3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
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Creality is good because they brought an entry level 3d printer to market for an affordable price, and people like me got into the hobby because of that. The price point shows in the parts they use to assemble it. I’ve clocked countless hours learning how to correct failures, and upgrade the cheap parts for better, more reliable parts, add features, modify and flash firmware.
Five and a half years ago I bought that ender 3 pro. I think it was around $250 USD. I probably spent over $300 more upgrading it and replacing parts. In retrospect I shouldn’t have cheaped out, but that’s the conclusion I came to. I no longer want to waste time fixing the printer. If I walk away and don’t print anything for weeks/months at a time I’d like to have confidence when I fire it up it’s going to work.
I ordered a Prusa MK4S about a month ago which was the top-end hobbyist printer back then, and I am blown away by the difference. Prusa may not be the top at the moment, but the quality and support is there.
I recommend that unless you have the free time, you’re willing to tinker, and are not easily frustrated, you should look into a higher quality brand.
Agreed on the Ender 3's needing some tinkering. My wife got me the Ender 3 V2 a couple of years ago for Christmas and I like it a lot, but I spend more time troubleshooting it than actually printing stuff.
I like to tinker, but the Ender 3 V2 takes advantage of that fact.
Any recommendations on part upgrades? I've upgraded the nozzle and the extruder on mine (the stock, plastic extruder cracked badly last year and I replaced it with a full metal one), but it is still very unreliable. Prints are always failing due to adhesion issues even if I use aftermarket adhesives like MagiGoo on the build plate.
The best upgrade I made for the Ender 3 for adhesion was a PEI coated build plate. I don’t know the specs of the V2, but the brand I went with was “Wham Bam Systems” mine didn’t have a magnetic bed so I had to purchase the kit with the magnetic plate, and stainless steel PEI coated build surface. It was nice being able to pull off the plate and pop prints off of it. Be careful printing PETG on PEI it can fuse to the PEI
If the V2 has some sort of leveling system make sure it’s working correctly or the PEI sheet isn’t really going to help. Mine did not. I had so many failures where the print head crashed into the sheet and gouged it. The Z end stop wasn’t the best. I added a BLTouch probe and flashed the firmware and it got much better.
Thanks a bunch; I'll check out the PEI coated build plate.
I've contemplated getting the BLTouch probe for auto-leveling, but I don't think bed leveling is the root of the issue; I've leveled the darn thing about a thousand times by now