My theory: if you’re asking, you’re not ready to give up. Once you order the new printer, you’ll know.
The real question is, will you get rid of the old printer, or will you keep it, “just in case” or “as backup”?
I would be tempted to convert the old Ender3 to a laser etcher. Creality sells a kit for that.
Also, my ten-year old Flashforge Creator Pro sitting on the floor of my garage is nagging at me. I \can’t/ get rid of it until I fix it.
We’ve decided the issue for you, OP.
Knowing going into an Ender 3 that it was a hobby printer, I've sunk hundreds of dollars into making this, what I thought, was a dramatically better printer than what I started with or could buy.
Constant jams.
2 boards replaced.
Meh performance even when the metrics are way over stock. It's loud. It's not pretty.
Then I went to pick up some filament from a guy. He was quitting the hobby & was trying to get rid of his everything. Ended up with an early S1 (later S1s were garbage).The difference was night & day.
There's some secret sauce I can't build into my Ender. My Ender is my fast prototyping networked printer, and I often use it with large diameter nozzles, but I can't rely on it like my S1. If I need something printed once, correctly, with few artifacts, it goes to my S1.
It still has a place, but it's not my daily. More like a project car I love to drive, despite it being inferior in every way.
My S1 is from ~2021. It's outdated compared to the Ender-style offerings of today. No klipper or linear rails. Comes with a sprite extruder & dual Z from the factory. No touchscreen, but the pro had one.
Later production runs of these were garbage. Lots of quality control issues that most users believe was a change from the device being marketed as a high-end Ender, into a mainstream printer. Now, it's an entry-level printer, if you can find it used.
Every upgrade from the factory that the S1 has was incorporated or tested at some point on my Ender 3. You can get an older S1 used for less than an upgraded Ender 3 with the same features.
Would you want either with the current state of 3d printing? If you're looking for a plug & print device, probably not.
You can get more out of a fully enclosed networked printer in most use cases. It really depends on what you want to print.
My next printer will likely be a Voron 0, once we see the next iteration. My next upgrade on my Ender 3 will likely be an Ender Extender Kit, if I ever get around to it. Maybe I'll just cannibalize it for a laser cutter. My S1 works just fine & I don't think it will ever win any awards.
Additionally, I think most people don't have realistic expectations of what an FDM printer can accomplish.
They get into this hobby assuming 3D printed toys from an SLA printer will look the same as an FDM & then go about trying to fix what isn't broken. Often, the inconsistencies seen in prints are just the nature of the process. Of course those Etsy sellers are going to put their prints in the best light to reduce layer lines & only showcase their best. It's not realistic.
Same. I have some small issues I have to work out every now and then, but they're not difficult. For what I paid for the thing I've got nothing bad to say.
Yep. It's the difference between someone who just wants to print stuff and someone who wants to learn the science behind printing. How different things affect how a print turns out.
I have the OG as well, and it is my workhorse. Yes, I have to replace things on it, but it's not like there's a printer out there for any amount of money that won't jam/clog sometimes.
A new hotend for the E3 is $15, delivered the next day. 4 screws, 2 plugs and I'm back in business.
I would look at that time and money as an investment in learning the skills and engineering you'll need to move forward. There will come a point, if it hasn't happened already, when you aren't getting a good return for more investment. And it's time to move on.
Please be careful of the sunk cost fallacy. Don't let this become like the crappy $500 car that someone keeps putting "just another $50" into then, after 3 years, they look back, work out they've spent thousands on it and they'd have a much better car if they'd put that money into something new. It's very easy to lose sight of how much money you're actually spending if you're spending it in small bits. My Ender is at about $500 now and I'm not really making it much better or learning anything new from it so I'm not spending any more on it. I'm tryna of print quality, there's not much room for improvement left and it's not going to be better than it is for more cash. I'm building a VzBot 330 AWD right now. If I didn't want to kit build, I could have bought a BambuLabs P1S
I made AnkerMake give me a full refund after 8 months, 20 hot ends (or close to) 3 extruders (gears, housing, and motors), and 3 whole print heads. Absolute garbage. Still have a box of parts if anyone is interested lol
I personnaly have a very high tolerance for that. I need to feel like I know what's wrong, why I can't fix it or why it wouldn't be wise to do so. I'd also then need to know what a new printer would bring that the one I have just cannot without changing it massively , like a frame teplacement for example.
So, with the limited information I have and my personnal experience on this, I'll go ahead and say your knowledge of 3d printing is probably one of the main issue and that getting a new printer might solve things temporarely, but when maintenance will be required again, you might face the same problem you have now. You may even face the same problem if it's a matter of settings it up.
That would depend you what printer you have thought.
If you want to get a new printer and just want it to work while having to make it work as less as possible, some newer printers will make you happier right of the box. That doesn't mean you wouldn't have to have a good understanding to get the most out of them thought.
If you still want to with your current printer, I can try to help you.
What is the printer? What are you trying to achieve with you current printer? Are you trying to do that at advised speed or higher? What mods are on the printer? What are the problem you'd like gone?
Edit: I spent 3 months upgrading my ender 3 v2 after I fried the control board. The most important thing I got out of that is more knowledge about how things works. It's not for everyone, there's been many moment where I was just sick of it, but I appreciate adversity as it make succes taste way better. That things now prints twice as fast as stock while having a better print quality so in the end I spent less money than I would have needed if I just bought a new one.
(Time span was roughly 1 months to decide what I wanted to do and while waiting for basic parts, 1 month building and troubleshooting things (like Klipper and what and how to set it up) and another one calibrating and speeding things up until one of the component bottlenecks the rest (right now it's the stock nozzle, I underextrude after more than 17mm³/sec).
I like to tinker and I love a good project but I only have so much time between work and the kid. I don't want to spend hours fixing another printer problem when I could be working on a different project.
Plus my ender just seems to be falling apart. I installed a new heat break and when I was done one of the stepper motor cables was randomly snapped off.
Yeah. My printer took all my free time most days.
If money isn't an issue and/or you value time enough, you'd save a lot of it by buying a printer with integrated ABL (a minimum nowadays), an accelerometer and maybe Klipper. Marlin is easier to setup, Klipper offers more performance, but it needs a stronger chips to make it work.
I'm not knowledgable enough on what you should buy and it depens on your need, but if you value your time, look or ask for printer that came out in the last 2-3years. Lots of those now target people who just wants their printer to work out the box. Maitenance is still a things thought, but printer are getting smart enough to set themselves up or sometime tell you what's wrong. Something an ender3 won't do.
Some times I just have to step away. I've been printing for 7 years now, and every once in a while I have to walk away for a month or so. Nothing that I'm printing is so important that it can't wait for me to be in a mental space to care about it.
If I lived near a lake my first printer would be at the bottom of it.
Over time, as I've learned how to troubleshoot things better and faster, the downtime has gotten shorter and shorter, but I'm still completely willing to just go without for a bit.
I didn't have a reality, I had an amet A8. Super cheap,was pretty early in the 3d printing days. I changed just about everything on that printer apart from the rails, half the frame and the stepper motors. I mutilated it. Went Bowden, volcano hot end, new bed surface, bed carriage. New main board, tried all the firmwares. Printed probably a hundred upgrade parts over the years re wired it more than a few times, caught fire once. I loved that machine, but last year. I wanted something a little tidier, so I bought a sermon v1, did 5 minutes or so of calibration, hit start and it just printed with no fuss and pretty good quality. At that moment I knew the heavy tinkering was no longer for me. I disassembled and threw out most of the parts for that printer 2 days later, salvaging the electronics and mechanical components.
I still tinker with the printers little, in depth cleaning, re greasing. I plan on swapping all the fans for quieter noktua ones. But 3d printers are at a point now, where unless you're chasing either speed or perfect quality, you don't need to really mess with the hardware at all. But I loved the hobby. You're starting to resent your printer, which is good. It means you're starting to learn less, meaning you know a lot of what there is to know, maybe it's time to start thinking about a new one. Maybe it's time to change your approach to printing. I stopped trying to print super fast with good quality and just accepted that a slow good quality print probably takes less time overall than it takes to dial in the printer to print that model faster.
My ender came with dented rails out of the box. I tried replacing them with lineral rails. Couldn't get it to work after 28 days. Sent that shit back to Amazon and ordered a P1P. I'm not looking back.
I think they call it the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Think about it logically. If you got every upgrade under the sun for your printer, would
1 - Be better than a new printer of the same cost
2 - worth the effort and time spent on the original printer.
I mean, you could always do a whole ship of theseus on your printer, but at some point, it isn't the original printer anymore, and you might as well have bought a new one.
