ender 5 pro upgrades

After owning a Creality Ender 5 pro for a year, it is time to explain what I have done to upgrade my 3d printer. Now the Ender 5 Pro is a great printer but with a little bit of tweaking and a few mods, it can be an excellent 3d printer.

All of these upgrades are able to be printed from your Ender 5. You will quickly see how these parts will help you get the most out of your Ender 5.

Ender 5 Pro upgrades and mods.

Ender 5 LCD screen back cover.

Ender 5 LCD screen back cover

The Ender 5 LCD screen back cover is made to protect the electronic circuit board from shorting out. I can’t believe it didn’t come with one. I printed it out using Black PETG at a 0.2mm layer height, upright and with no supports. Turned out really well.

I did resize it to 101% as I was reading in the comments that it was a tight fit.

Ender 5 Spool holder clip

Ender 5 Spool holder clip

The Ender 5 pro spool holder clip is a simple print that stops your filament spool from wandering all over the place. It comes in a few different sizes and you can scale it to fit your spool sizes.

I have had no issues and the 25mm spool clip works well for my 1kg PLA and PETG Sunlu filament.

Ender 5 Pro bed supports

Ender 5 Pro bed supports

This is a remix of the excellent Super Struts support for the Creality Ender 5. This is already a brilliant thing but it has been tweaked for a few details to make the installation a little easier. Now there are a few different free Ender 5 heated bed supports available but I have found these ones to be the best.

The reason for bed support is so the printer heated bed does not flex when you are printing a heavy item. When you are removing a print that is stuck the bed won’t bend as much out of shape. It will improve your big prints. This is my favorite Ender 5 Pro upgrade.

  1. Included nut retention sockets to the support arms to make it much easier to install and allow the use of Nylocks
  2. Increased the hole sizes by 0.2 mm to make bolt insertion a little easier (this may vary between printer tolerances.
  3. Uploaded parts in the correct printing orientation to reduce confusion.
  4. Tweaked the back plate symmetrically so it does not require handing.
  5. The nut retention apertures are a snug fit so it may be easier to fix a bolt to the nut and pull through from the other side.

I Printed @ 0.2 mm layer height, 50% infill, and 4 perimeters with Sunlu Black PETG. The parts do not need support.

You can find the Ender 5 bed support STL files here.

SD Card adapter housing for the Creality Ender 5

SD Card adapter housing for the Creality Ender 5

The Ender 5 micro SD card mod enables you to be able to use a full-sized SD card in the 3d printer. I like this upgrade as removing the micro SD card can be difficult as it is so small.

This is an SD card adapter housing for the Creality Ender 5. This thing includes:

Integral clips which locate in the 2020 extrusions so there is no requirement for any additional fixings. Integrated clip to lid to stop any transverse movement. Holes for cable ties to help tidy ribbon. Integrated storage slots for both SD and Micro SD cards. Card insertion symbol and USB symbol.

This is the internal adapter cable that will need to be purchased.

LANMU Micro SD to SD Card Extension Cable Adapter Flexible Extender Compatible with Ender 3 Pro/Ender 3/Ender 3 V2/Ender 5 Plus/Ender 5 Pro/CR-10S Pro/Anet A8.

Now it will work without the 3D-printed box cover but it just makes it a neater installation.

Ender 5 heat bed support

Ender 5 heat bed support
Image thingiverse

The Ender-5 Bed strain relief is designed to take the load off the cables. Over time without any strain relief, the heat bed cables could crack and come off the soldered joint. A great upgrade for the Ender 5.

Print with PETG and 10% infill for heat and load resistance.

Ender 5 Pro tool holder

Ender 5 Pro upgrade tool holder.

The Ender 5 & 5 Pro Tool holder is excellent. It has a slot for every tool that comes with your Creality Ender 5 Pro. The new version 2 even has a slot for the micro sd to USB card cap.

It just clips onto one of the upright 20×20 extruded posts. I have found it to be a really nice piece of hardware and it was one of the first things I printed for my Ender 5 pro.

Petsfang hot end blower.

Petsfang hot end blower cura files

The Petsfang 3d printed hot end blower is simply amazing. there are so many combinations and different files to download that you could be experimenting for years. There have been over 1.1 million downloads at the time of writing this so it is popular.

Petsfang plenums and ducts are professionally engineered to always produce a smooth, balanced flow of fresh air directly on the filament.

Here is a quick interactive tutorial for those that just want something already tested. You can download all .stl files from there.

If you want to use the stock 4010 fans you will need to download the bullseye files. Bullseye is designed for all stock parts with optimal cooling with the stock 4010 parts like fans and a hotend cooler. If you want to use the bigger 5015 fans then you will need the blockhead files.

Petsfang hot end blower interactive ender 5 parts list
Screen shot of Petsfang 3d Printing Technologies

It looks confusing but once you work out what hot end and fans you want to use it’s just a matter of downloading the free files. The above Ender 5 spreadsheet can be found here.

