Budget 3D Printer Build and Mods: Ender-3

Metallic and 'silky' or whatever they call it... PLA stuff tends to print pretty easy and gives good results. This wasn't on an Ender, but the larger commercial one I use now. Wasn't going full all out quality as theyre mockup parts for an accessory drive setup, but the stuff works quite well. 

My upgrade to the Ender 3

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I call it the Jason wheel.

With this upgrade the two uprights do not need to be parallel, only on the same plane.

Reduces the need for an additional Z axis stepper.

The Z axes moves so freely it will not stay up if Z stepper is not energized.

We bought my son (11) an Ender for Christmas and he loves it.  He has projects all the time.  He's been sharing some of his prints with the teachers and students at his school.  They've been so impressed that they've bought a couple Enders and are going to put together a S.T.E.A.M. club to introduce the kids to 3D design and printing.  They asked that he put together a brief "How To" video to share with the club.  Here's what we did (I'm sure he would appreciate the likes on the video):

Awsome video young man!

I picked up some good points that I was never aware of.

You may also have a career in movie productions!

Start your own channel. I will watch!

Thanks

So, what is the current recommendation on what model to get? In reading through the thread it seems like people have a mix of the original Ender 3, the 3 v2, and 3 Pro with there being a roughly $100 difference between the least-expensive (3) and most (at the moment, 3 V2 slightly). 

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Short version: if you need the bed space to print larger objects, the CR series or the Ender 5; if size doesn't matter (lol) the Ender 3 is a great place to start, especially at it's price point.

I'm pretty sure that for now the Ender 3's size is enough for what I'm going to be interested in... just trying to figure out which version would be best to start with.

https://m.all3dp.com/1/creality-ender-3-pro-vs-ender-3-v2-the-differences/

Seems to be the main difference is that the V2 has the 'silent' board.

I'd go with the regular 3 and then upgrade parts as needed/wanted

Got tired of mine not working, so I got a Creality Direct Drive Extruder and so far so good. Probably should have been able to fix the standard bowden setup, but I lost patience. 

So Amazon has the Ender 3 S1 for $370 today, which has a direct-drive extruder and auto-leveling built in as well as some of the other upgrades that had looked nice (large bed leveling knobs). Is that a pretty good deal?

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

So Amazon has the Ender 3 S1 for $370 today, which has a direct-drive extruder and auto-leveling built in as well as some of the other upgrades that had looked nice (large bed leveling knobs). Is that a pretty good deal?

I use a plugin called Keepa that monitors Amazon pricing over time, and it looks like it's been $429 since January, so yeah, pretty good.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

So Amazon has the Ender 3 S1 for $370 today, which has a direct-drive extruder and auto-leveling built in as well as some of the other upgrades that had looked nice (large bed leveling knobs). Is that a pretty good deal?

I use a plugin called Keepa that monitors Amazon pricing over time, and it looks like it's been $429 since January, so yeah, pretty good.

After a discussion with The Dancer about it, ordered it along with an initial spool of filament! Looking forward to it getting here- though I'm thinking that I need to do some rearranging of my office a bit for it- the printer stand that I think would work best to put it on is currently right next to a window (but also right next to my computer where it's convenient). 

Related- my primary computer is an iMac, does anyone have good suggestions as to what software to use on a mac for 3D printing? 

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

Free for personal use. 

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

Free for personal use. 

Also, since you could be using it for the charity org, there is a way to get the more feature packed version and not have to pay the user fees...

either way you have to go through the sign-up/application process to get to the part when you can waive the fee.

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

Free for personal use. 

Ah, hadn't seen that- thanks!

stafford1500 said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

Free for personal use. 

Also, since you could be using it for the charity org, there is a way to get the more feature packed version and not have to pay the user fees...

either way you have to go through the sign-up/application process to get to the part when you can waive the fee.

Actually it's pretty likely that I will be using it to make things for The Dancer's non-profit, so that's a good idea. Thanks!

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

I use Design Spark Mechanical (DSM). Free. It is a detuned version of Space Claim, part of the powerful ANSYS portfolio of engineering software.

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

So Amazon has the Ender 3 S1 for $370 today, which has a direct-drive extruder and auto-leveling built in as well as some of the other upgrades that had looked nice (large bed leveling knobs). Is that a pretty good deal?

Would you mind posting the link to the amazon deal? Hopefully its still on. 

Thanks!

Slippery said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

So Amazon has the Ender 3 S1 for $370 today, which has a direct-drive extruder and auto-leveling built in as well as some of the other upgrades that had looked nice (large bed leveling knobs). Is that a pretty good deal?

Would you mind posting the link to the amazon deal? Hopefully its still on. 

Thanks!

Here's the link, but it looks like it's back to its original price unfortunately. I got lucky and was looking through the daily deals on Amazon and saw the deal on it coming up so jumped on it pretty quickly (when I bought it like 10% of the deal stock had been bought). 
 

Creality Ender 3 S1 3D Printer, Advanced 32 Bit Mute Mainboard, CR Touch Au... https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09KBML6PD/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_i_VETSQWRGM32D2SZ101N9

JasonMills said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Fusion360 for modeling, Cura for a slicer. Seems to be the default, and both have worked well for me so far. 

Ouch... I think The Dancer wouldn't be too thrilled with my having to spend more for a year of licensing Fusion360 than I spent on the printer itself. Any more budget-friendly options?

I use Design Spark Mechanical (DSM). Free. It is a detuned version of Space Claim, part of the powerful ANSYS portfolio of engineering software.

 

 

 

I'll have to take a look at that as well... some people at my work use ANSYS for analysis, but our primary design work is done on Dassault products (Catia/3DX). I'd be curious if they have a free hobbyist version I could use since I'm nore familiar with it (though not super familiar when it comes to designing, since I'm an analyst and not a designer), but since I'd be using it on my iMac anyway the controls would be enough different to probably be more confusing that helpful. 

The new printer arrived on Saturday as expected!

It was pretty easy to set up, and I got it started printing out a Benchy to test it out. Unfortunately I had to leave for a bit, and when I got back the crappy filament that came with the printer that wasn't on a spool had fallen off of the holder and bound up and not been feeding through the extruder.

Thankfully swapping to using the spooled filament I'd picked up worked without a hitch- here's the completed Benchy along with the aborted one.

I decided to dive into what I had really wanted to do and try out printing LEGO pieces. The first attempt went horribly awry...

Honestly, I'm still having trouble getting the scale just right for them so they fit together right... but I've been having fun trying to print other things too with varying success. This guy for example worked out pretty well...

I'm going to be picking up the two spools of glow-in-the-dark filament that I won at a local auction in a bit, and tomorrow a spool of 'shiny' filament should arrive so I can try printing parts with that too. I'm hoping to design and print my first thing from scratch in the next few days- I want to make a keychain with The Dancer's non-profit's logo on it, and I may try and get fancy and change colors so the base and logo are different color filaments...

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Does that version still have the cock-eyed z-axis stepper motor?

Turbo_Rev said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Does that version still have the cock-eyed z-axis stepper motor?

I'm not sure, I don't know exactly what you mean or what to look for on it...