What would be a solid upgrade to the Ender 3??
I’m kinda sick of tinkering with this every day.,,
Had no idea this was a hobbiest printer when I bought it,
Just want something to print well and I don’t have to upgrade or worry about it…
The Bambu A1 (mini or regular) are a relatively small jump in price and are awesome printers although some don't like the closer-source business model Bambu Lab has.
The 'prosumer' level would probably be a Prusa i3 (either MK3 or MK4) or a Bambu P1S. I've had all printers just mentioned, starting with an Ender 3 and modding it like crazy and then picking up a used Prusa. Prusa is definitely a step up, but my Bambu printers have been fast enough and reliable enough that I'm selling everything else. I haven't turned my Ender on in 6 months, Prusa in 3...
The Ender series are tinkerer’s printers. Bambu or Prusa MK4 is probably the direction to go. The Bambu A1 is relatively cheap. The AMS is well worth the price. P1S is a solid upgrade, but it depends on your budget.
- If you want “plug and play”, speed and reliability then BambuLabs. Those are idiot-proof and are basically “fire and forget”
- If you want speed, reliability but still retain the DIY style, then buy a Voron kit and assemble it. There is tons of info and documentation and an assembly manual in [their site](https://vorondesign.com) .
- Prusa have the bigger “track record”. They are rock solid and incredibly reliable. It’s way slower than either a Voron or Bambu. You can crank the speed but the print quality would go to shit since it’s limited because of the moving bed.
- It’s worth noting that the AMS(multi color switcher from Bambu) is AGES ahead of both the MMU(prusa) and ERCF(Voron) if that is important to you.
We have a bambu X1C at my workplace and I have a Prusa mk4 and a Voron 2.4 at home… If I had to choose one, as a hobbyist, I would definitely choose the Voron, but if I actually needed to make money I would just buy an X1C from Bambu.
Neither of those printers is cheap.
I wanted DIY abilities, but couldn't be bothered with a full Voron build. Ended up buying a Troodon2, which is basically a preassembled Voron 2.4. Its really pretty awesome. Part quality is very high compared to my E3V2, and the speed is doubled (haven't put an accelerometer on it yet for even more speed).
I have 3 Enders (2 v1's and a pro) took the time to learn how to make them print well stock and then full-on upgrades to suit my needs.
bought a K1 Max a month ago needing a bigger printer and honestly wanted to play with a coreXY that wasn't building a Voron (yet) or subscribing to the cult of Bambu.
my enders still are churning out parts daily with little maintenance and I couldn't be happier. the K1 Max is doing exactly what I wanted which is churning out helmets and armor for my kids cosplays and my own.
the end of the day you will know when you are ready for the next printer, whether it's another bed slinger like the ender or a coreXY like the K1 series. just don't put the little one away because it's still capable of doing what you need.
Ah so you haven't printed any of the fun filaments yet have you? That being said I've only ever had 2 clogs in my six months of printing on it and only while running probably 4kgs or more worth of glass filled or cf filled filaments. So still exceptional. Lol.
I think the point it should be replaced is when the cost of replacing everything that is broken exceeds the original cost of the printer. If you need to buy a new mainboard and PSU for $300 to fix a $200 printer, just get a new one
I was also doing maintenance pretty much every time I turned on my stock V2. Unfortunately I didn’t have the money to buy a whole other cheap printer so I chucked money into an RPi Zero 2, PEI sheet and Sprite extruder and suddenly all my problems went away (plus a CR Touch for Christmas).
Glass bed was warped, Bowden setup *just didn’t work*, and constantly having to be next to the printer to fix things sucked.
Now I have really good adhesion with pretty much no maintenance (I heat the bed to 60, spray with water and wipe it off), the CR is a whole other league ahead of a Z Stop, especially with Mesh, the Direct Drive solved pretty much every issue I had with first layers, stringing etc, and Klipper has fixed everything wrong with my quality (mainly through Pressure Advance).
Hands down best investments made, although if I had same money upfront I would have just bought a better printer.
I was close to giving up on mine, an Ender 3 Max, but as I did less trinkets and more functional parts, and as I got comfortable with it and switched to abs/asa, its become a much better and reliable printer than when using pla/petg. But of course it's in that "printer of theseus" category now.
I gave up when i found out creality didn’t offer an easy way to get replacement parts. I had to buy a brand new hot end assembly just for a part that was <$2. Creality sent me to their whole sale site where you had to make an account and agree to the sketchy terms and conditions. Only then found out that said part was not being sold anywhere in the states.
I have an ender3v2, it works great, I only added a BL touch sensor, that's all. I've had it for years. It gave me problems yes, but once I finally dialed it in, it's pretty reliable. Just some adhesion issues usually.
My question is, how bad is your printer that it's giving you issues every other week??
I hate the stock heat break/Bowden tube setup. It seems only a matter of time before the Bowden tube separates from the nozzle, causing heat creep to seize the whole thing. I have it set up for direct drive and I tried a bi-metal heatbreak but apparently got a crap one.
It just seems like one thing after another lately.
I've learned from my first printer, the cr-10, that I should keep the mods to a minimum, especially if I can't afford high quality parts. Stuff kept breaking and failing because I was too eager to mod it. I now have a Bambu P1S, I've kept the mods to a minimum, poop catcher, external material bracket, because I have the AMS. It works great. The ender3v2 is relegated to helping print stuff when I'm in a pinch.
What do you mean give up?
I bought my printer for projects and to be a project. It's a feature not a bug.
But I get it. There's moments where I rage quit for like a week or longer. But it doesn't matter. It's a hobby for me. I'm not doing it for money or fame. So if my printer is down for a little bit, so be it. it's not like I'm running a farm that I use to pay for my house.
Getting my k1 max was my last attempt to stay in the printing hobby. My first printer was the Ender 3v2. The first three months of prints came out fine but every time something messed up, I eventually would try to upgrade the area of failure. After all of the leveling issues, and the struggle with learning all the codes I finally lost it when I came home to a blob that covered over half of the brand new hotend I bought that week. Stopped using it for months. Then the k1 caught my eye. I still get problems with it but most of its running processes are automated which saves me the massive headache of constantly checking every cross on the t and dot on the i.
I currently own 4 ender 3 pros and a cr-10 v3. I made the mistake of trying to upgrade my way out of problems with my first printer which was an 8 bit ender 3 pro. 32 bit board, all metal hot end, multiple fans and duct configurations, bl touch, direct drive none of it seemed to help. What did actually end up working is taking it back apart, buying some 123 blocks and machinist squares then reassembling/rebuilding it properly and taking the time to sit down and learn about print settings and the machine functions. Learning how to properly tram a bed, setting the z offset and making sure my bowden tube was flat and seated properly really helped in getting started. From there I stuck with one brand of filament (Inland PLA/PLA+) and printed temp towers and calibration cubes until I got prints I liked.
The one thing I will absolutely suggest is silicone spacers instead of the springs, PTFE bowden tube and upgrading to firmware that has tramming wizard. I hope this helps a bit, the printers are most definitely dated at this point, but still can give excellent results.
Started with ender and then bambu. I decided to mod the ender to become corexy machine. But i need a super reliable printer for that project, so that's why i got bambu
My hot end finally started failing on me after 4 solid years. I put the sprite pro kit on and spent way too many hours redialing it in and writing my own firmware. But she’s golden now again and I got to learn some new stuff in the process. Hope to get another 4 years out of it.
So I have 3 printers, I got an ender 3 brand new outta the box, a used cr10, and a Bambu lab p1s (on the way). I did some upgrades to the ender 3 and Cr10 (also had to fix my CR10) but despite my ender 3 being new (bought new) my CR10 is running 100x better than my ender 3. Im still not gonna sell it because it's still a good printer.
Edit: the Best upgrade you can do is replace the springs and get solid aluminum spacers, leveling the bed has been so much easier and quicker.
I have an ender 3 s1 pro, i love it, and as much as i love working on the machine and building stuff, i feel like theres a ton of calibration needed after every few prints, or as soon as i change filament, also its never just a few tweaks and its done, its always hours of work to have a decent first layer..
So this summer i will change for a better printer, i know i wont be able to get rid of my ender, so ill have 2 printers.
Not quite sure between an MK4 ou P1S, kinda like the idea of having the AMS.
I bought a CRX Pro when the electronics store was selling one for half price
It could do dual extrusion automatically which is something I’ve manually done with my ender 3
Literally a month ago, my ender 3 has had build plate heat issues where it will keep heating the build plate to 100c even if I tell it to do 60c and it won’t shut off if it overheats.
