If it is working as stated then it doesn’t appear to be a bad price for the spec. Should you not get along with it then you should be able to sell on for not much of a loss. That the seller has ungraded to a Bambu Labs printer suggests they are keen – Bambu Labs seem to be leading the pack in the more expensive home printer field at the moment & even their entry level stuff is a big step up on an Ender 3.

Creality have a large user base, so there is a lot of information about on setting up, using & upgrading them. They appear capable when set up, but may well not be very “plug and play” compared to some (usually more expensive) brands. IIRC Silly Old Duffer on here has one – I chose to go Anycubic when I got my current (first) printer and 4 trouble free years on I have another Anycubic printer on the way..

What do you intend to do with it ? Doing much other than downloading and printing other people’s models from the likes of Printables or Thingiverse will require getting to grips with some form of 3D Cad, which is a steep learning curve where I am currently still very mcuh at the beginner stage (FreeCad) after quite a lot of frustration. It does seem to be getting a bit easier with practice & perseverance, though.

If you want to dip a toe in the water, it doens’t seem like a bad option & the seller may be able to advise on how best to run it. Be aware that 3D printing is (yet another) rabbit hole to go down !

Nigel B.

Sounds like the seller knows what he is doing. Auto Bed levelling on the Ender 3 Pro is useful. I had to upgrade my 3 year old 3 Pro to a 32bit mainboard to accommodate bed levelling, so that may have been done on the one you are buying. If so it makes for a nice machine.

Lucky boy to get that with the upgrades cheap. I’d be tempted to get it as a second one if it were available on my doorstep. The Ender 3 is very capable and was even being used by people doing commercial work.

There are lots of Model Engineering related things on Thingiverse for starters – changewheels, division plates, dials, knobs, handles.
See the recent topics on here about FreeCAD and have a go at something simple like a washer or spacer. It will only take ten minutes to print and then you can modify it and build up your confidence in self design.
You mantra at this time of year needs to be ‘dry filament’.

And my wife has already complained about the smell…

What filament are you using ? I have only printed PLA at the moment & there is no noticable smell with that. Mrs B has a very sensitive nose (at least where my indoor hobby activities are concerned ! ) and the only comments I get about the printer relate to the noise it makes when printing – no smell related comments at all.

I have used both Ebay & Amazon for filament. Can’t say I have noticed any difference in print quality between the Anycubic branded PLA supplied with my printer or any of the replacements. I have bought usually on the basis of price rather than a brand name & print out a test “temperture tower” when changing to a new roll to determine the optimum print temperature for the new filament – but this seems to only change around 5 degrees C or so from a nominal 200 C for PLA.

YouTube contributors worth looking up include Teaching Tech, Maker’s Muse, Tomas Sanladerer, CNC Kitchen & Filament Friday. You may have to go back quite a long way through the posted videos to get to older “Getting started” and Creality Ender specific content.

Nigel B.

On 26 January 2024 at 00:29 Grindstone Cowboy Said:

Nigel – it’s just some Ender branded PLA that came with it. To be honest, I can’t smell much, and I think her real objection is that I’ve currently got it on the floor in front of the TV :). Thanks for the YouTube suggestions, I’ll have a look at them.

Neil – Thanks, I can certainly see what you mean, particularly the nozzle height. From it working fine when demo’d, after a short trip in the car, I resumed the print. After ten minutes, it was apparent something had gone wrong. It’s taken me literally hours to get it back working like it was.

Scrapped the first print and tried again. There seemed to be no adhesion whatsoever. Scrapped many more attempts. Messed about with nozzle height offset from ABL probe, manually levelled the bed, flow rate, bed and nozzle temp (I think it is in a draught), fan speed, speed of printing. I think it’s OK now. Daren’t leave it and go to bed though.

But I think I’ve done the right thing in getting it. A bit more practice required and a lot of reading and watching tutorials.

Rob

 

you are beginniong to learn there is much to know and fiddle with, my suggestion is to get Cura and the template for Ender 3, the settings within should be ok without any tweeking.

Bed adhesion – can be very frustrating, clenliness of the bed is very important.

there are borders that you can put round your print that will aid adhesion and if you are still having problems, try cheap versions of pritt stick, a very thin layer is all you need.

nozzle height is easily set by using a page of normal 80gm copy/printer paper, such that the grip on the paper by the nozzle can just be fealt. I would not worry too much about auto bed leveling at this stage.

Bed and nozzle temp for PLA is usually 60 and 200 and +- 5 deg.

draughts you should try and avoid as this can cause ‘elephants foot’ problems.

Once you get a reasonable print – DON’T change anything.

Your slicer should tell you either weight or length of the print as well as time. Might not be immediately obvious. When you get the new spool weigh it to get the total so you can easily work out how much is left as you approach the end. Write the weight of full spool on it because you will lose that piece of paper……

Rob,

Like you, my printer has a removable flexible build plate and Bambu Lab actually recommend the use of a glue stick to aid bed adhesion!  I’ve not had a problem with either bed adhesion or print release.  Having said that, I have only used PLA and TPU filament so far in my foray into 3D printing.  My printer in totally enclosed, so I’m not bothered by fumes – not that I’ve noticed any – and the machine resides in the garage, is connected to the household wifi network for downloading the print files and monitoring via the in-built camera.  Perhaps a home brew enclosure might be worth consideration?

OrcaSlicer is an alternative and very capable open source program, too, if you fancy a bit of parameter tweaking.

John

I had my Ender 3 for a couple of years pretty much standard. This Christmas I bought a K1 and gave the Ender to my daughter’s school for their tech department. The Ender was a decent affordable machine but the K1 is definitely a level or three above.

How were the wires to the terminals terminated Rob ?

Wires to screw terminals should have “hardened” ends like boot lace ferrules or crimped forks / eyelets. Worst case for coming loose in service is tinning the wire ends – the solder flows away from the pressure of the screw clamps, so regardless of how hard they are initially tightened they will come loose over time.

Hopefully you will soon be back in action.

Nigel B.

Pritt stick type (I’m using generic Tesco version) is best for those beds.