Ultimaker S5 Review

Based on hands-on during customer training and general knowledge

Review Summary

The Good

Excellent User Interface
Enclosed (with addon)
Dual extrusion (2 materials)
Excellent remote management
Excellent material combability
6-bay optional material swapping
Simple and low maintenance

The Bad

Expensive addons
2.85mm Filament standard
Price

The Ultimaker S5 3D printer targets “ambitious” professionals from beginners to professionals wanting leverage reliable, tweak-free 3D printing.

Specifications:

Build Volume: 330 x 240 x 300 mm
Number of Extruders; 2 (non-IDEX)
Filament: 2.85mm
Nozzle size: 0.25, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8mm
Swappable HotEnds (Print Cores)
Heted Buildplate (20-140 °C)
Built-in camera
Slicer: Ultimaker Cura
Supported OS: MacOS, Windows and Linux
File Formats: STL, OBJ, X3D, 3MF

I’m sure most users of an Ultimaker 3 or later would agree that the machines are incredible reliable and easy-to-use 3D printers, specially if they have used 3D printers before.

The complete package is what makes Ultimakers great machines for small and large businesses, as well as schools with a clear goal (and budget) for 3D printing.

Everything from the startup menu, to documentation, troubleshooting and material compability really helps the Ultimaker S5 to be one of the to-go-to 3D Printers.

Design

Ultimaker S5 is a typical “professional” desktop 3D printer, in a format perfect for both an designers table, or just in the corner of an open office.

The beatuiful design with a big open window in front makes your office look a tad better, but is also great for quickly having a glance at the lit build volume, and see how the print goes.

If you’re at your desk, you can of course just look though the built-in-camera.

On the front you’re greeted with a large touchscreen with a fantastic user interface.

Only downside is that you have to access the back of the machine to swap materials, unless you upgrade for the Material station.

If you go for the Pro Bundle, that includes the S5 Air Manager and S5 Material Station you end up with a really capable 3D Printing station in an efficient format.

Ultimaker S5 features

Ultimaker S5 offers a ton of features that build on the Ultimaker 3 success. Below are mention of a few extra interesting features (good or bad).

Single-head Dual Extrusion.

The Ultimaker S5 continues on Ultimaker 3s dual hot-end (or Print-Core) print head, which has 2 print-cores that comes in different nozzle sizes or even nozzle material.

The left one is static, while the right print-core is mounted slightly lower. The right print-core is mechanically lifted with a lever in the corner of the machine, and thus you have two nozzles that can operate at different heights without interfering with each other.

So when Left nozzle is printing, the right one is further away and wont “hit” the print. This is a great compromise between IDEX (individual Dual extrusion) along one axis and regular dual-extrusion where both nozzles are on the same height and can interfere.

Ultimaker Print Core hotends

The print cores is a cleaver way of allowing different print characteristics, such as PVA-support material or high-strength materials, without risking to clog hot ends using less optimized settings. There are 4 main categories, AA, BB, CC and DD.

AA comes in 0.25, 0.4 and 0.8mm nozzle sizes and are made fore regular materials, providing a great finish.

BB are available in 0.4 and 0.8mm nozzle sizes and made for support material (PVA).

CC Print cores come in 0.4 and 0.6mm nozzle sizes and are made for technical materials.

DD Print cores are fairly new and made for the most abrasive materials such as metal filament support (part of the metal printing kit).

The print cores themselves are really smart, as they have chips inside them that tells your printer (and slices) what settings you can and cannot use. This is a great way to avoid multiple users trying to print with the wrong settings, for what the machine is configured for. Increasing accessibility in larger companies and reducing maintenance.

The print-cores are reliable enough that the price to replace one isn’t too much in the larger picture. Specially if you account for the time an employee cost to do service on your 3D printer.

NFC Filament

Another nice features is the optional NFC chipped Ultimaker filament. These spools of filament will be recognized by the machine, and again avoid mismatch between users trying to print in a material that isn’t loaded in the machine.