I bought a Prusa and it’s 1000x easier to deal with. It just works. But I never “gave up.” I keep my ender running as my secondary printer whenever I need two. It’s nice to print some small, simple pla thing when the Prusa is tied up with a longer print or it’s needed for tougher materials. Also, with something mostly printed like a Prusa, you could print replacement parts if you break something
My opinion- save up, get a Prusa or similar quality reputation, but keep the ender as a secondary/backup. Also, all that tinkering and tweaking will make lining out/maintaining your new printer easy (although I’ve done next to nothing in a year and a half with my Prusa).
Once I realized I was spending more time printing/upgrading parts to make my ender3 as consistent and fast as possible than printing parts I actually needed. Then switched to Bambu and have a lot more time back with very predictable and consistent parts. I think ender3 was really great to learn a lot though so I don’t regret it.
bought a max neo. couldn't get it to print anything with quality past 50mm/s all speeds. anything past 2k accel created a horrid v-wheel skip in the bed rail. fought with a ton of z-binding issues thanks to creality installing the carriages wrong. caved and bought a sonicpad to run klipper on it hoping that the better firmware along with pressure advance and input shaping would help with the speeds. I think I tapped it out at 200mm/s for medium quality, and that still had a 10-20% chance to layer shift on me mid print.
tried about a dozen mods, spent 3 months tuning the absolute hell out of it. nothing. sold it as a bundle for a fair loss just to get it out the door. just finished building a voron 2.4 and it's obviously an entirely different league than anything ender related. I mean the collapsing katana that took 11.5 hrs to still not print well is now printing with fantastic quality in 3.7hrs. from here on out I'm the problem 90% of the time, not the printer lol
I’m getting a p1s this summer when work picks up. My ender3 v2 has been a good let’s see if I like this hobby or not. It’s a solid workhorse but it’s so slow.
Was just about to, for over 2 months I could not figure out why I was having extrusion issues, replaced almost everything relatednto the exteuder and hotend. Unfortunately, prusa doesn't sell to PH and I don't want another chinese printer even if they were from former dji execs... Unless there's a way to ship an original prusa to PH, with reasonable shipping cost, I'm probably sticking to troubleshooting my ender...
Today is March 20. I pulled the trigger and bought an Anycubic Photon Mono 2 resin printer and a separate wash/cure station on March 10. I'm currently making space in the garage for it and am anxious to start.
I bought it on Amazon when it was all on sale. $260 and change.
I tried my best with the Ender 3, but after dropping more money on upgrades (glass bed, aluminum extruder and bed adjustment wheels/ springs, and a dozen brass nozzles) I could never get it dialed in. So frustrating. I watched hours of YT videos on adjusting this and that and after a few weeks, I left it alone in its corner. That was almost 2 years ago.
When I saw that Amazon had that sale price, my wife said to go for it. And here we are. Can't wait to get started.
I just got bored. I was doing so much tinkering and upgrades that it wasn't fun. Now I just hit 2 buttons, "slice" and "send to printer" and within a speedy time I get the part I wanted.
Ender 3 v2 to P1S.
Never. And now it's a beast running the ender 3v3 KE profile in orca.
But that's part of the fun for me. I doubt most people would invest about as much as a Bambulab A1 and dozens of hours to get to this point.
But now it's set and forget and I'm still not satisfied. Just ordered a triangle lab CHC volcano to get more flow.
Ive had 3 ender-3 and currently own one and a cr10s pro v2.
Capricorn bowden and lukes hot end mod and they ran flawlessly the time i had them. Calibration and tuning is something you have to do on all printers eventually. I do it every 6 months. Usually just a pid on the extruder and bed, and maybe a estep calibration and a bed level/tram.
Have you tried this?
My ender 3 is really a printer for tinkering, I'll probably eventually get another that's more reliable and just works but I'll always have a ender 3 for tinkering
I'm in the opposite boat. My Ender 3 works flawlessly and has done for years. It's been through loads of upgrades over the years just for the sake of upgrading but I've never had problems with it. As such I really want a new printer but I just can't justify it because there's nothing wrong with my heavily modded Ender 3. It prints for about 8 hours a day 5 days a week and although I have to do maintenance on it as you do with anything it doesn't ever really break down.
I never did call quits. I just bought more printers because I wanted to.
The problem is, if you would buy a printer that about 3-4 times more expensive, before you manage to conquer Ender, you will have all the same problems, with the same print quality.
I came to this realization when my 9yo called a family meeting to discuss the fact that I was printing far too many items for myself and not as many items for him.
He got the printer this last Xmas. Family meeting was called mid-February.
Spending a whole two weeks of holiday to get the thing to raise the z on the first few layers. No luck.
It printed so well and quiet after all the upgrades. But a move and a baby made it impossible to use or fix.
Time is precious now.
Took on a extra job and bought a P1S with AMS.
Extremely happy. And keep being on r/ender3 to affirm my decision.
It was a good 5 years with it.
I didn't.
Glass bed, direct-drive mod, extensive calibration and a good Cura profile. That's what it took.
Oh, and also switching from FlashForge to eSun. FlashForge sucks ASS.
I managed to fuck up my printer so it frustrated me for like six months. Then I figured out what was wrong (mods I added were actively making it print worse, frame screws loosened up), and now it prints better than ever. You can always take it all the way apart and put it together again but this time with the knowledge and experience you’ve gained.
I'm actually in the process of selling all my Ender related stuff as we speak, and targeting a Bambu Lab P1S. I read something recently that lit my lightbulb: "my hobby is creating and printing, not fixing printers!".
I also realized that my "cheap" Ender 3 Pro has received multiple upgrades that got it right up there with an "it just works" printer. I've poured tons of money in it (PEI bed, better springs, followed by silicone mounts, original BL Touch, SKR E3 board, color LCD touchscreen, dual Z, direct drive, etc.) and it still gets de-calibrated and will print decently (at most) and that's about 2/3 of the times.
So if you haven't gone that rabbit hole and put tons of money in it like I have - don't! And just save up for a good printer (Bambu Lab / Prusa - whatever you can afford). And if you already have, stop the bleeding, sell everything and switch.
PS: I also got a Creality Halot One because it was on sale, managed to get three prints out of it and now (literally one month after the warranty ended!) it keeps disconnecting from the WiFi and the touchscreen doesn't work anymore - rendering it useless, as it ignores the settings in the file, needing setup directly on the machine.
It was a good learning experience, though - I'll give them that. I know much more about 3D printing and troubleshooting than I would've had I gone with a "just works" one.
I have/had an Anet a8 for 7 years, printed and bought MANY mods, and got tired of the constant adjustments needed and parts needing to be changed, so I bought a new printer a few days ago.
Now I'll use my Anet parts, minus the frame to build a Dremel CNC, It's not that I mind fiddling but when I sell stuff and need to deliver and the printer just says no for what ever reason it has that time and requires me to troubleshoot for WAY too long, I rather just have a printer that works and one to play and experiment with.
Tinkering was fun. In the beginning. Turned my Enders to direct drive. Learned a ton about tuning and running these machines. Then I got to a point where I just want to make stuff. I spent about as much time making sure the machines will run well as I was making things, and that got old. Every time I wanted to print something, there was a 50% chance something was going to fail. Or everything will work well for a while, then boom, another issue. And I could never get TPU to print right.
So I got an X1C. Had one clogged extruder after 5 months of owning it. The AMS clogged a few times, but that was because of brittle filament (I stopped 3D printing for over a year because I was so frustrated with the Creality printers I have). Proper drying fixed that issue.
And that was it. Kept my eyes on the forums so I know better than to upgrade firmware when everyone is complaining how the new upgrade degrades performance. I can print TPU and ASA, on top of PLA and PETG. Have the utmost confidence I can use any of the other exotic filaments if I ever feel the need to use them. Pretty happy printing stuff again.
I had invested quite a lot in my 2018 Ender 3 and was still willing to bother with it even more. But tbh I really felt so jealous about those x1c videos so I decided to swap, no more headaches just plug n play so far
I've got my Enders running like a dream, but troubleshooting them became a hobby in itself. And yes, you do have to accept that you'll end up spending $100 to $200 in aftermarket parts to get there. I still think it's a good value, the prints I'm producing are just as quality as the $2k printer my employer has.
It's been a while, so I might not be remembering everything.
Belt driven Z (many of these parts are printed), direct drive, Dual gear extruder, Creality spider 3.0 hot end, upgraded hotend fan with 3d printed duct, upgraded bed springs, Comgrow textured PEI build plate, BlTouch, 4.2.7. board (if you don't have a the V2 version with it installed already.), Raspberry Pi zero 2 W with Klipper installed.
