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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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.
Best upgrades for me was the following in order of overall impact
Klipper
BTT Skr mini e3v3 board
Silicon bed spacers
Klackender mod by KevinAkaSam
G10 build plate
Orbiter extruder and dragonfly hotend for direct drive
Belted Z mod by KevinAkaSam
More recent EBB36 canbus for the tool head mainly because it frees up some ports on the control board for other things like my Nevermore.
For overall quality and reliability the following have the biggest impact.
Ensuring the physical frame is as square as possible. As well as adjusting and shimming things such as folded aluminum foil under the Z extrusions to get them square with the base.
The board and Klipper are huge since it makes it easier to use the klack probe (Klicky for ender) and the silicone spacers allow me to dial in the screws with adjust_screws.
And skew correction because my X gantry is twisted (tested that on granite counter top) and after I’ve done everything else to ensure it’s physically right i still had to work around some of it with software.
Now I can just fire it up and print PLA, ABS (it’s in a grow tent enclosure), PETG and TPU without any issue.
The g10 plate works great with all of them, Klipper can compensate for any warping, build offset as long as the screws are properly adjusted (which I test every couple of months or after I’ve had a print that really didn’t want to come off.
I’m building a trident myself right now and I’m using the “Frankender” to do it with really great quality results.
Thanks a lot! I'll look into the upgrades you mentioned and try my luck. Here's hoping I can get it back up and running without too much work