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.
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Creality isn't a bad company, they're just hindered by the ignorant. The Ender 3, the baseline, old 8 bit model - was a perfectly fine machine if you knew what needed to be tight, and what didn't.
The new 3v3 SE is a wonderful machine at like $180 with direct drive, magnetic PEI bed, dual Z screws, and the works. It doesn't require all the knowledge that the old versions did. It's a perfectly fine beginner machine.
The problem with Creality is just that everyone bought one as an enthusiast, so they told all the non-enthusiasts it was a great machine, and without that same level of knowledge, those people fell HARD. In doing so, they returned and claimed that creality machines were garbage. But they really weren't. As far as bottom-of-the-barrel budget machines go, they were pretty alright.
The Elegoo Neptune 4's are pretty good. Avoid Anycubic FDM machines, but their Resin printers are good. Avoid Dremel; their nozzles are literally a smaller MK10 nozzle from 12 years ago with nichrome wire wrapped around it. They are unserviceable. Nozzle clogs, and you just buy a $35 replacement everything. Avoid XYZPrinting. New-gen Creality is good for beginners in this new higher-expectation world. Old-gen Creality, don't even bother unless you're getting it for <$50 and know enough to repair it yourself. (Old Gen is Ender 3, CR-10, Ender 3 v2, Ender 3 Pro, anything with "Neo" in it. Yes, Ender 3 is a version number. Yes, Creality is basically calling their printer the Ender v3 v2. Only Ender worth getting is the Ender 3, v3 (SE, KE, etc)) - If you have the budget, the Creality K1 Max is really the only alternative to a Bambu if you need a larger build size. Possibly the Sovol SV08 - but as much as I love the Klipper team, it is NOT the most user friendly on that front. If you like techy-stuff, the SV08 isn't as polished as a Bambu, but may be worth the price/size ratio.
Ignore people telling you to print carbon fiber, most of them are idiots. Glow in the dark is also destructive to your machine, avoid that unless it's DAS filament (who ball-grind their glow powder, so it's not abrasive to brass nozzles and other softer parts of your machine).
Sovol machines are a pretty good Prusa-alternative. They cloned the machines quite well, and are much cheaper.
Stick with PLA for everything until you find a situation in which it fails. Move up to PETG after that. Don't get caught up in the "TPU Trap". Great, you can print a phone case. What are you going to do with the REST of the roll? TPU doesn't work in remote-drive systems. YES, some of us who are headstrong can force it to work, but generally just accept that it doesn't, and if you MUST use TPU, make sure you're using it on a direct drive machine. If you have an enclosed machine, feel free to move up to ABS/ASA, HIPS, and others. Be prepared for the stinky. They do smell like burning styrofoam depending on the mfg.
Anyone selling you a used machine - you are adopting their problem. They wouldn't be selling it to you otherwise. There is ALWAYS a problem. Buy new when possible. Also, though I HATE Jeff Bezos, get your shit from Amazon. It's not their product, and if it's defective, they're not going to give you the run-around in replacing it. I've seen lots of people even told to keep the old/busted machine (great for spare parts later!). Amazon don't give a shiiiiiiiiit. This isn't possible for some machines: Bambu for example. They just don't work with resellers.
And don't go getting the cheapest bullshit filament you can buy. Stay above the...eh...$18/spool range. Lower than that, and you start getting some crusty shit.
If you have pets - good...fucking....luck. Pet dander, and all the shit they add to the air, is cancer to 3D printers. There is not a single pet owner that I have met where they aren't constantly servicing their machine due to clogs.
Re: Pets. I have three cats and I've been doing well with my Qidi X-Max 3, which has a fully enclosed filament path even in stock configuration. And mine still does now in its current getup, where I feed it directly from my filament dryer.
The PLA I currently use near-exclusively is Elegoo Rapid PLA+ which at least when you buy it in the bulk 4 packs is $12.99 per 1kg spool. I've occasionally used other off brand sub-$15 PLA filaments and not gotten screwed. Cheap bullshit filament can be OK if you are willing to commit to thoroughly drying it out before use and can have its uses if you need one decorative thing in a particular weird color and don't feel like shelling out for an oddball. For me, the Elegoo stuff is as cheap enough and is a known good quantity so I don't see much reason to mess with success unless I have to.
You're right about TPU being a specialty material, but for the times I have needed it, it has definitely come in clutch. Its unique mechanical properties have allowed me to make various weird gaskets (most recent being a replacement air intake gasket for an old motorcycle), adapter boots, bumpers, buffers, and most recently this thing. TPU exhibits incredible layer adhesion -- you can make parts out of it that are basically completely isotropic, even with a bog standard filament machine -- which turn out to be damn near indestructible provided you don't need them to tolerate high heat or be rigid in any way whatsoever. It's a rather silly choice to use for just making static objects, though. For printing your low poly Pikachus and Deadpool busts and Yoda bobbleheads or whatever the hell, PLA is much easier to use.