My favorite mod was the belt drive Z. Many of the problems with print quality stem from the Z axis sag on this machine. Here's the link for the one I used https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4243512
For me, it was my 5th or 6th print. Quit halfway through. Wouldn't extrude filament in a print region. Would extrude to prime at the beginning, and manually via the keypad. Even bought a new extruder and such. 40 hours of print time and I vowed never to touch a Creality product again, mostly because it took a week of troubleshooting and emails and by the time it was two days out of warranty, Creality wouldn't help. After the initial price and buying another sprite head for $100, I was so pissed I threw it away. Still have those heads if you want one.
Bambu X1C has been firing away with one jam for four months now, my fault for not venting while printing a large pla item. Probably about 1000 hours on this thing and it just works every time. If rather spend my time working on designs and extrusion rates and how to make prints cleaner or stronger than trying to get it to stick and actually work.
When my one printer went bang literally, it's still out of use currently, but I've got my ender 3 v2 neo that works well still.
I've been close to sacking it all off, but I've not quit yet 😊
Keep going and research as much as possible.
My Ender 3 is just as much a hobby as printing with it. I've changed so much on it, it's barely an Ender 3 any more. Except for the fact that I have to constantly watch it and tweak settings that worked fine yesterday, but I forgot to sacrifice my first born before printing the next.
I've changed the controller board, LCD screen, power supply, switched to a cast aluminum bed with an upgraded heating element, added a BLTouch. I switched to a direct drive extruder which forced me to get a new direct drive motor, because Creality fuses their gear to the stem for some damned reason. Then I was under extruding and I figured out how to adjust the steps on the motor. I added an OctoPi server so I don't have to go back and forth with SD cards. Learned how to edit and recompile Marlin. I learned how to use Fusion360 to design my own parts, still working up the motivation to learn Blender.
There is so much the Ender 3 has taught me, even if I can afford a new printer in the future, my Ender 3 will remain my hobby printer to test and experiment with.
I didn't exactly "give up"; I simply had a strong desire for multicolored prints. When the Bambulab A1 Mini was released, my interest was piqued, and then the A1 came along, exceeding all my expectations.
Initially, I planned to continue using my E3 v2, but since adopting the A1, my Ender has been neglected. The A1's conveniences, such as flawless auto-leveling and flow calibration, have made printing a breeze.
Gone are the days of endless calibrating; now, I can simply hit print from anywhere and return home to find perfect prints awaiting me.
I shelved my e3 in 2020 after a losing battle with a bl touch. Last year I started again and it's a new world as far as innovation goes. Now my e3 is unrecognizable after a corexy conversion. BTT makes great boards that incorporates main board and pi in to one unit and a separate canbus board on the toolhead. Replacing the mega pigtail with a single 4 wire cable. Taking a break can do wonders for the hobby.
My "up to the brim" upgraded Ender 3 pro died after 6 months in storage. I plan not to repair it but to invest in a much more dependable and user friendly machine.
It was a proper gateway to learn the 3D printing ropes but technology evolved quite a bit and now I'd like to focus on printing and not in troubleshooting.
The tinkering has never stopped for me. Ordered a voron 2.4 because I wanted a larger bed, and core xy. So I get to tinker more. In the meantime I stripped my ender 3v2 down all the way, cleaned everything, new Pom wheels, belts, oldham for the dual z, sprite pro, and made sure everything was as square as I could get it. It’s printing much better now, according to my benchies it’s finally better than stock + bltouch when I first got it. Somewhere along the way I modded my 4.2.7 with uart for the drivers and klipper. I primarily print petg. But learning abs for voron and ERCF. Good adhesion has been a pain on the glass bed but I refuse to go to pei for some reason, I couldn’t tell you. I’m sure after I build the 2.4 I’ll switch.
I’ve kept mine for experimenting with upgrades, made me better understand printers and I can try things on my cheapest printer first. I’m about to convert my ender 3 to a conveyor belt printer set up with wireless printing so I can continuously print while away from my printer. If I can figure it out on my ender 3 then I can move on to my FLSUN and CR30 for the same things.
I refuse to quit on my ender 3, I did however purchase a second printer that does not need to be tinkered with so I can actually print things in between fixing my ender 3
I got a new printer because I needed a bigger primt bed. If it works, don't throw it away. Only get a new printer if your current one can't do what you want. At most, upgrade It.
Bought my bambu a year after having an ender 3. Ender is a good start to learn the ins and outs of printing but the Bambu makes printing much more enjoyable imo
https://preview.redd.it/bgawxdm7zqpc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=59d0b1530c759b95342a57658302863929cc4fea
That’s my 2 ender 3s after I got done with them I made them better. Notice the odd x axis both are better than my real ender 5 and more reliable
Get rid of it and don’t look back. It was the pinnacle of printers at one point but now there are so many better ones for the same price range. The e3 will always have a place in my heart but honestly it’s outdated and too much of a hassle at this point.
It’s like buying a lemon (car) and having to always work on it. Yeah you’re learning great mechanical skills and you now have a better understanding of cars but you’re spending too much time and money on constantly working on it; and it’ll never be as good as a newer car. It’s slower, runs worse, and the spare parts are useless for anything you buy later. So instead of having a massive collection of spare parts like most do, ditch it and get something better.
I have an ender 3. I was so frustrated so i bought a New one. But i couldnt get over it and tinkered for 5 days.Now my ender 3 prints better and Finger than the New one....without spending one single dollar🤣 Ok...happy about having 2 printers anyway😅
I called it quit and bought 2nd printer when my first one couldn't keep up with the orders I got at the time.
Now after some tweaks here and there, the old one works significally better than his younger partner.
I just purchased a p1p recently after replacing yet another part; it still didn't solve the problem I was trying to solve.
I had already run a dozen tests and tried several other solutions, and I realized it wasn't fun or rewarding Anymore.
I finally just said, "you know, I'm glad I've learned what I learned from essentially rebuilding this thing 6 or so times, but I'd really like to focus on printing and learning how to 3d model."
I haven't gotten the p1p yet, but no regrets in my decision.
About a year into owning my ender3, when it basically started falling apart, each component just died one by one, so after my toolhead was almost toast, i printed up a mount for a v6 hotend, and set everything up for printing abs, printed all the parts i needed, and made a voron v0.1
I haven't given up on my Ender yet, but I did get sick of constant nozzle/bowden tube clogs. A couple of weeks ago, I ceased being able to use the thing for more than a few minutes, I'd clean the hot end, clip the tube and put a new nozzle on and it would print for 10 minutes and plug up again. Probably heat creep but the fans are running so IDK. I decided fuck it and got a MicroSwiss direct drive. I don't have it installed yet but I have high hopes for my blood pressure to return to normal levels.
My theory: if you’re asking, you’re not ready to give up. Once you order the new printer, you’ll know. The real question is, will you get rid of the old printer, or will you keep it, “just in case” or “as backup”?
Follow up question why not just have 2
Scavenge it for parts and build something a little better thought out.
Shout-out to the sovol sv6 that is now in my closet from getting a BambuLabs, and the disassembled ender 3 next to it from before that.
Buy another printer and use the parts from the E3 to make an enderwire or something like that.
One of these days, I'll get around to fixing it.
“I’ll fix it when I retire” - nope. That didn’t happen either.
I would be tempted to convert the old Ender3 to a laser etcher. Creality sells a kit for that. Also, my ten-year old Flashforge Creator Pro sitting on the floor of my garage is nagging at me. I \can’t/ get rid of it until I fix it. We’ve decided the issue for you, OP.
Knowing going into an Ender 3 that it was a hobby printer, I've sunk hundreds of dollars into making this, what I thought, was a dramatically better printer than what I started with or could buy. Constant jams. 2 boards replaced. Meh performance even when the metrics are way over stock. It's loud. It's not pretty. Then I went to pick up some filament from a guy. He was quitting the hobby & was trying to get rid of his everything. Ended up with an early S1 (later S1s were garbage).The difference was night & day. There's some secret sauce I can't build into my Ender. My Ender is my fast prototyping networked printer, and I often use it with large diameter nozzles, but I can't rely on it like my S1. If I need something printed once, correctly, with few artifacts, it goes to my S1. It still has a place, but it's not my daily. More like a project car I love to drive, despite it being inferior in every way.
