Flashforge Adventurer 5M (AKA "The Mrs. Left me unsupervised with an amazon order")

[chaos_engineer]

I've had a Monoprice Voxel/Flashforge Adventurer 3 for a few months that was gifted to me by a buddy. Great printer, but it was slow and really only liked PLA. So I've been kinda looking for a faster upgrade that could handle other filament types. Found a great deal the on the Adventurer 5M (299USD Amazon Prime deal) and jumped on it.

Setup was a breeze, I had it out, leveled, and printing in about 15 minutes from delivery. Here's the first benchy, which took 14 minutes.

Quick vid in action. Real time.

https://imgur.com/a/bZLP3wy

Today it moved to it's permanent home. First mod is to relocate the spool holder from the rear to the side. Running that now, and also testing ABS. So far, so good.

it's a lot louder than the voxel, but I can quiet it down if I enclose it.

I'll post some periodic updates as I live with it and see how I feel over time.

 

[chaos_engineer]

Bed adhesion on the textured plate has been a bit of a pain. Some filament works fine, some filament loses adhesion halfway through a print. Spent the weekend methodically working through various permutations to try and find a "one size fits all" solution with the included flashprint slicer software without much success. Late Sunday I switched to a version of Orca slicer that's been customized for Flashforge printers. It's got a LOT more fine-grained control of settings and importantly, allows for individual customized profiles for specific filaments. I can tune temps, speeds, whether or not I want a raft, z offsets, and all kinds of other stuff I haven't learned about yet. It's made the difference and I'm getting a lot less spaghetti the last couple of days.

I got some adhesive, but I'm not going to use it except as a last resort.

 

[chaos_engineer]

How not to change filament. On the AD5M, to change, you clip the filament at the top of the extruder, run the last bit through as you add your new filament, and carry on.

Well, I clipped wrong.

I spent several hours trying to chase down the problem thinking I had messed up settings or something because load/change worked fine, but as soon as I tried to run a print the feeder stopped working. Wasn't until I started tearing it down to see if I had some kind of a gear problem that I found the culprit.

Lesson learned, and back to printing critters.

 

[Redbrickman]

Congrats on your new machine, I'm sure you will have a lot of fun with it. With regards to bed adhesion if you are using a PEI plate then I struggled at first with adhesion on my Voron but found out it was down to proper cleaning of the plate. Everyone says use IPA but that is not the whole answer. IPA will clean it but also leaves a film sometimes. The solution is to wash the plate with ordinary dish soap, rinse and then dry with a clean pice of kitchen towel. When drying it and aferwards do not touch the printing surface with your fingers.
First layer squish also plays a big part and with ABS you sometimes have to move the nozzle a little higher than with PLA.

I would only print ABS with the machine enclosed, to prevent warping and also to cut down on the fumes and VOC particles.

If you intend to print ASA/ABS regularly I'd consider adding a filter. There are several designs which might have a suitable version for your machine. Google Nevermore Filter and Bento Box filter for more info.

 

[chaos_engineer]

I switched to a different plate, it wasn't really successful so I went back to the textured PEI plate. I also added some LED strip lights just above the printer so I have better vis while printing. The 5M doesn't have any lights included. So for that experiment, lights==good. Alternate plate==shiny but not good.

Since than I've been fiddling with minutia in my prints trying to get consistent finished prints without rafts. Switching fill types, tweaking the z offset and the liftoff to try and keep the head from bumping the print, etc... Getting more consistent, so I'll call it a win.

Also dialing in profiles for different filaments and nozzle openings in orca, which I think is also part of the equation.

Knocked this up in tinkercad last week. Deck box for a MTG commander deck.

One of several prototypes as I dialed it in.

Finished product. Not 100% happy with the inset but it's a model problem not a print problem and for me it's "good enough"

And some fidget toys.

 

[Redbrickman]

Looking good. For tuning I found thius guide excellent

https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/index_tuning.html

 

[chaos_engineer]

Looking good. For tuning I found thius guide excellent

https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/index_tuning.html

Nice! Thanks for that link.

 

[chaos_engineer]

Ordered the enclosure kit. Only did about 80% of it for now. I have to add about 7" of height to the top of the shelf to get the head frame and top cover on it, and right now it's not all that critical. I'm not printing ABS or anything really temp sensitive right now to NEED it fully enclosed, I just wanted to spiff it up.

 

[The Hat]

Ordered the enclosure kit.

That looks very impressive, but do you not find these enclosures hamper your pleasure working with your printer, (nice colours)..

I’ve noticed you don’t enclose your filament rolls in anything..

I like my printers to roam free with no fences to hold them back and that gives me 360 access to them at all times, I don’t use any of the smelly filaments..

 

[chaos_engineer]

That looks very impressive, but do you not find these enclosures hamper your pleasure working with your printer, (nice colours)..

Not really. The side panels are affixed with 3 little button magnets at the top so they easily come off for access. Having the enclosure on cuts down a bit on the noise, which can be distracting since it's in my office and 8 feet from my desk. It will also help keep dust out of the printer enclosure (live in the desert, dust on things, even overnight, is simply a fact of life here). But most important of all, black was drab and it needed a spot of color to make my ADHD artist brain happy.

I’ve noticed you don’t enclose your filament rolls in anything..

Moisture is not a problem here so I don't need a dryer. For example, it's currently 102F and 14% relative humidity. I have a small mountain of resealable vacuum bags and dessicant pods which I keep the filaments in when I'm not printing with them, and I store those in large airtight plastic tubs. I can fit a dozen 1kg spools in each tub and then the tubs just slide into the bottom shelf of my printing station. I very likely don't even need the dessicant packs, but I've got 'em so might as well use 'em.