I think a lot of people get caught up in the trap of thinking of your material choices being a "ranking," with the cheaper and easier to print polymers being lower on the totem pole and assuming that the more expensive and harder to print ones are "better." This is not necessarily the case. Every material choice (excepting various strange exotic materials some of which have no realistic purpose other than showing off) has its advantages and disadvantages that may be a consideration depending on your application. Boring old cheap PLA, for instance, is actually the most rigid of the commonly available materials that are possible for ordinary people to print without non-industrial printers. It also confers the second best layer adhesion strength out of the rigid polymers in that same category (behind TPU which is not rigid, and arguably polycarbonate which is a pain in the ass to print and presents it own other problems). Really, the only failings PLA has is a very low temperature resistance and susceptibility to cold creep.
I kind of agree with what you're saying on creality, but if you look at their core xy machines compared to other manufacturers of a similar price point, it's just not worth it (K1).
To your point about larger size, Qidi XMAX3 is where it's at. It's rock solid and customer support is amazing. They've sent me free parts due to clogs and helped diagnose issues on the printer (this is what Creality lacks, support). It runs on Klipper and is easily modified, and it's fully enclosed with a heater.
I also think a "beginner" machine has shifted. Most people want to print, not maintain. And now we have plenty of machines that need little maintenance.
Creality machines do excel at tinkering, swapping parts, and doing fun mods. But you need to know that's what you want when going in. Even then for a beginner I'd say get something rock solid for your first printer, and get a tinkering machine for your second.
I agree with everything you're saying about filament. The only thing to use CF with is Nylon if you need it to be a little more rigid, but it will eat your nozzle.
ASA and ABS won't only smell, it will poison you. Do not hang out if you can smell it.
As per Amazon and their return policy, totally true. If you're not buying there make sure they have a solid customer support, like Qidi and Bambu. Creality wouldn't take a return for the world.
Absolutely on the K1. Nobody should be buying it. Only time I ever recommend them -- is when referring to the K1 Max. And that's only when people want: A - To Print Fast, and B - Something larger than Bambu. But I'm starting to move toward suggesting the SV08 if I can see they are at least a little bit technical.
The normal K1? Forget it. Don't buy it.
Agree with everything with one caveat - creality QA is absolute dogshit.
It really isn't. It's the users who are mostly to blame. The one I see all the time, is users who replace the PTFE without knowing how that whole system works. Especially people who replace the PTFE with Crapricorn tubing.
I'm just going on personal experience, 1st e3v2 I bought had a bent gantry extrusion (box was not damaged) and I had to deburr several of the holes. Luckily microcenter is local to me and I was able to exchange it. 2nd one was good for about a month before I had to replace the extruder as the teeth had worn off to the point it would slip and make that fun clicking sound we all know and love. I was only printing standard Inland PLA, nothing filled or overly abrasive. All ghings being equal, as someone new to the hobby at the time, spending more time and money trying to get it to print "ok" versus trusting it to not fail a 10+ hour print finally got to me. Not sure about their newer machines as my Ender experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Personally, when people ask what I'd recommend, I default to Prusa or Bambu (I went with Bambu), or Sovol or Quidi for more budget friendly options. I've heard Creality's newer stuff is better, but I'm not planning on buying any more of their stuff. Eventually I'll jump down the Voron rabbit hole, but too many other projects at the moment, plus a 350x350x350 machine is going to take up serious space in my print room.
Tl;dr : if you have a creality machine and you're happy with it, by all means. One can only speak on their personal experience.
I have pretty unique experience here in that I run a 3D printer repair shop. I have my hands on literally thousands of machines (an avg of 3-4 a day or so).
I've never once seen a bent gantry extrusion. The Ender 3 was known for a faulty period between 2020 and 2021 where they made a non-glass-filled extruder levers; and that caused a lot of extrusion headaches with PLA.
And I've never seen a brass hobbed gear for the extruder wear down on just normal PLA. White-PLA can be a little bit abrasive, but glow in the dark is just as bad as carbon fiber.
Again, looping back to the non-glass-filled lever, I have absolutely seen PLA tear the shit out of that thing though -- nearly cut it in half. But that's not a QA problem; that's a design/engineering problem.
I would imagine the one I returned got shipped back to the manufacturer or distributor, I can't say for certain, but I'd guess most people who had such an obvious defect out of the box would do the same thing, might explain why you've never seen one. And, yes, I improperly lumped the poorly spec'd brass extruder gear into QA, you are correct, it was poor design. My point stands, Creality, at least from the period I bought mine, (likely manufactured during that era) had poor QA / poor design. I eventually got tired of manually trimming the bed every few prints, installed the Creality abl switch which really didn't do much other than highlight the fact that the glass/PEI Creality beds seemed to warp on me. Once again, I'm speaking on my own experience, and if you're new to the hobby and feel that Creality printers have improved enough to the point where they are reliable and relatively hands-off maintenance-wise, feel free to purchase one. My advice is worth exact as much as everyone else's, one random voice on the internet.
That's...not true at all. If I gave someone advice on how to do a brain surgery, they'd be idiotic to listen to me. Same with 3D printers. Your replies echo the hordes of uneducated 3D printer owners who don't know where to locate these things.