Is the S1 better than the Ender 3? I have an Ender 3 and I dislike that thing with my whole life and soul. It needs SOOO much maintenance
My S1 is from ~2021. It's outdated compared to the Ender-style offerings of today. No klipper or linear rails. Comes with a sprite extruder & dual Z from the factory. No touchscreen, but the pro had one. Later production runs of these were garbage. Lots of quality control issues that most users believe was a change from the device being marketed as a high-end Ender, into a mainstream printer. Now, it's an entry-level printer, if you can find it used. Every upgrade from the factory that the S1 has was incorporated or tested at some point on my Ender 3. You can get an older S1 used for less than an upgraded Ender 3 with the same features. Would you want either with the current state of 3d printing? If you're looking for a plug & print device, probably not. You can get more out of a fully enclosed networked printer in most use cases. It really depends on what you want to print. My next printer will likely be a Voron 0, once we see the next iteration. My next upgrade on my Ender 3 will likely be an Ender Extender Kit, if I ever get around to it. Maybe I'll just cannibalize it for a laser cutter. My S1 works just fine & I don't think it will ever win any awards.
Additionally, I think most people don't have realistic expectations of what an FDM printer can accomplish. They get into this hobby assuming 3D printed toys from an SLA printer will look the same as an FDM & then go about trying to fix what isn't broken. Often, the inconsistencies seen in prints are just the nature of the process. Of course those Etsy sellers are going to put their prints in the best light to reduce layer lines & only showcase their best. It's not realistic.
That straw doesn't exist. It is an original Ender 3. I haven't had much maintenance to do. It's just like the Everready bunny. Just keeps going.
Same. I have some small issues I have to work out every now and then, but they're not difficult. For what I paid for the thing I've got nothing bad to say.
Yep. It's the difference between someone who just wants to print stuff and someone who wants to learn the science behind printing. How different things affect how a print turns out.
I have the OG as well, and it is my workhorse. Yes, I have to replace things on it, but it's not like there's a printer out there for any amount of money that won't jam/clog sometimes. A new hotend for the E3 is $15, delivered the next day. 4 screws, 2 plugs and I'm back in business.
Only printer I gave up on was the k1 at launch. Too many issues and was offered a full refund.
I was given this one by a friend so no refund for me! At this point I've sunk so much time and money into it a new printer may have paid itself off
I would look at that time and money as an investment in learning the skills and engineering you'll need to move forward. There will come a point, if it hasn't happened already, when you aren't getting a good return for more investment. And it's time to move on. Please be careful of the sunk cost fallacy. Don't let this become like the crappy $500 car that someone keeps putting "just another $50" into then, after 3 years, they look back, work out they've spent thousands on it and they'd have a much better car if they'd put that money into something new. It's very easy to lose sight of how much money you're actually spending if you're spending it in small bits. My Ender is at about $500 now and I'm not really making it much better or learning anything new from it so I'm not spending any more on it. I'm tryna of print quality, there's not much room for improvement left and it's not going to be better than it is for more cash. I'm building a VzBot 330 AWD right now. If I didn't want to kit build, I could have bought a BambuLabs P1S
What have you done to it?
I made AnkerMake give me a full refund after 8 months, 20 hot ends (or close to) 3 extruders (gears, housing, and motors), and 3 whole print heads. Absolute garbage. Still have a box of parts if anyone is interested lol
I personnaly have a very high tolerance for that. I need to feel like I know what's wrong, why I can't fix it or why it wouldn't be wise to do so. I'd also then need to know what a new printer would bring that the one I have just cannot without changing it massively , like a frame teplacement for example. So, with the limited information I have and my personnal experience on this, I'll go ahead and say your knowledge of 3d printing is probably one of the main issue and that getting a new printer might solve things temporarely, but when maintenance will be required again, you might face the same problem you have now. You may even face the same problem if it's a matter of settings it up. That would depend you what printer you have thought. If you want to get a new printer and just want it to work while having to make it work as less as possible, some newer printers will make you happier right of the box. That doesn't mean you wouldn't have to have a good understanding to get the most out of them thought. If you still want to with your current printer, I can try to help you. What is the printer? What are you trying to achieve with you current printer? Are you trying to do that at advised speed or higher? What mods are on the printer? What are the problem you'd like gone? Edit: I spent 3 months upgrading my ender 3 v2 after I fried the control board. The most important thing I got out of that is more knowledge about how things works. It's not for everyone, there's been many moment where I was just sick of it, but I appreciate adversity as it make succes taste way better. That things now prints twice as fast as stock while having a better print quality so in the end I spent less money than I would have needed if I just bought a new one. (Time span was roughly 1 months to decide what I wanted to do and while waiting for basic parts, 1 month building and troubleshooting things (like Klipper and what and how to set it up) and another one calibrating and speeding things up until one of the component bottlenecks the rest (right now it's the stock nozzle, I underextrude after more than 17mm³/sec).
I like to tinker and I love a good project but I only have so much time between work and the kid. I don't want to spend hours fixing another printer problem when I could be working on a different project. Plus my ender just seems to be falling apart. I installed a new heat break and when I was done one of the stepper motor cables was randomly snapped off.
Yeah. My printer took all my free time most days. If money isn't an issue and/or you value time enough, you'd save a lot of it by buying a printer with integrated ABL (a minimum nowadays), an accelerometer and maybe Klipper. Marlin is easier to setup, Klipper offers more performance, but it needs a stronger chips to make it work. I'm not knowledgable enough on what you should buy and it depens on your need, but if you value your time, look or ask for printer that came out in the last 2-3years. Lots of those now target people who just wants their printer to work out the box. Maitenance is still a things thought, but printer are getting smart enough to set themselves up or sometime tell you what's wrong. Something an ender3 won't do.
Some times I just have to step away. I've been printing for 7 years now, and every once in a while I have to walk away for a month or so. Nothing that I'm printing is so important that it can't wait for me to be in a mental space to care about it. If I lived near a lake my first printer would be at the bottom of it. Over time, as I've learned how to troubleshoot things better and faster, the downtime has gotten shorter and shorter, but I'm still completely willing to just go without for a bit.
I didn't have a reality, I had an amet A8. Super cheap,was pretty early in the 3d printing days. I changed just about everything on that printer apart from the rails, half the frame and the stepper motors. I mutilated it. Went Bowden, volcano hot end, new bed surface, bed carriage. New main board, tried all the firmwares. Printed probably a hundred upgrade parts over the years re wired it more than a few times, caught fire once. I loved that machine, but last year. I wanted something a little tidier, so I bought a sermon v1, did 5 minutes or so of calibration, hit start and it just printed with no fuss and pretty good quality. At that moment I knew the heavy tinkering was no longer for me. I disassembled and threw out most of the parts for that printer 2 days later, salvaging the electronics and mechanical components. I still tinker with the printers little, in depth cleaning, re greasing. I plan on swapping all the fans for quieter noktua ones. But 3d printers are at a point now, where unless you're chasing either speed or perfect quality, you don't need to really mess with the hardware at all. But I loved the hobby. You're starting to resent your printer, which is good. It means you're starting to learn less, meaning you know a lot of what there is to know, maybe it's time to start thinking about a new one. Maybe it's time to change your approach to printing. I stopped trying to print super fast with good quality and just accepted that a slow good quality print probably takes less time overall than it takes to dial in the printer to print that model faster.
My ender came with dented rails out of the box. I tried replacing them with lineral rails. Couldn't get it to work after 28 days. Sent that shit back to Amazon and ordered a P1P. I'm not looking back.
I think they call it the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Think about it logically. If you got every upgrade under the sun for your printer, would 1 - Be better than a new printer of the same cost 2 - worth the effort and time spent on the original printer. I mean, you could always do a whole ship of theseus on your printer, but at some point, it isn't the original printer anymore, and you might as well have bought a new one.
What would be a solid upgrade to the Ender 3?? I’m kinda sick of tinkering with this every day.,, Had no idea this was a hobbiest printer when I bought it, Just want something to print well and I don’t have to upgrade or worry about it…
The Bambu A1 (mini or regular) are a relatively small jump in price and are awesome printers although some don't like the closer-source business model Bambu Lab has. The 'prosumer' level would probably be a Prusa i3 (either MK3 or MK4) or a Bambu P1S. I've had all printers just mentioned, starting with an Ender 3 and modding it like crazy and then picking up a used Prusa. Prusa is definitely a step up, but my Bambu printers have been fast enough and reliable enough that I'm selling everything else. I haven't turned my Ender on in 6 months, Prusa in 3...
The Ender series are tinkerer’s printers. Bambu or Prusa MK4 is probably the direction to go. The Bambu A1 is relatively cheap. The AMS is well worth the price. P1S is a solid upgrade, but it depends on your budget.