You can also estimate usage of a spool and receive a warning if your spool wont make it through your print.

Ultimaker S5 (and other ultimakers) are open standard filament machines, so you don’t have to run NFC chipped spools.

Unfortunately Ultimaker is one of those manufactures still using the 2.85mm filament diameter. This limits material availability a bit and can be a issue if you already have a ton of material in 1.75mm standard.

Ultimaker Certified Materials

Ultimaker actually encourages other manufacturers to have their materials certified by Ultimaker and accessible within Cura.

This means an user can download presets for 3rd party manufacturers like Polymaker PolyCast and get as close to perfect printing without tuning the material themselves.

Scalable printing with several Ultimakers

It’s no secret that the Ultimaker S-series are aimed for customers who really want to leverage 3D printing with more than one machine.

Ultimaker Cura and the Digital Factory makes it incredible easy to let users across your company queue prints across several machines. Since the machines know what material is loaded, or have material stations that can swap to the correct filament, the system will match your job with a suitable printer and off you go.

You can also have administrators accept/decline jobs depending on parameters, all to increase throughput.

If you have several prints in a room they will light up indicating when a print is complete, or if a user have to swap a spool or print core.

This really is a fantastic way of utilizing 3D printing in schools or large companies, and makes it almost fool-proof when handling printing.

Ultimaker Pro Bundle

If you really want to get one of the best 3D printer systems out there, you want to add the Material station and Air Manager. I experienced both, and they really are worth it for a professional customer.

Ultimaker Material Station is a box that sits underneath the machine and gives you 6-spool capacity with automatic switching. Meaning your machine will automatically swap to a new spool if it runs out, or if you send a job that requires another color or material.

You can really set this up as you want, and for uses who only print white PLA you can have 5 spools of that and a PVA support material for example, making sure you can just continue printing for days.

This system is fantastic when scaled in a larger printfarm. More automation and less hands-on.

Ultimaker Air Manager mostly filters out particles and odors, while ensuring the machine is fully enclosed, making it easier to print materials like nylon or ABS.

Ultimaker S5 Print Quality

The hands-on I had was customer prints only, so I can’t show anything. But I can confirm that with the Ultimaker materials we used, it really is fantastic finish and quality. Specially on newly opened spools, or ones that have been stored in the Material station.

PVA is more difficult as it decays with moisture, so it’s not as “perfect” as it may seem, but as long as you keep it dry it works great. PVA printing in general is difficult, and Ultimaker does it better than almost everyone else.

Dimensional stability is also very impressive, specially with certified materials.

Review conclusion

My thoughts on the Ultimaker S5 is that it’s a fantastic printer that despite its large price tag (around 10’000 USD with Pro Bundle) actually pays off in the long run, for the right customer.

The right customer

In my mind, the right customer is a medium to large engineering, architect or design firm that have had a few geeks playing with 3D Printing, but want to enable their staff. Sure enough, schools or universities with a focus on the same areas are also a perfect fit, as long as the money is there.

The Ultimaker S5 suits these customers since it’s close to the “Apple Experience”. It’s incredible reliable and have tons of mechanisms in place to make it idiot-proof, even in an environment filled with sloppy users, who have never gotten any real training for 3D Printing.

Adjust your budget

With the scalability though network printing and print-management software, you should really aim to buy more than one S-Series ultimaker in the long run, specially when you realise how well it work and hopefully see the creativity and use spread within your organization.

If you need for 3D Printing is fairly new, and you’re a enthusiast or small business wanting to try it out, I wouldn’t suggest spending 10 grand on this as you first machine. You should have a clear indication that you have a need, before investing in an Ultimaker. My tip for this customer group is to try something else first, see how much tinker it CAN be, and when you start counting work-hours spent tinkering, you can accumilate the budget for an Ultimaker fairly quickly.

You can also consider the smaller Ultimaker S3, which offers the same print quality at a smaller volume and without the fancy Pro Bundle. The Ultimaker S3 is still compatible with the fancy print management system.