Budget 3D Printer Build and Mods: Ender-3

So the actual printing...

I didn't follow the advice in this thread and print a much of small stuff to dial in the printer, instead, i just jumped right into the deep end, and learned as i went with big prints... 

This was one of the first lessons: orientation not only affects final quality, but also print time, and "how the parts come apart." These two pieces had support material between them, which was nearly impossible to get apart. I had to slowly slice between with a sharpened putty knife, and still ended up damaging the print itself. The second part of that was the orientation of the layer lines over a curve. The resolution of the layers means the shallow portions of the curve end up with notable steps. These were later sanded and filled with a coat of epoxy, but took a fair amount of work to make them go away.

Here you can see the damage to the print, the leftover support material, and the "steps" in the shallow portions. I didn't mention it here, but the soft bed + rafts was giving me issues. Pulling/smushing a bit every print, even with (giant, time and material consuming) rafts, so i upgraded to the glass bed from Creality. Here's a better orientation for the curved faces, and the glass bed in place.

Two full 1kg spools later, the feeder gear decided enough was enough, and began slipping on the *last* layer of a print. i replaced it with one from amazon that has a set screw, instead of press on

I cut it close on a few prints... nothing like watching the last hour of a 36 hour print to see if you'll make it:

Altogether here. You can see some gaps - This was another lesson learned. Using the glass bed, check your level every print. AND! Check your level with the bed clips in the same place they'll be during the print, and with the bed warmed up to print temp. Those all make a difference, and make some funkyness part to part.

a little bondo, sanding, and a few coats of epoxy to seal it all up and smooth it out:

Then sand to 1000 grit, coat with PVA mold release, clamp together, and ready to (poorly) lay glass into!

And finally pulling from the mold! First piece - i'm happy it worked, but i need to work on my fiberglassing skills. This is the first time i've every done any glassing in a mold, and the first time using epoxy resin (West Systems). Test piece success, and traditional resin on order to make a real piece!

In reply to bdashrian :

If you haven't yet, replace the factory leveling springs used to suspend the bed. Any of the thick, yellow Amazon no-name brands are fine. They all work better than factory by a lot; that is, I can usually print a few weeks at a time without leveling.

Also, you can adjust the z-offset while your first layer prints if you're not perfectly level (which you rarely are). Play around with that setting with a calibration cube. It'll make leveling a lot less time intensive. 

Edit: I should note, if you're tuning your leveling by changing the z-offset at the start of a print, you'll have to do that every time you start a new print, until you level the bed again. The z-offset setting doesn't stay in memory. But I've gone weeks with just inputting the z-offset from the last print every time I start a new one. It's lazy but it keeps you moving through prints. 

I haven't messed with z-offset, but i did find that moving the binder clips around would throw things off. I'll have to look into the aftermarket springs - that could certainly make a difference. 

I got in the habit of printing a bed level test (can't remember which it is - one with a loopy curve, then a one layer disk in each corner and center) after checking level and before each print. The disks, i'll pop off the bed, and check with calipers to make sure they're close to the single layer thickness (0.2mm) as a confirmation

Since moving to the glass, i haven't had any first layer pull up issues. 

Is the 'soft' bed you're referring to the same magnetic spring steel bed that my Ender S1 came with? I've have pretty good luck with the spring steel one so far, and it's generally pretty good for removing prints from (though ABS can be a bit troublesome when it adheres properly- I've learned that I need to keep the bed hot so it's easier).

I always run the printer through its leveling routine before each print, and tweak the Z-offset every few prints- and watch the first layer and adjust it on the fly to make sure it's printing smoothly. The only time I've had issues and had to cancel prints and start again was when I switched from printing PLA (I've more been using PLA+, it is a lot more forgiving I've found) to ABS- the difference in the temperatures required (ABS uses a bed temp of like 105c vs PLA's 65c) meant I had to play with the Z-offset a few times to get it right so the first layer would adhere properly.

Also- for some reason the pictures aren't showing up for me...

the "soft" bed is the one that comes with the Ender3Pro - its a soft flexible, textured, magnetic piece. 

Not sure why photos aren't showing - can other see them?

try this one:

In reply to bdashrian :

I can see that picture, just not the ones in the post at the top of this page... weird.