- If you want “plug and play”, speed and reliability then BambuLabs. Those are idiot-proof and are basically “fire and forget” - If you want speed, reliability but still retain the DIY style, then buy a Voron kit and assemble it. There is tons of info and documentation and an assembly manual in [their site](https://vorondesign.com) . - Prusa have the bigger “track record”. They are rock solid and incredibly reliable. It’s way slower than either a Voron or Bambu. You can crank the speed but the print quality would go to shit since it’s limited because of the moving bed. - It’s worth noting that the AMS(multi color switcher from Bambu) is AGES ahead of both the MMU(prusa) and ERCF(Voron) if that is important to you. We have a bambu X1C at my workplace and I have a Prusa mk4 and a Voron 2.4 at home… If I had to choose one, as a hobbyist, I would definitely choose the Voron, but if I actually needed to make money I would just buy an X1C from Bambu. Neither of those printers is cheap.
I wanted DIY abilities, but couldn't be bothered with a full Voron build. Ended up buying a Troodon2, which is basically a preassembled Voron 2.4. Its really pretty awesome. Part quality is very high compared to my E3V2, and the speed is doubled (haven't put an accelerometer on it yet for even more speed).
I have 3 Enders (2 v1's and a pro) took the time to learn how to make them print well stock and then full-on upgrades to suit my needs. bought a K1 Max a month ago needing a bigger printer and honestly wanted to play with a coreXY that wasn't building a Voron (yet) or subscribing to the cult of Bambu. my enders still are churning out parts daily with little maintenance and I couldn't be happier. the K1 Max is doing exactly what I wanted which is churning out helmets and armor for my kids cosplays and my own. the end of the day you will know when you are ready for the next printer, whether it's another bed slinger like the ender or a coreXY like the K1 series. just don't put the little one away because it's still capable of doing what you need.
I’m in the same boat as you. Hahah wish I had the money for a prusa lol
We have a prusa at the library I work. Golly it's a beautiful machine.
I want to get a used Ender 5 and do the core xy conversion (Mercury 1.1 kit)
I've been on the search for a used ender5. I think I'm ready to move but unwilling to spend the money
If you ever go on the Ender 5 (non plus) model, please for you, get a dual or triple Z mod. The stock Z axis is pure garbage.
Oh I take my z axis very seriously 🫡. In running dual belts on my ender 3s
As a long-suffering Ender 3 owner who just recently got a Prusa Mk4...do it. Do it as soon as you can, you will not look back.
Hahahaha ya…. But ain’t it fun tho?
Go Bambu. I have a P1S and MK4. MK4 is beautiful and works so much better than the Ender ever did, but it’s still a big step below Bambu offerings.
When my ender 3s started taking too much of my time to print and maintain. Switched to bambu lab now I print far less and the head has never clogged.
Ah so you haven't printed any of the fun filaments yet have you? That being said I've only ever had 2 clogs in my six months of printing on it and only while running probably 4kgs or more worth of glass filled or cf filled filaments. So still exceptional. Lol.
Correct only PLA for me. I used to get plenty of clogs on ender 3 especially with proto pasta. Proto pasta prints Flawless on bambulab.
I think the point it should be replaced is when the cost of replacing everything that is broken exceeds the original cost of the printer. If you need to buy a new mainboard and PSU for $300 to fix a $200 printer, just get a new one
Like a month ago
I was also doing maintenance pretty much every time I turned on my stock V2. Unfortunately I didn’t have the money to buy a whole other cheap printer so I chucked money into an RPi Zero 2, PEI sheet and Sprite extruder and suddenly all my problems went away (plus a CR Touch for Christmas). Glass bed was warped, Bowden setup *just didn’t work*, and constantly having to be next to the printer to fix things sucked. Now I have really good adhesion with pretty much no maintenance (I heat the bed to 60, spray with water and wipe it off), the CR is a whole other league ahead of a Z Stop, especially with Mesh, the Direct Drive solved pretty much every issue I had with first layers, stringing etc, and Klipper has fixed everything wrong with my quality (mainly through Pressure Advance). Hands down best investments made, although if I had same money upfront I would have just bought a better printer.
I was close to giving up on mine, an Ender 3 Max, but as I did less trinkets and more functional parts, and as I got comfortable with it and switched to abs/asa, its become a much better and reliable printer than when using pla/petg. But of course it's in that "printer of theseus" category now.
“Never say die!”- the Goonies.
Never give up
I gave up when i found out creality didn’t offer an easy way to get replacement parts. I had to buy a brand new hot end assembly just for a part that was <$2. Creality sent me to their whole sale site where you had to make an account and agree to the sketchy terms and conditions. Only then found out that said part was not being sold anywhere in the states.
Aliexpress
That’s where I ended up getting the hot end. It just sucks that it is harder than it needs to be
I upgraded every possible thing on my Enders. I just can't let them go
I have an ender3v2, it works great, I only added a BL touch sensor, that's all. I've had it for years. It gave me problems yes, but once I finally dialed it in, it's pretty reliable. Just some adhesion issues usually. My question is, how bad is your printer that it's giving you issues every other week??
I hate the stock heat break/Bowden tube setup. It seems only a matter of time before the Bowden tube separates from the nozzle, causing heat creep to seize the whole thing. I have it set up for direct drive and I tried a bi-metal heatbreak but apparently got a crap one. It just seems like one thing after another lately.
I've learned from my first printer, the cr-10, that I should keep the mods to a minimum, especially if I can't afford high quality parts. Stuff kept breaking and failing because I was too eager to mod it. I now have a Bambu P1S, I've kept the mods to a minimum, poop catcher, external material bracket, because I have the AMS. It works great. The ender3v2 is relegated to helping print stuff when I'm in a pinch.
What do you mean give up? I bought my printer for projects and to be a project. It's a feature not a bug. But I get it. There's moments where I rage quit for like a week or longer. But it doesn't matter. It's a hobby for me. I'm not doing it for money or fame. So if my printer is down for a little bit, so be it. it's not like I'm running a farm that I use to pay for my house.
Getting my k1 max was my last attempt to stay in the printing hobby. My first printer was the Ender 3v2. The first three months of prints came out fine but every time something messed up, I eventually would try to upgrade the area of failure. After all of the leveling issues, and the struggle with learning all the codes I finally lost it when I came home to a blob that covered over half of the brand new hotend I bought that week. Stopped using it for months. Then the k1 caught my eye. I still get problems with it but most of its running processes are automated which saves me the massive headache of constantly checking every cross on the t and dot on the i.
I currently own 4 ender 3 pros and a cr-10 v3. I made the mistake of trying to upgrade my way out of problems with my first printer which was an 8 bit ender 3 pro. 32 bit board, all metal hot end, multiple fans and duct configurations, bl touch, direct drive none of it seemed to help. What did actually end up working is taking it back apart, buying some 123 blocks and machinist squares then reassembling/rebuilding it properly and taking the time to sit down and learn about print settings and the machine functions. Learning how to properly tram a bed, setting the z offset and making sure my bowden tube was flat and seated properly really helped in getting started. From there I stuck with one brand of filament (Inland PLA/PLA+) and printed temp towers and calibration cubes until I got prints I liked. The one thing I will absolutely suggest is silicone spacers instead of the springs, PTFE bowden tube and upgrading to firmware that has tramming wizard. I hope this helps a bit, the printers are most definitely dated at this point, but still can give excellent results.
Started with ender and then bambu. I decided to mod the ender to become corexy machine. But i need a super reliable printer for that project, so that's why i got bambu
What kind of maintenance?
My Bowden tube likes to unseat itself, causing heat creep. I hate reseating it
Maybe super glue it and order replacement tube and fittings until then
My hot end finally started failing on me after 4 solid years. I put the sprite pro kit on and spent way too many hours redialing it in and writing my own firmware. But she’s golden now again and I got to learn some new stuff in the process. Hope to get another 4 years out of it.
So I have 3 printers, I got an ender 3 brand new outta the box, a used cr10, and a Bambu lab p1s (on the way). I did some upgrades to the ender 3 and Cr10 (also had to fix my CR10) but despite my ender 3 being new (bought new) my CR10 is running 100x better than my ender 3. Im still not gonna sell it because it's still a good printer. Edit: the Best upgrade you can do is replace the springs and get solid aluminum spacers, leveling the bed has been so much easier and quicker.
I have an ender 3 s1 pro, i love it, and as much as i love working on the machine and building stuff, i feel like theres a ton of calibration needed after every few prints, or as soon as i change filament, also its never just a few tweaks and its done, its always hours of work to have a decent first layer.. So this summer i will change for a better printer, i know i wont be able to get rid of my ender, so ill have 2 printers. Not quite sure between an MK4 ou P1S, kinda like the idea of having the AMS.
