Introduction

After looking around for a semi-professional 3D printer for six months, and then agonizing over the price for another six months I finally purchased a Ultimaker S5 Pro bundle in January 2022.

Why I Bought It

I bought my first 3D printer for rapid prototyping in 2020-2021. I started off with a JGAurora A5 printer that cost under $ 600 CDN. The printer got the job done, but required a lot of setup and constant tweaking, specifically with bed leveling. So after about six months of that I started looking around at other options and landed on the Ultimaker S5 Pro bundle. It was significantly more expensive than I would have liked but eventually I pulled the trigger and retired my JGAurora A5 printer.

The difference was notable, specifically the bed leveling, material handling and the enclosure. The printing was more consistent in terms of prints completing. What I noticed immediately is that with the S5 if the print failed, more often than not it was a user issue. The ability to print directly from Cura to the printer over the network was great, printing through the digital factory was even better.

The old workflow involved a raspberry PI running OctoPrint connected to the printer via USB, and Simplify 3D for the slicer. When looking around at slicers I initially tried Cura, but wasn’t impressed so I shelled out for Simplifiy 3D. Once I had purchased the S5, Cura was clearly the way to go as it integrated material with the material handling, made sure the right cores were loaded and essentially turned 3D printing into a push to print operation.

The S5 disappointed me in one major way, print quality. That’s not to say the print quality was bad, it wasn’t. The print quality was in fact better then the JGAurora A5, it just wasn’t 12K better.

What I Like about the S5

• It just works
• Digital Factory
• Enclosure
• Material station
• Air Handler unit
• Dual Core
• Print Speed
• Build Volume

What I Love about the S5

• the ability to load six spools of filament
• the NFC filament detection
• Cura Integration
• Print Quality and Consistency
• The broad range of supported materials
• Works well with 3rd party filaments
• Filament dryer in the material station – although I am skeptical of the effectiveness
• Ability to queue jobs and have the printer wait until the previous job is removed from the build plate
• Low to no maintenance

What I Don’t Like

• the NFC filament detection – it can be finicky
• Sync’ing the material list between Cura and the Printer
• filament breaking off in the material station – requiring disassembly
• Print Bed – Glass
• I wish the enclosures doors didn’t have such a large gap.
• Camera

Air Handling

One of the reasons for buying this printer was to print ABS, so the plan was to duct the output from the air handler through to the outside right from the start. I didn’t want the VOC’s or the smell in the office, so I designed a flange for the back of the air handling unit to connect a dryer hose and ducted it to the outside. If your interested you can download the FreeCad File from here.

Reseller and Ultimaker Support

I have had zero interaction with Ultimaker support in the 4 years of ownership. I think their online help systems and documentation is excellent. My single interaction with support was through the reseller when I purchased filament about a year ago. I ordered a few rolls of ABS filament, and while the box was labeled as ABS, the printer would detect it as PETG. Not a big deal, but really? So was the box mislabelled or was the wrong NFC paper ring installed? Unfortunately, I don’t know. I never heard back from Ultimaker or the reseller.

Filament

Over the life of the printer I have printed a mix of Ultimaker branded filament along with 3rd party filament. I find the Ultimaker filament expensive. The spools are typically smaller, 750 grams vs 1000 grams from third party vendors.

The one downside of the 3rd party vendors is that some of the cardboard spools can have issues retracting filament when the printer is changing spools. The cardboard spool appears to bind in the material station on the hold down clip at the top of the bay. I have ended up with about a meter and a half of material all over the inside of the material handler. Not a big deal, just annoying.

I probably use Polymaker filament 90 percent of the time. Here in Canada the official Ultimaker reseller is selling 750 grams of PLA for $ 84.00, where as I can purchase a 1 kg spool of Polymaker PLA for 33.00 online. While the spool detection is nice, its not worth $ 51.00 per reel.

Camera

Sorry, but I can’t believe the S5 left the factory with that camera. Someone at Ultimaker should have been fired for that thing. The visibility is horrible, you can’t see the entire print bed, and depending on the position of the print bed you can’t see anything. I guess if the point was to check off a feature on a brochure, then sure, mission accomplished. But seriously what was the point?

Apparently the camera in the S7 has been updated/changed, but I can’t speak to its effectiveness.

Touchscreen and UI

The touchscreen is great, its responsive, it displays all the useful information for the print as well as the material loaded in the material station. The interface has a number of setup and maintenance functions built in to get you back up and running quickly.

