Nice work sir! If I can ever get both of my printers working well, I really need to put myself "back to school" and learn now to do my own modelling. The brand new Ender 3 V2 I bought is a total lemon, so I'm fighting with that while trying to mod my busted old Ender 5 Plus at the same time. It's been a tough slog, but I'm making *some* progress.
This was a historic weekend, as my poor old Ender 5 Plus finally got some much needed love. After upgrading to the SKR 1.4 Turbo board with 2209 drivers, next target was the PSU. When I bought this 2 years ago, it came with a *terrible* PSU, so that was replaced with a 450W Meanwell immediately. Since I upgraded the board however, I noticed something bad when I hooked the printer up to a UPS: I could pull a STEADY 575W from the wall JUST by heating the bed. Out of a 450W PSU, not good.
So I listened to my inner Scotty from Star Trek: "we need more power Captain!!!". Yes, yes we do, hence a new 600W Meanwell unit:
Now this thicc boi isn't fitting in the stock PSU compartment, so arrangements had to be made. I basically replicated what Kris from Kersey Fabrications YT channel did, and drilled some extra holes in the back of the case to route the wires, and mounted the PSU externally on the rear with some 3d printed brackets. Would have much preferred metal mounts, but this will do:
Mod #2 in this round was the Micro Swiss all metal hot end. Bought this thing ages ago, but due to the "great basement flood of 2019" I didn't get around to installing it until now, about bloody time:
Mod #3 required a printed part from my sketchy E3 V2, thankfully it managed it with no issues:
This was for the Bondtech BMG extruder, since Creality extruders are a blight upon humankind. I needed a new plate to align the thick BMG with the stock filament sensor:
Mounted up:
Now that he's all modded up, I gave him a name. Some old nerds might remember the movie Short Circuit, from way back, family movie about a robot named Johnny-5:
I've also been doing lots of toying with Marlin, and all the newer levelling features, mesh creation, etc. Big learning curve there, but I managed to get auto-alignment working on my Z-screws via the G34 command, and via the LCD. Very cool stuff. I split my Z-motors off onto different steppers so I can align them with each other in firmware, down to 0.02mm accuracy:
