It’s tempting to jump straight into a four-color print once the AD5X is put together, but the first job is a better test with one spool loaded in a single IFS channel. Whatever you run into, whether it’s bed adhesion, a loose belt, or a leveling pass that needs redoing, is easier to sort out without also troubleshooting filament switching at the same time.
PLA or PETG are the more forgiving choices for this first run, and both are among the materials Flashforge lists for the AD5X. Pick a simple model with a flat base and nothing overhanging, something you can watch finish in well under an hour.
On speed, don’t push straight to the printer’s ceiling for this one. The AD5X is rated for up to 300 mm/s printing and 600 mm/s travel moves, and its CoreXY frame handles that pace better than most machines can. Still, a slower default profile from Orca-Flashforge gives you a cleaner baseline for comparison. Once a print at moderate speed comes out clean, stepping up afterward is a much easier call to make.
Stay near the printer for the first layer no matter what speed you land on. Warping, weak adhesion, or a leveling result that needs another pass all show up here first, and it’s the one stage worth watching in person rather than checking on later. Once a few layers are down cleanly, the rest of the print rarely needs help.
The AD5X also includes power-loss recovery, meant to pick a print back up close to where it stopped after an outage. It’s a genuinely useful safety net, but not a reason to leave a first print unattended. You’re still learning how the machine behaves at this point, so treat recovery as a backup plan rather than a substitute for watching it work.
A first layer that lays down flat and even is the real test here; if it doesn’t, the diagnostic sequence for a first layer that won’t stick is the next place to look before touching anything else. If the same patchy result keeps showing up print after print, rerun the checks in the AD5X calibration guide rather than adjusting settings at random.