Latest Hands-on Review: Ultimaker S5 by 3dprinting.com

Original link: https://3dprinting.com/reviews/ultimaker-s5-review/

Hands-On Review: Ultimaker S5

May 19, 2020

For all of our BigRep filament reviews we used the Ultimaker S5 with mostly default print profiles in Cura in order to generate results that the typical user can expect. We also promised a review of the printer itself. By printing an array of different objects in a range of materials for the filament reviews, I got a good sense of the S5. So hopefully this review provides you with something more useful than a spec sheet with max build dimensions and extruder temperatures.

The S5 arrived in a large box and was very well packaged. There are plastic tabs on the outside of the box that have to be popped out to open the box, and several custom inserts keep everything in place during shipping.

Every material printed well with the profiles available in Cura. That’s a big deal and one of the many features that separate the S5 from DIY desktop 3D printers. Searching for good print profiles online and then having to spend hours printing with them and tweaking them just to get decent prints is a common endeavor among makers out there. Print profiles that work right out of the box are a true blessing.

I’d confirmed that the S5 can make great looking prints in a range of materials, that it can print quickly, can handle two-color printing, dissolvable support printing, and even dissolvable support printing with moving parts, so the only thing left to test was endurance. Sure, the dice tower took 14 hours to complete but that’s small potatoes compared to this highly scaled up Crinkle Lamp.

Overall, the Ultimaker S5 is a workhorse for professional and creative environments. It produces quality prints and is incredibly reliable, easy to use, and versatile. It will fit in just as well at design studios, prototyping companies, and architectural firms.