When things are going right, don't F with it.

Well you can tell by the title that I screwed something up.

Backstory.....

As you most likely know I recently got the Ender 5 FDM printer to print in plastic. I can say that I really like the printer, but dislike the manual and the information out there on how to work it. So it was crash course time, but that is not what I screwed up.

First off.... my first FDM print was this which turned out great. The precision on it was amazing (resin can warp quite easily making assembling parts hard), but this top of this pyramid was snug and fit almost exact. I had to shave the slightest bit of material off and it fit tight. No glue holding that in. Its that tight. I will need to finish some pieces on it later to finish up the larger section of the pyramid.

SOMETHING BIGGER

So I decided to try something a little big bigger! Holy cow these prints take awhile, but when I think about the size of it and printing it in one large piece compared to the breaking down of lots of pieces on my Resin Printer its all about the same.

Here is what I decided to print!

A TINY ROLL OF PLA COMES WITH THE PRINTER

Make certain you order a full roll of PLA to arrive with your printer.

Then I quickly discovered I was going to run out of PLA! Unfortunately all the online videos and manual don't say how to swap material mid print. Nor did I have any extra PLA here! Quick order from Amazon got a new spool coming in the following day.

The Ender 5 does something cool. You can pause the print yes, even for a long time. However I can also turn it off while paused and the printer will pick up where it left off! This was cool. Swapping PLA with no idea how to do it was not.

CHANGING PLA ROLL DURING A PRINT

BTW you need to have the nozzle heated up to pull out the current line of PLA to put the new roll on. This means I had to be quick because believe it or not there is not a command on my digital display to change PLA. Not out of the box anyhow, because every video I watched had a command prompt for it. Mine did not. So while on Pause the nozzle was still warm I pulled out the remaining old PLA and put the new one in.

So I got the new roll on, figured out that it needed a slightly higher temperature to print (so had to figure that out- but every roll of material you get has those settings on the roll). Finally I had things printing again and the swap worked perfectly and the machine was off to printing again!

AFTER ALL THIS I CAN STILL SCREW IT UP

Things were going great but I can't help myself from messing with things. The columns on the terrain piece were getting higher and looking good. However I just had to try and put a model in there (my Cadian trooper) to see the scale and what it could look like while printing. When I took the miniature out I broke a column with my hand! I did not expect it to be quite as fragile, but it is sitting on a heated bed and I was trying to stay clear of the printer.

So I paused the print and attempted to glue the column back in place! The printer still had to print the capital of the column and the arches above it, so I had to try and get it as straight as possible. The glue did not hold it well so I got out the baking soda for a quicker cure and did my best to get the column straight up and down.

Lesson: Keep hands out of the print in progress.

In the end the capital of the column printed just slightly crooked, but it did print. Once complete I will show some more pictures to see how noticeable it is on the final print. The terrain piece is supposed to be ruins so it should be OK.

Here is the crooked column