Ender 5 Printing Guide

Last modified by Darren Cocco on 2026/01/13 11:34

Safety Notes

Keep your hands away from the bed and nozzle - they are hot!

It is better to stop the print via the printer’s control menus rather than cutting the power because printers need a controlled cooldown with their fans running to prevent molten plastic migrating too high up into the extruder. If you have cut power, you can always just power it back on to resume controlled cooling

Motors are generally not strong enough to cause significant damage or injury if jams occur, and can even be pushed aside to clear a jam if necessary.

Ender Slicing Configuration

WARNING
Creality Ender printers require you to add the G29 command in the .gcode in order to perform autolevelling. Enter Expert Mode and then the Custom GCode in your slicer for the current printer configuration to make sure that G29 is run after G28 as shown in the image below.

Printing

Setup

If the screen on the front is dark, the printer is probably off. The on/off button is at the front left.

Navigation

The knob on the right of the machine is used for navigating the printer settings. Turn the knob to toggle through menu items. Press the knob to submit the menu item, and to back out there is often a "Main" item that will take you back.

Loading filament

Unload old filament first using this section of the guide.
Navigate to the Change filament option
Select your material type from the list. It will then heat to the temperature associated with that material.
When it prompts you, load the filament into the nozzle and press the knob.
Some of the old colour may be remaining in the system so continually press the knob until it extrudes with the correct colour.

Insert SD card

The MicroSD card goes into the hole at the front of the machine, as pictured. Be careful when inserting it because there is a gap around the card reader which is large enough to insert the MicroSD card.

Printing

Once your MicroSD card is in the printer, select the Print from Media option, and navigate through the file system to your file.
The bed will heat to the target temperature. This is done so that the first layer of extruded material is able to stick to it more easily
After heating the bed, it will perform a bed levelling procedure.
After the bed levelling procedure, it will start to print. It's worth standing by and watching the first layer or two of the print, because if something is going to go wrong in the print it is most likely to go wrong in the first couple of layers.