Everybody who owns a 3D FDM printer desires to print their tasks sooner with out sacrificing high quality. Luckily, there are customized firmware choices that may allow you to enhance the print speeds of even the perfect 3D printers on the market.
Klipper is without doubt one of the hottest decisions for pace and high quality, however it’s not a beginner-friendly alternative. It is a customized firmware that it’s essential to first configure on a single-board pc (like a Raspberry Pi) that works along with your printer’s important board to spice up obtainable processing energy.
Enter the Creality Sonic Pad (opens in new tab). The Sonic Pad is a Klipper (opens in new tab) controller that features every part you have to calibrate and optimize your printer in a single straightforward package deal. Your printer will nonetheless should be Klipper appropriate, however assuming it’s, the Sonic Pad takes lots of the stress and energy out of the method because you need not get your individual single board pc.
Let’s check out the Sonic Pad and see how easy it’s to go to the Klipper and calibrate the printer and print. For this text, we’ll use the Ender 3 S1 Professional and the newly supported Ender 5 S1. Let’s examine how a lot sooner we will print and the way the standard holds up.
Creality Sonic Pad: Design
The Creality Sonic Pad has a 7-inch colour contact display with a decision of 1024 x 600. The physique is fabricated from laborious plastic. It is light-weight, however has nice really feel and construct high quality. Two standing LEDs and an influence button are situated on the fitting facet of the unit.
Two USB ports are on the left facet. Across the again are two extra USB ports (one labeled digital camera), an Ethernet port, and a PS/2 port for connecting the accelerometer for tuning calibration. Lastly, the pad is held in an upright place by two base toes.
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Creality Sonic Pad: Setup
The Sonic Pad is an easy plug-and-play system. The very first thing you’ll do after activating the pad is to pick your printer mannequin. The Sonic Pad is appropriate with many Creality printer fashions, in addition to different printers that may run Klipper firmware. Creality consists of directions for including help for fashions from different producers. The printer.cfg file that Klipper wants for firmware is a very powerful factor you may want.
After deciding on your mannequin (in our case, Ender 3 S1 Professional and Ender 5 S1), you have to observe the on-screen directions and insert an SD card into the indicated USB port to put in the Klipper firmware for printer. Insert the SD card, then activate the printer and join the USB cable to the pad and the printer.
After the printer is flashed, join it to the Sonic Pad and the on-screen wizard will stroll you thru the remainder of the setup course of. The entire course of solely takes about 10 to fifteen minutes to finish. Setting the z-shift, manually leveling the mattress, after which auto-leveling are the most important steps within the course of. Nonetheless, the auto degree is way sooner than the inventory model, which is a plus.
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After finishing the preliminary setup, you possibly can transfer on to a few of the extra superior calibrations. Step one is to carry out PID (Analog, Integral and Spinoff) tuning for each the hotend and the mattress. These choices are discovered within the settings and superior menus.
After that, we wish to run the tuning offset calibration, which is slightly below the PID choices. You have to a bracket for the sensor to sit down on to carry out this take a look at, for which you could find the file on the USB drive. Simply reduce and print the mannequin. we did this on the Ender 3 S1 Professional earlier than changing it to Klipper.
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The bracket will probably be hooked up to the hotend with the 2 longer screws included with the sound pad. As soon as related, the accelerometer sensor will probably be related to the PS/2 port on the again of the pad earlier than continuing with the take a look at. The hotend will begin vibrating as soon as the take a look at begins.
The take a look at will take a number of minutes to finish, after which you can be requested to maneuver the sensor to the mattress. This may be tough as a result of the hotend doesn’t transfer away. Earlier than continuing, we fastened the sensor to the mattress with duct tape. The mattress will start to vibrate and as soon as full, the pad will calculate the perfect enter modulator and acceleration to make use of for the heater.
Creality Sonic Pad: Efficiency and Print High quality
We reduce some fashions for the Ender S1 Professional at 140mm/s as soon as every part was prepared. The primary mannequin is a Flexi Yeti from Flexifactory, adopted by a photograph of the identical print in inventory firmware set up at 60mm/s. Each prints have been flawless. there have been no joint issues and no different imperfections. The Flexi Yeti took about 3.4 hours to print utilizing the Sonic Pad, in comparison with 6.3 hours with inventory firmware.
Sonic Pad was in a position to keep print high quality whereas rising print pace to barely greater than twice as quick because the inventory firmware. Do the outcomes converse for themselves? As a result of the primary yeti printed so effectively, we determined to print the child flexi yeti on the identical pace (140mm/s) and the standard was wonderful as soon as once more. Child Flexi print instances have been decreased to round 1.5 hours with the Sonic Pad, from 3 hours inventory.
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The primary print we determined to attempt was an Eastman bodice. That is an unimaginable Skeletor bust printed on Creality HP Extremely PLA at a print pace of 200mm/s on the inside partitions and 100mm/s on the outer partitions. We could not be happier with the outcomes, which took half the time it could have taken inventory firmware – 6.5 hours, down from 13 hours.
We determined to maneuver the Ender 5 S1 into place and set it up with the Sonic Pad for the following take a look at prints so we might run each Enders on the identical time. So as to add a printer, merely click on Swap Printer on the high of the display, then click on Add. We shortly arrange the Ender 5 S1 following the identical steps as earlier than.
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For the ultimate take a look at mannequin, we went with one other bra from Eastman’s unimaginable assortment, this time the Hellboy bra. The orange PLA labored very effectively and with the identical settings because the earlier mannequin, the outcomes are passable to say the least. As soon as once more, print instances have been reduce in half – 6.5 hours, down from 13 hours
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Sonic Pad | Inventory firmware | % discount in printing time |
| Flexi Yeti | 3.4 hours | 6.3 hours | 46% |
| Child Yeti | 1.5 hours | 3 hours | 50% |
| Skeleton bust | 6.5 hours | 13 hours | 50% |
| Hellboy Bust | 6.5 hours | 13 hours | 50% |
Must you purchase the Creality Sonic Pad?
The Creality Sonic Pad is a should in case you have a appropriate FDM printer. It gives drastically elevated print speeds with out sacrificing high quality. Mix that with the convenience of setup and calibration, in addition to the included accelerometer for enter modulator tuning and acceleration, and it is a clear winner in our ebook.
The Sonic Pad can also be a smart funding for individuals with a number of printers as a result of it may well help as much as 4 printers or a mixture of two printers and two cameras on a single pad. The included Internet UI can also be a pleasant contact, permitting you to observe and make adjustments on the fly – one thing not potential with a inventory Marlin firmware printer.
