure how to properly do this in the middle of a print. I viewed it somewhat like a hot-glue gun, where when one glue stick runs out, you smoosh in the next one until there is glue dripping from the nozzle and until the new stick is far enough in that the feeder from the trigger can grip it. During my successful print, the filament broke before the filament sensor, which stopped the print. I was able to re-feed the filament through the sensor and push it through the feeder and into the tube to the extruder in order to continue, but it felt more like an awkward amateur approach than whatever you’re actually supposed to do.
(5) When I installed the Creality software, it asks me which kind of printer I am using. However, there is no option for the Ender 5 Plus. The whole purpose for getting the Ender 5 Plus is the extra print size, but because the printer is missing from the list, it limits you to the smaller print area of the Ender 5. There’s probably a software update somewhere that would fix this, but it is surprising to me that Creality didn’t bother to include the updated software on the SD card they provided with the actual Ender 5 Plus printer. This makes a problem for customers and creates extra steps/troubleshooting rather than moving toward a more complete plug-and-play product.

Performance: Although I am impressed with the quality of the prints, I am not at all impressed by the printing time. I’m new to 3D printing, so I know I probably had unrealistic expectations to start. I got the Ender 5 Plus specifically because of the large print area, with the objective of printing larger objects. I was somewhat alarmed to see that the print time for such objects can easily be more than 24 hours. Then, when you factor issues like repeat broken filaments or the possibility of completely failed prints -it could take way longer. Plus, if you’re trying to print something large, you may be looking at more than one spool of filament, which aren’t inexpensive. If you waste 2-3 spools on failed prints before you eventually produce one large object, that definitely factors into the cost of that object. From my entire first spool of filament, I got only one object, which definitely is not worth the value of the original filament. If you’re new to 3D printing, it might be worth just getting a smaller, less expensive printer and focusing on smaller objects. It is exciting to think about printing something that’s over 1 cubic foot, but when you realize how many hours that print will take, and how much filament you’ll go through, there may be another approach which is both faster and cheaper.

It is also important to note that the printed object will not have a perfectly smooth surface. I understood this going in, but assumed that I would be able to use fine sandpaper or files to smooth the surface, much like I did when building plastic models as a kid. The printed plastic is rigid enough that it can be tough to do this. For the one object I successfully printed, I spent quite a bit of time with an exacto knife, sand paper and metal files trying to clean it up. I’m not sure if this is the best approach. Someone mentioned to me that you can use heat to soften the surface to make it easier to work with, but I feel like that’s a difficult and risky method. It might work well to apply a thin layer of putty or gap filling primer which can be more easily smoothed and then painted. No matter what the approach, just know that unless you’re specifically looking for a rough, unfinished, and obviously 3D printed look (which certainly is cool for some applications), then you’re going to be spending a considerable amount of time on finishing work for each object you produce.

Filament: So far I’ve only used the filament provided by Creality. I’m definitely not impressed with it due to the frequency of breaks and the problems with the sensor and feeder. I’ve already ordered more spools from different vendors and am eager to try them.

As a novice printer, I have a possibly unrealistic dream that eventually I’ll be able to recycle plastic bottles at home by running them through a shredder and melting the particles into my own spools for use in 3D printing. I imagine that if someone were to create a machine which made this possible, it would make 3D printing more economically viable, and that it would help reduce the amount of plastic waste that humanity is dumping into the environment every year. It would probably also be really helpful to the companies which already produce filament, by driving down their production costs.

As it is, paying a lot for filament which may end up wasted on failed prints is obviously frustrating and not sustainable.

Economics: At the beginning, I had the thought that maybe I could help offset the cost of the printer by making things and selling them on Etsy or Ebay. From searching around a bit, it appears that other people do this, and theoretically earn enough from it to justify their efforts. Being practical, there’s definitely a learning curve, and a lot of research is needed to identify what to make that would be in high enough demand to justify the cost of doing it. Also, due to the extremely slow print rate, and the high cost of filament, it would be easy to lose money printing things that aren’t in high enough demand and don’t command a high enough price. If you intend to print stuff to cover your costs, it seems to be easier said than done. If your margins and volume are both low, then it could take a long time to break even, remembering that the printer itself has a limited lifespan.
However, if you’re just planning to print things for prototyping, and the production method would involve making molds of the 3D printed items which could then be produced faster and more economically, then that could work. There’s definitely a learning curve when it comes to producing effective molds and using them to produce quality end items.

If your goal is to start a business that makes a large volume of objects and sells them for a moderate margin, a pizza oven might generate a more reliable ROI.

Conclusions: I’m not sure if I will get the intended value out of the printer itself, but I do think I got a lot of value from the learning that came from it. Learning also takes time, and I’m still very near the beginning of this journey, so I’m feeling confident that the value I will eventually get from all the learning ahead will exceed the cost I paid for this, filament, 3D modeling software, and time.

It took me a few days to really get the hang of this machine, but now that i understand it i love it. Unfortunately the silent board i was upgrading didn’t work correct, but the stock board is working great. I ordered a new silent board to upgrade later. The biggest thing i’ve learned is to level before every print. If you do that your golden. First you do the aux leveling, then do the measurement setting to dial it in. After that you should be golden.

Packaged well, all parts worked on arrival. Instructions are a little vague and one plug was not labeled……but using process of elimination pretty easy to intuit. Looking forward to printing full sized monoprint cosplay helmets now

The PSU stopped working after a few minutes. I contacted customer support and they send me a new upgraded PSU for free. Other then the power supply no issues for me.

Update: The seller contacted me about the problem an was very helpful in responding to my distress, I had purchased a replacement motherboard called the silent board an bought another power supply meanwell after installation everything is running great now. Comcrow sent me a roll of filament to help with my issues they worked with me to resolve this problem. I really do like the printer and I am telling my friends about the printer quality and how helpful the seller has been
Review Updated: Feb 3 , One day after the return period ended , the motherboard and powersupply fried.
It melted a cable hooked up to my usb port on my laptop.
Nothing moves anymore the screen blinks an then goes black.
I am requesting a replacement powersupply an motherboard through Amazon system but their email system is not setup correctly Amazon keeps sending my messages back as not deliverable to ComGrow.

In all good concious I can no longer recoomend to buy this model of printer, if the parts only last 30days that is not an acceptable risk for the price.

The printer was really easy to put together and had excellent build quality I printed five different items so far using the printer and everyone’s come out perfect I’ve not been this excited over a toy that I got for Christmas since I was a little kid and I’m an old guy now

Put it together, manual not great and youtube vids not great either. Did eventually get it hooked up.

This thing is badass! Super easy to assemble and sturdy af. It barely even vibrates at full speed. If you use an sd card you need to format it and rename your toolpath if you use cura otherwise it won’t read the files. A little bit of a learning curve but as my 4th 3d printer I think it’s my new favorite.