It sounds like the 3Pro has the same basic bed as my 3 S1. I've had pretty good luck with overall, but it did take a good while before I really got a handle on the Z-offset... it wasn't until I'd made a good bit of upgrades to the printer (after I switched to running Klipper off a Raspberry Pi) that I really got it dialed in, and even now I occasionally have a few prints fail on the first layer and have to calibrate it again.

Anybody want a cheap used Ender 3? HiBid Auction- Creality Ender 3

I've gotten several batches of filament from HiBid auctions (of varying value... the last batch, a box of 6 spools of PETG, had clearly been partially used but was still half what it would have cost to buy them new), but this is the first time I've seen an actual printer.

Also- if anyone else is running Klipper on a Raspberry Pi and wants to run Input Shaper to find the resonances of the printer to be able to up the speeds let me know- having already done this I now have the accelerometer board and cable to hook it up to the RPi but am not likely to make any changes to the printer that would necessitate re-running Input Shaper anytime soon so would be happy so work out lending it out.

Printer is currently in the middle (well, like 20% through...) a print that the slicer said would take 42 hours but Mainsail is saying will be closer to 55: printing a lithophane sphere of the moon at pretty much the size limits of the printer using glow-in-the-dark filament.

Well, first the good news: the moon lithophane somehow finished largely without incident, though I do need to figure out why it seemed like as it got higher on the Z-axis that I needed to bump up the Z-offset more because it sounded like the nozzle was clipping the print. My theory is that it's something to do with my having tweaked the z-rotations setting after running calibration prints. The moon print looks pretty awesome: 

The bad: 

Printing the stand for it however- which was an only 5-hour print vs. the over 50-hour one for the lithophane- went far, far worse. Not only did the print head again apparently catch on the print as it was getting near the top of the legs higher up on the z-axis and knock things enough out of whack to spaghetti the last centimeter or so of the print, something happened that the z-offset or bed height map were off and way too low and the PETG print was absolutely glued to the print bed, and getting it off pulled up some of the plastic coating on the flexible metal bed.

So, I now have to wait for a new one to come In tomorrow- I actually ordered both a direct replacement and one of Creality's glass beds to see which I like better. 

Only fortunate thing is that since we came out to the cabin this weekend I couldn't have been printing anything most of the weekend anyway...

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Is that stand meant to be printed without supports? 

I like my glass bed a lot. More flexibility in what surface you can use (gluestick, painters tape, or flip it over for Creality's textured finish) and I've smacked it around pretty hard to get prints off and it doesn't mind. 

Alternatively, I'll stick it in the freezer for about 10 minutes after a print and it almost always pops off on its own in there. 

In reply to Turbo_Rev :

Yes, the stand was designed to print without supports- if the nozzle hadn't apparently snagged on the print itself and thrown things out of whack the print itself would have been fine- I just still wouldn't have been able to get it off the bed. 

I'm looking forward to trying otu the glass bed. I was hoping to be able to use the thermistor info I got from Creality to install the 300C hot end as well, and was even more optimistic when I realized that it was actually just the S1 Pro's hot end- but when I pulled up the Klipper config file for the S1 Pro it has the exact same thermistor setting as my standard S1, so it looks like I'm going to have to do the whole 'measure the resistance at 3 temperatures' in order to set up the new thermistor. 

FINALLY got the moon lithophane stand to print properly... it took a good bit of tweaking of the print settings, probably most influentially setting it to lift the Z-axis whenever it moved. The downside is that it's not wiping the print head when it moves as much so there's more stringing, but I'll take a bit of stringing over prints failing.

Got an ender 3 pro for 99$... was given a printer near Christmas and I never got it to work, couldn't pass up the deal. Would have had to completely recode it because it had a bigtreetech board.. it was a ton of parts do I'm gonna scavenge some off of it like the bl touch. Currently printing some wire chains and brackets for some wire management 

In reply to Gambit :

Nice! An auction site near me had an Ender 3 that went for like $80 and it was reaaaaally tempting to bid on it- but I do not at the moment need another printer. Down the line... maybe. I have a very ambitious idea that I want to print and build a custom guitar for a friend who is a very talented musician, and having a 2nd printer would definitely speed things up. But I also want to be printing it with filament I recycle from bottles myself, and I'm only starting to get that setup build, so I've got time.