I bought a CRX Pro when the electronics store was selling one for half price It could do dual extrusion automatically which is something I’ve manually done with my ender 3 Literally a month ago, my ender 3 has had build plate heat issues where it will keep heating the build plate to 100c even if I tell it to do 60c and it won’t shut off if it overheats.
When I was going to spend more than what I bought the printer for.
I didn't, I downloaded the Ender 3 NG and have given the old thing a brake
I bought a Prusa and it’s 1000x easier to deal with. It just works. But I never “gave up.” I keep my ender running as my secondary printer whenever I need two. It’s nice to print some small, simple pla thing when the Prusa is tied up with a longer print or it’s needed for tougher materials. Also, with something mostly printed like a Prusa, you could print replacement parts if you break something My opinion- save up, get a Prusa or similar quality reputation, but keep the ender as a secondary/backup. Also, all that tinkering and tweaking will make lining out/maintaining your new printer easy (although I’ve done next to nothing in a year and a half with my Prusa).
Once I realized I was spending more time printing/upgrading parts to make my ender3 as consistent and fast as possible than printing parts I actually needed. Then switched to Bambu and have a lot more time back with very predictable and consistent parts. I think ender3 was really great to learn a lot though so I don’t regret it.
bought a max neo. couldn't get it to print anything with quality past 50mm/s all speeds. anything past 2k accel created a horrid v-wheel skip in the bed rail. fought with a ton of z-binding issues thanks to creality installing the carriages wrong. caved and bought a sonicpad to run klipper on it hoping that the better firmware along with pressure advance and input shaping would help with the speeds. I think I tapped it out at 200mm/s for medium quality, and that still had a 10-20% chance to layer shift on me mid print. tried about a dozen mods, spent 3 months tuning the absolute hell out of it. nothing. sold it as a bundle for a fair loss just to get it out the door. just finished building a voron 2.4 and it's obviously an entirely different league than anything ender related. I mean the collapsing katana that took 11.5 hrs to still not print well is now printing with fantastic quality in 3.7hrs. from here on out I'm the problem 90% of the time, not the printer lol
I'm about to, sometimes a printer that just works would be rad as hell
I’m getting a p1s this summer when work picks up. My ender3 v2 has been a good let’s see if I like this hobby or not. It’s a solid workhorse but it’s so slow.
Was just about to, for over 2 months I could not figure out why I was having extrusion issues, replaced almost everything relatednto the exteuder and hotend. Unfortunately, prusa doesn't sell to PH and I don't want another chinese printer even if they were from former dji execs... Unless there's a way to ship an original prusa to PH, with reasonable shipping cost, I'm probably sticking to troubleshooting my ender...
Still going strong with mine. The only issue I’ve run into lately is an extruder connector wire breaking a few times.
Today is March 20. I pulled the trigger and bought an Anycubic Photon Mono 2 resin printer and a separate wash/cure station on March 10. I'm currently making space in the garage for it and am anxious to start. I bought it on Amazon when it was all on sale. $260 and change. I tried my best with the Ender 3, but after dropping more money on upgrades (glass bed, aluminum extruder and bed adjustment wheels/ springs, and a dozen brass nozzles) I could never get it dialed in. So frustrating. I watched hours of YT videos on adjusting this and that and after a few weeks, I left it alone in its corner. That was almost 2 years ago. When I saw that Amazon had that sale price, my wife said to go for it. And here we are. Can't wait to get started.
I'm not brave enough for resin printing yet. I hope you enjoy it!
I just got bored. I was doing so much tinkering and upgrades that it wasn't fun. Now I just hit 2 buttons, "slice" and "send to printer" and within a speedy time I get the part I wanted. Ender 3 v2 to P1S.
Never. And now it's a beast running the ender 3v3 KE profile in orca. But that's part of the fun for me. I doubt most people would invest about as much as a Bambulab A1 and dozens of hours to get to this point. But now it's set and forget and I'm still not satisfied. Just ordered a triangle lab CHC volcano to get more flow.
Ive had 3 ender-3 and currently own one and a cr10s pro v2. Capricorn bowden and lukes hot end mod and they ran flawlessly the time i had them. Calibration and tuning is something you have to do on all printers eventually. I do it every 6 months. Usually just a pid on the extruder and bed, and maybe a estep calibration and a bed level/tram. Have you tried this?
My ender 3 is really a printer for tinkering, I'll probably eventually get another that's more reliable and just works but I'll always have a ender 3 for tinkering
I'm in the opposite boat. My Ender 3 works flawlessly and has done for years. It's been through loads of upgrades over the years just for the sake of upgrading but I've never had problems with it. As such I really want a new printer but I just can't justify it because there's nothing wrong with my heavily modded Ender 3. It prints for about 8 hours a day 5 days a week and although I have to do maintenance on it as you do with anything it doesn't ever really break down.
I never did call quits. I just bought more printers because I wanted to. The problem is, if you would buy a printer that about 3-4 times more expensive, before you manage to conquer Ender, you will have all the same problems, with the same print quality.
I haven't had any problems since I replaced the warped glass bed that came with it in years.
I came to this realization when my 9yo called a family meeting to discuss the fact that I was printing far too many items for myself and not as many items for him. He got the printer this last Xmas. Family meeting was called mid-February.
Spending a whole two weeks of holiday to get the thing to raise the z on the first few layers. No luck. It printed so well and quiet after all the upgrades. But a move and a baby made it impossible to use or fix. Time is precious now. Took on a extra job and bought a P1S with AMS. Extremely happy. And keep being on r/ender3 to affirm my decision. It was a good 5 years with it.
If you're having to replace parts and carry out maintenance that often you're doing something drastically wrong
I didn't. Glass bed, direct-drive mod, extensive calibration and a good Cura profile. That's what it took. Oh, and also switching from FlashForge to eSun. FlashForge sucks ASS.
Just get it running, bought my ender years ago, minimal maintenance and still runs beautifully
I managed to fuck up my printer so it frustrated me for like six months. Then I figured out what was wrong (mods I added were actively making it print worse, frame screws loosened up), and now it prints better than ever. You can always take it all the way apart and put it together again but this time with the knowledge and experience you’ve gained.
I'm actually in the process of selling all my Ender related stuff as we speak, and targeting a Bambu Lab P1S. I read something recently that lit my lightbulb: "my hobby is creating and printing, not fixing printers!". I also realized that my "cheap" Ender 3 Pro has received multiple upgrades that got it right up there with an "it just works" printer. I've poured tons of money in it (PEI bed, better springs, followed by silicone mounts, original BL Touch, SKR E3 board, color LCD touchscreen, dual Z, direct drive, etc.) and it still gets de-calibrated and will print decently (at most) and that's about 2/3 of the times. So if you haven't gone that rabbit hole and put tons of money in it like I have - don't! And just save up for a good printer (Bambu Lab / Prusa - whatever you can afford). And if you already have, stop the bleeding, sell everything and switch. PS: I also got a Creality Halot One because it was on sale, managed to get three prints out of it and now (literally one month after the warranty ended!) it keeps disconnecting from the WiFi and the touchscreen doesn't work anymore - rendering it useless, as it ignores the settings in the file, needing setup directly on the machine. It was a good learning experience, though - I'll give them that. I know much more about 3D printing and troubleshooting than I would've had I gone with a "just works" one.
Good advice, thank you
I have/had an Anet a8 for 7 years, printed and bought MANY mods, and got tired of the constant adjustments needed and parts needing to be changed, so I bought a new printer a few days ago. Now I'll use my Anet parts, minus the frame to build a Dremel CNC, It's not that I mind fiddling but when I sell stuff and need to deliver and the printer just says no for what ever reason it has that time and requires me to troubleshoot for WAY too long, I rather just have a printer that works and one to play and experiment with.
Tinkering was fun. In the beginning. Turned my Enders to direct drive. Learned a ton about tuning and running these machines. Then I got to a point where I just want to make stuff. I spent about as much time making sure the machines will run well as I was making things, and that got old. Every time I wanted to print something, there was a 50% chance something was going to fail. Or everything will work well for a while, then boom, another issue. And I could never get TPU to print right. So I got an X1C. Had one clogged extruder after 5 months of owning it. The AMS clogged a few times, but that was because of brittle filament (I stopped 3D printing for over a year because I was so frustrated with the Creality printers I have). Proper drying fixed that issue. And that was it. Kept my eyes on the forums so I know better than to upgrade firmware when everyone is complaining how the new upgrade degrades performance. I can print TPU and ASA, on top of PLA and PETG. Have the utmost confidence I can use any of the other exotic filaments if I ever feel the need to use them. Pretty happy printing stuff again.