Room Air Filter

I purchased an in room air filter with a HEPA filter almost immediately after getting the S5. The gaps between the enclosure doors left me nervous (possibly for no reason), but I felt better safe than sorry. The S5 lives in my 300 sq ft office in the basement.

The solution (hack) I came up with dealing with the gap in the doors was to apply painters tape over the gap and then open and close the doors a few times. The tape would stick to the one edge and act like a really poor seal but it cut the size of the gap down significantly. I was initially concerned that the gap was engineered to allow a sufficient volume air into the enclosure, but I never had any issues where the enclosure “overheated” causing printing issues when the tape was applied. Every couple of months I would replace the tape.

Digital Factory

The Digital factory feature is really nice. I resisted using it at first, as the connection between the printer and the Cura worked well. But once I tried it, I was hooked. If you have a shop with multiple printers this feature is must have, as it will automatically find the next available printer with the right print cores loaded and the right filament loaded and routes the job to it. I stuck with essentials subscription which is included with the printer. The essentials account is limited to 1 printer and 1 user with limited library support. While I am sure the other subscription levels are essential for managing large print farms, as the owner of a single printer I cannot justify the $ 600 to 1800.00 per year subscription cost for the Professional subscription.

The web interface is well laid out, however It would be nice to see more additional information about the material station. I would like to see the material in each slot, along with the humidity. Currently only the materials connected to their respective print cores, but thats a strange place to show core information as it has nothing to do with the material station.

Auto Leveling

I realize that most if not all printers on the market today have auto leveling, but coming from two inexpensive printers with manual leveling the S5 is bullet proof. It has worked flawlessly for me to the point that I forget that it actually performs it before each print. In the four years I have had the printer I never had to manually adjust the bed. I have had a couple of instance where bed leveling feature failed due to a small string of filament was stuck to the head but that was easy to resolve.

Print Cores

I love the quick change print cores and the different print core options. I probably print 99 percent of all the jobs with the AA 0.4. I have only used the other cores for very limited testing, and stay away from the water soluble or break-a-way material. I find it expensive and the water soluble material messy.

I have had to retire two print cores in the last four years. If I remember correctly the one core had north of 1500 hrs on it so I was OK with that. Unfortunately the second “had an unscheduled retirement” as the core needed to be cut out of the head due to filament getting backed up above the print nozzle essentially locking the core into the head.

Material Station

For me the material station was a must have. It was easy to integrate, simply add power, data/control, connect a couple of Bowden tubes, power up the printer, let it detect the material station and off you go.

I wanted to be able to load the Material Station up with material and not worry about it, and it did exactly that. I typically will load two or three of the bays with the same material, and never have to worry about it pausing a print and then wait for me to change a spool. Is the material handler fool proof, no it is not. I have had filament get stuck in the feeder tube which required some disassembly to remove. After that second time i stopped using breakaway material as it seem to happen with that material type. The breakaway material always seemed brittle so i stopped using it. No point looking for trouble.

I also loved the idea of the dehumidifier built into the material station, but I am not sure of it effectiveness. The spec sheet says it keeps humidity below 40% but there is no good way to know for sure unless you install a temperature / humidity sensor in the material station.

Print Bed

The glass print bed works OK. For the most part removing prints from the glass is not a problem but patience is required, as it works best if the bed is fully cooled before trying to remove the print. I have had three or four print jobs over the years so badly stuck to the glass they were extremely difficult to remove. I am currently on my second sheet of glass, the first one became so badly pitted it was affecting print quality. While prints were not failing due to the pitting, the surface finish wasn’t good. In general I really don’t like the surface of finished prints when the finished side is up against the glass.

When I purchased the S5 magnetic print beds were just becoming a thing. I understand there are some third party options for the Ultimaker S5 but I have not tried them.

Would I buy it again

The short answer is unfortunately, no I would not. It’s a great printer but at +12K CDN (Jan 2022 pricing) for the S5 Pro bundle that is hard to swallow. I recently checked the local reseller for the S7 Pro bundle and noticed the price has jumped to north of 16K CDN. I have to wonder how well they are selling, with all the other options out there.

Having said all that the printer has stood up very well, has been a reliable workhorse and continues to print with very few issues. But the initial cost of the printer is just too high to justify, and I think there are printers on the market that are a better value.

I think that is all for today. Cheers!