Probably one of the more unusual and interesting things I've printed yet- and the one that to date will be seen and appreciated by the most people by far. The Dancer's non-profit was selected to paint/decorate a horse (foal, technically) that will be put out on display around town and then auctioned off to raise money for the charity that runs the thing. It's... I guess don't worry about the details, if you're not a Lexintonian it probably doesn't make much sense. 

But anyway... she right away decided that the kids she works with should get to paint it and they did- but they also pretty much immediately upon seeing it said that it NEEDED to be a unicorn. Which is where I come in- she mentioned this to me, and I searched around and found a unicorn horn on Thingiverse that was close to what she wanted but had to make some modifications to the file in OpenSCAD to be able to mount it. It was printed out 100%-infill (since it will be out in public and I was worried if I did it less than that it might break of someone grabbed it) using 'transparent' glitter-infused filament and then coated again in glitter and then 2-part epoxied to the head of the horse:

I can't wait to see what it looks like next week- they take the horses to a local shop that covers them with automotive clearcoat. I had to check A LOT to (hopefully) confirm that they didn't bake them at all in the process to make sure that the horn (which is just PLA) didn't melt...

Well after several years of faithful service I finally had a component fail on the old ender. I had not used it since moving, and plugged it in to help my son print something. When I flipped the switch on the power supply I got a loud pop and a green spark, now the PSU doesn't work. Time to upgrade I guess...

Well, haven't done much printing in the last couple of months, flat out with travel, finishing up work and then packing all my stuff in a shipping container to relocate back to Oz. Managed to pack the CR10 into it's original shipping box despite the upgrades.

Also realise I forgot to update on the Scan Lizard Kickstarter situation.

So, Kickstarter refunded everything $ wise, and then Creality offered via pledgebox to fulfill what everyone originally signed up for, at the KS pricing, with the bonuses originally promised. So I paid up for that, and it arrived at my in-laws place back home last week, a couple of days after Creality delivered the V2.0 software package for it. Will be interesting to see how it looks when I'm finally in the same postcode as it next week.

First job will be scan the non damaged side of my Bimota's fairing to mirror and print a mould to patch repair the damaged indicator mount pocket...

In reply to Gammaboy :

Looking forward to updates!

bgkast said:

In reply to Gammaboy :

Looking forward to updates!

So am I!

Mr_Asa said:

Here's a checklist of stuff to do.

https://3dprinterly.com/8-ways-how-to-fix-a-clicking-slipping-extruder-on-a-3d-printer/

Thanks for sharing this wonderful post on 3d printer, Are you a printers expert?

Does anyone know what type of connector fits in here?

I had to get a new motherboard since my buddy fried mine when trying to update the firmware. Got a bigtreetech skr mini e3 v3.0 and need that connector for the one fan that normally goes into a screw terminal.

Is this the general thread of 3d printer questions?  I'm just getting into it, but dont necessarily want to derail this any more than it already has been.

ProDarwin said:

Is this the general thread of 3d printer questions?  I'm just getting into it, but dont necessarily want to derail this any more than it already has been.

I think it's sort of become the general 3D printing thread, unless someone has started another one for more general questions that I don't know of. 

I've halfway thought about starting a 'Today I Printed (TIP)' thread so I'm not constantly posting pictures of things I printe here though.

I know that I really shouldn't.... but I'm toying with picking up another, larger build-volume printer. The Anycubic Mega X is now only $200 and has a 300mm square build area- large enough to print full LEGO baseplates, something my S1 can't do. At $200 it's a pretty good price, but I don't know where I'd put it and would only really be able to justify getting it if I were to seriously be planning on making and selling things with it. 

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

ProDarwin said:

Is this the general thread of 3d printer questions?  I'm just getting into it, but dont necessarily want to derail this any more than it already has been.

I think it's sort of become the general 3D printing thread, unless someone has started another one for more general questions that I don't know of. 

I've halfway thought about starting a 'Today I Printed (TIP)' thread so I'm not constantly posting pictures of things I printe here though.

Do it, and I will fill that with questions instead of this thread here:  https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/shop-talk/please-help-me-get-started-in-3d-printing/196423/page1/

Well, since I finally got pretty much everything I had on my plate printing-wise done, I finally got around to swapping for a smaller (.2mm) nozzle from the stock .4mm- the idea being that the thinner lines will make it easier to print LEGO parts as I couldn't get the wall thicknesses right with the default. But now I need to spend a lot of time figuring out all the settings for the new nozzle to get prints to come out right...