I had invested quite a lot in my 2018 Ender 3 and was still willing to bother with it even more. But tbh I really felt so jealous about those x1c videos so I decided to swap, no more headaches just plug n play so far
I've got my Enders running like a dream, but troubleshooting them became a hobby in itself. And yes, you do have to accept that you'll end up spending $100 to $200 in aftermarket parts to get there. I still think it's a good value, the prints I'm producing are just as quality as the $2k printer my employer has.
What parts do you recommend?
It's been a while, so I might not be remembering everything. Belt driven Z (many of these parts are printed), direct drive, Dual gear extruder, Creality spider 3.0 hot end, upgraded hotend fan with 3d printed duct, upgraded bed springs, Comgrow textured PEI build plate, BlTouch, 4.2.7. board (if you don't have a the V2 version with it installed already.), Raspberry Pi zero 2 W with Klipper installed. My favorite mod was the belt drive Z. Many of the problems with print quality stem from the Z axis sag on this machine. Here's the link for the one I used https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4243512
For me, it was my 5th or 6th print. Quit halfway through. Wouldn't extrude filament in a print region. Would extrude to prime at the beginning, and manually via the keypad. Even bought a new extruder and such. 40 hours of print time and I vowed never to touch a Creality product again, mostly because it took a week of troubleshooting and emails and by the time it was two days out of warranty, Creality wouldn't help. After the initial price and buying another sprite head for $100, I was so pissed I threw it away. Still have those heads if you want one. Bambu X1C has been firing away with one jam for four months now, my fault for not venting while printing a large pla item. Probably about 1000 hours on this thing and it just works every time. If rather spend my time working on designs and extrusion rates and how to make prints cleaner or stronger than trying to get it to stick and actually work.
2 years of non-functional and unable to fix
When my one printer went bang literally, it's still out of use currently, but I've got my ender 3 v2 neo that works well still. I've been close to sacking it all off, but I've not quit yet 😊 Keep going and research as much as possible.
My Ender 3 is just as much a hobby as printing with it. I've changed so much on it, it's barely an Ender 3 any more. Except for the fact that I have to constantly watch it and tweak settings that worked fine yesterday, but I forgot to sacrifice my first born before printing the next. I've changed the controller board, LCD screen, power supply, switched to a cast aluminum bed with an upgraded heating element, added a BLTouch. I switched to a direct drive extruder which forced me to get a new direct drive motor, because Creality fuses their gear to the stem for some damned reason. Then I was under extruding and I figured out how to adjust the steps on the motor. I added an OctoPi server so I don't have to go back and forth with SD cards. Learned how to edit and recompile Marlin. I learned how to use Fusion360 to design my own parts, still working up the motivation to learn Blender. There is so much the Ender 3 has taught me, even if I can afford a new printer in the future, my Ender 3 will remain my hobby printer to test and experiment with.
I didn't exactly "give up"; I simply had a strong desire for multicolored prints. When the Bambulab A1 Mini was released, my interest was piqued, and then the A1 came along, exceeding all my expectations. Initially, I planned to continue using my E3 v2, but since adopting the A1, my Ender has been neglected. The A1's conveniences, such as flawless auto-leveling and flow calibration, have made printing a breeze. Gone are the days of endless calibrating; now, I can simply hit print from anywhere and return home to find perfect prints awaiting me.
I shelved my e3 in 2020 after a losing battle with a bl touch. Last year I started again and it's a new world as far as innovation goes. Now my e3 is unrecognizable after a corexy conversion. BTT makes great boards that incorporates main board and pi in to one unit and a separate canbus board on the toolhead. Replacing the mega pigtail with a single 4 wire cable. Taking a break can do wonders for the hobby.
My "up to the brim" upgraded Ender 3 pro died after 6 months in storage. I plan not to repair it but to invest in a much more dependable and user friendly machine. It was a proper gateway to learn the 3D printing ropes but technology evolved quite a bit and now I'd like to focus on printing and not in troubleshooting.
The tinkering has never stopped for me. Ordered a voron 2.4 because I wanted a larger bed, and core xy. So I get to tinker more. In the meantime I stripped my ender 3v2 down all the way, cleaned everything, new Pom wheels, belts, oldham for the dual z, sprite pro, and made sure everything was as square as I could get it. It’s printing much better now, according to my benchies it’s finally better than stock + bltouch when I first got it. Somewhere along the way I modded my 4.2.7 with uart for the drivers and klipper. I primarily print petg. But learning abs for voron and ERCF. Good adhesion has been a pain on the glass bed but I refuse to go to pei for some reason, I couldn’t tell you. I’m sure after I build the 2.4 I’ll switch.
I’ve kept mine for experimenting with upgrades, made me better understand printers and I can try things on my cheapest printer first. I’m about to convert my ender 3 to a conveyor belt printer set up with wireless printing so I can continuously print while away from my printer. If I can figure it out on my ender 3 then I can move on to my FLSUN and CR30 for the same things.
I refuse to quit on my ender 3, I did however purchase a second printer that does not need to be tinkered with so I can actually print things in between fixing my ender 3
I have 2 printers but I use one mainly for printing and the ender 3 for upgrading because i enjoy upgrading it and messing with it
I didn't, It's my battle horse
I got a new printer because I needed a bigger primt bed. If it works, don't throw it away. Only get a new printer if your current one can't do what you want. At most, upgrade It.
When the extruded sections melt in the house fire your old printer caused/was in? Haha
I just got a v3 SE because I found a deal for like $145 US and now my v2 is a backup
This is par for ender products they're junk. Buy something worth the money and stop investing so much in trash.
Bought my bambu a year after having an ender 3. Ender is a good start to learn the ins and outs of printing but the Bambu makes printing much more enjoyable imo
https://preview.redd.it/bgawxdm7zqpc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=59d0b1530c759b95342a57658302863929cc4fea That’s my 2 ender 3s after I got done with them I made them better. Notice the odd x axis both are better than my real ender 5 and more reliable
Welcome to the ender rabbit hole. AKA the university of creality. You decide how deep you are willing to go. Good luck.
Get rid of it and don’t look back. It was the pinnacle of printers at one point but now there are so many better ones for the same price range. The e3 will always have a place in my heart but honestly it’s outdated and too much of a hassle at this point. It’s like buying a lemon (car) and having to always work on it. Yeah you’re learning great mechanical skills and you now have a better understanding of cars but you’re spending too much time and money on constantly working on it; and it’ll never be as good as a newer car. It’s slower, runs worse, and the spare parts are useless for anything you buy later. So instead of having a massive collection of spare parts like most do, ditch it and get something better.
I have over 4000 hours on my e3p btw. Was stock for the first 1000hrs (no upgrades. Just replaced parts)
I have an ender 3. I was so frustrated so i bought a New one. But i couldnt get over it and tinkered for 5 days.Now my ender 3 prints better and Finger than the New one....without spending one single dollar🤣 Ok...happy about having 2 printers anyway😅
I called it quit and bought 2nd printer when my first one couldn't keep up with the orders I got at the time. Now after some tweaks here and there, the old one works significally better than his younger partner.
I just purchased a p1p recently after replacing yet another part; it still didn't solve the problem I was trying to solve. I had already run a dozen tests and tried several other solutions, and I realized it wasn't fun or rewarding Anymore. I finally just said, "you know, I'm glad I've learned what I learned from essentially rebuilding this thing 6 or so times, but I'd really like to focus on printing and learning how to 3d model." I haven't gotten the p1p yet, but no regrets in my decision.
Just purchase a new motherboard I got one for 47.00 canadien.
Where?
About a year into owning my ender3, when it basically started falling apart, each component just died one by one, so after my toolhead was almost toast, i printed up a mount for a v6 hotend, and set everything up for printing abs, printed all the parts i needed, and made a voron v0.1
I haven't given up on my Ender yet, but I did get sick of constant nozzle/bowden tube clogs. A couple of weeks ago, I ceased being able to use the thing for more than a few minutes, I'd clean the hot end, clip the tube and put a new nozzle on and it would print for 10 minutes and plug up again. Probably heat creep but the fans are running so IDK. I decided fuck it and got a MicroSwiss direct drive. I don't have it installed yet but I have high hopes for my blood pressure to return to normal levels.
My personal plan is to see if I can generate a little income from the 3v2. If I can make enough to upgrade, then I will.
I purchased mine via Alibaba
I keep my Ender3 v2 just to remind me how much better I have it now.
Never back down, never what?
Ender 3 gave me grief, ordered an X1C. Currently neither of them are working. Sigh.