Be sure to print with PETG as it has higher heat tolerance than PLA. This is one of the best Ender 5 Pro upgrades you can do and it will teach you all about your printer.

To print the 2 Bullseye files I needed with PETG using the stock 4010 fans and stock hot end took 9.2 hours.

Print the Petfang with the following settings for PETG

Resolution: .2

Infill: 80 – 100% or 6 walls

Filament – Overture PETG Black
Bed Temp 80
Hot End Temp 240-250
Speed 40 or lower
First layer speed 30%

Support from base plate only with 70 deg overhang setting.

BFPTouch – Poor’s man BLtouch

The homemade BLTouch is called the BFPTouch. This is an auto bed level sensing device that will send the bed level measurements to your printer.

  • It can be used on all bed surfaces.
  • It is not sensitive to temperature changes.
  • What you see is what you get during the setup.
  • High accuracy and repeatability (better than anything at least at this price range! ;-) )

I like the Ender BLTouch – but the real thing is too expensive for my tastes and the clones are not that reliable and not so cheap as well.

I do not like the bulky thing, with movable wires and such, when using a servo and a mechanical end-stop. Also, I do not trust the repeatability of the servo positioning.

So the BFP touch was designed from the ideas of the following things.
Robscar Thing
Jupacreations Thing

You will only need:

  • 1x Micro Servo (e.g. TowerPro SG90)
  • 1x Optical Endstop TCST2103 (RepRap Standard)
  • 2x M3x10 to fix the optical end stop.
  • 1x M3x30 as the probe
  • 2x self-cutting screws (2×8) fix the servo
  • 1x Cheap made-in-China gift pen spring that fits the M3x30 screw.
  • Some 4-wire cable

There are some configuration file changes that will need to be made to your Ender 5 so check out the full instructions here.

3d Printed T-nut for 20×20

3d Printed T-nut for 20x20 extrusions

T-nut for 20×20 or 20×40 V-Slot aluminum extrusion (6 mm gap) compliant with original metal T-nut but adopted for an M3 nut. These are great if you need to attach extra items to the T-slot aluminum extruded rails of your Ender 5 printer.

Just get yourself some M3 hex bolts and nuts to suit, this is 3mm for the old school people. I like to use stainless steel as they don’t rust.

Profile cable clip for 20×20 extrusions

Profile clip for 20x20 extrusions

This profile clip for 20×20 extrusions is handy when you want to attach stuff to the aluminum profile. It enables you to attach items without disassembling the whole structure. Great for cable management of your 3d printer.

Now, this item comes in 4 parts that can be easily printed without support but I found that a brim helps. Just download and follow the diagram pictures and try. You can also use your own parts to replace the “Clip_holder” part.

Profile cable clip for 20x20 aluminium extrusions

The files uploaded are for “4040” aluminum and 2020 profile.

Crerality Ender 5 LED light Mod

The Ender 5 could really do with some LED lights mounted on either the front, side, or back rails. This is more of a cosmetic user-friendly idea and there are a few options around.

I have seen people put some LED light strips into the top tracks either in the middle or underneath.

Ender 5 LED light Mod

Also a small LED light strip can be mounted underneath the hot end and wired back to the power supply.

Microswiss direct-drive and hot-end upgrade

Micro Swiss Direct Drive Extruder is a drop-in plug-and-play system for Ender 5 Printers.

Even though there are no printable parts I thought I would include it for those that are wanting a more advanced Ender 5 pro upgrade. No modification is required, simply plug and play. But fine-tuning is required for perfect results. It should take you around 1 hour for this upgrade.

Features:

  • Dual-drive train
  • Hardened tool steel, CNC precision cut gears
  • Adjustable filament grip
  • Easy filament loading
  • Short, highly constrained filament path
  • Prints flexible filaments with high speed and accuracy
  • Outstanding extrusion control
  • Lightweight aluminum body

Conclusion

The Creality Ender 5 Pro is an excellent 3d printer, I have had no issues from day one apart from the voltage switch not being correct for my country. As long as you clean the heat bed, level the heat bed, use some glue stick on the mat, and use the correct temperature settings for your filament you should have no issues with a stock setup.

Check out this post if you do have 3d printing problems and their solutions.

Upgrading the Ender 5 pro with a few of the things mentioned here will make your 3d printer that much better. Not to mention if you print them all out you will save money by not having to buy the upgrades. Win-win.

Another quick tip is to hook your 3d printer to an uninterruptible power supply. This way if the power goes out your printer will stay running for a while. I just had to replace the batteries on my APC 1000 UPS and it was easy.

Let me know in the comments below what other upgrades you have for your 3d printer. Now I’m off to 3d print some mirror plugs for my motorcycle as I put on some bar end mirrors. There is always something to print to save money.

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