Glass is manufactured using a float method - it cannot be manufactured non-flat unless it is intentional. (It CAN, however, be pulled out-of-flat with clips and clamps though!) Which shows the straws you're grasping at because you didn't have the knowledge available to you at the time as to what was causing your issue. In fact, you mentioning the ABL not working even further displays that your lack of knowledge was the entire issue. Bed leveling cannot work if the physical machine is not working according to the kinematic model. That model expects the X gantry to move perfectly parallel, and the head to be tight, and move exactly how much the machine thinks it's moving. Yours wasn't because you didn't put it together correctly.
The fact that you've made the same mistakes that I see plenty of people making over and over and over again - means that your opinion is misinformed, and sharing it is not only not helpful, but actually detrimental to the greater discourse. This is why I left the 3D printing Reddit community, because masses of users were parroting "Dry Your Filament!" for every single problem out there.
Your issue with the bed leveling has more to do with how the X axis gantry is assembled on the older Ender 3's. You want the left-cluster of eccentric spacers to be snug; and you want the ones on the right to be looser. The X axis gantry on the Ender also needs to be TIGHTENED. (the ones that are impossible to get to unless you take the X gantry off of the frame) It's fighting shear forces, because creality was too stupid to design the left gantry brackets correctly, and many people leave these far too loose.
So what was happening, was your X gantry wasn't moving parallel and staying that way - it was doing the wobbly-worm as your X gantry moved on the Z axis. It's not a problem with the machine, it's a problem with the education of the user.
But I love that you're here, because you're the EXACT example I was looking for. Creality gets a bad rap, from people like yourself who didn't understand the mechanics behind how the printer was supposed to work. So you go on the internet and talk crap about them, because your experience was bad. Your bad experience was completely due to your own uneducation, but because you had that bad experience - you'll never say it was you - you'll blame Creality.
Remember: The Creality Ender 3 was designed, and deployed in an era where a majority of users were still building their machines from scratch, or from parts kits. It wasn't a microwave-oven, and it still pushed what could be done by making the machines cheaper and available to more people. When viewed in a vacuum from the perspective of all the progress we've made today - absolutely, it's a machine that doesn't even compare. But that doesn't make it a bad machine, just an old one.
It's my opinion that they need to flat-out just discontinue the Ender 3, Pro, v2, Neo, etc -- but they probably premanufactured millions of these things and they likely still want to get rid of the stock that's out there. It's still a wonderful machine - again - IF you know how it's supposed to be properly assembled.
And if you listen to CHEP on YouTube, then you've assembled it wrong.
So I will repeat myself one more time for clarity: You were uneducated. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as you're willing to educate yourself. I was in your shoes 12 years ago when I first started, and I made the same stupid mistakes (though, it was with the community who were curious to try things at the time, vs this new generation of 3D printer owners who have no interest in the 3D printer at all).
Also, I agree with the statement that nobody should be buying an Ender 3, pro, v2, today. The v3 SE, KE - are worthwhile machines though, and one users uneducated trials from years ago does not echo what rings true today. If that were the case, QiDi should be in the garbage - because they were once one of the worst machines on the market. But they're a pretty good machine now.
Sure thing, chief. You were there when I bought the 1st one, there when I returned it for another one, and then held my hand through the tough times with the 2nd one. I salute you.
That was MY experience. You, as a 3d printer repair shop owner, had / have a different one. When a shop takes one back for a blatant defective part, do they send it to you? When that non-glass filled, poorly casted brass geared extruder breaks and it's an easy-enough $15ish dollar swap, does it cone to you? Or do the majority of people just try it and it works long enough for them to think, "well maybe if I just throw a little more time and money into it, it'll be good enough"? I. Me. The guy who's responding. Had multiple bad experiences with Creality printers. I'm done with them. My Bambu has been great since I've bought it, no maintenance aside from cleaning the carbon rods and the stray strands that make their way under the build plate. I repeatedly said, that was MY experience. I won't recommend them to anyone until I see major changes in their hardware. Feel free to disagree, but you're trying to argue with me regarding what I dealt with for far too long before I bought a printer that... wait for it... just works.
Yes - we constantly bought "defective" ones off of Ebay through an Amazon merchant program. They'd have shattered glass beds, or a missing idler arm, but I'd say 49/50 times, they were just misassembled. We'd purchase them for $40/ea, spend 5 minutes on them, and sell them for $150 properly assembled. Many of those people are still printing on the same Ender today, because a properly built old Ender 3 is a workhorse. You can't rely on people with no electromechanical knowledge to put together a literal manufacturing robot.
Yes. I have people drop their machines off and pay me the repair fee for a fan swap. For the silliest small things, constantly. Not only that, but this particular issue with Ender 3's was almost invisible, as the problem area existed under the arm idler, and if you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't catch it. All you'd know is that you were having problems "leveling the bed" (as my customers always claimed) or "couldn't get it calibrated".
They literally have and I've been telling you that this whole time... The Ender 3 v3 comes with dual belt-sync'd Z, sprite extruder, dual auto leveling probes, proper linear rails on the bed, USB support, on custom extrusions. And I come to you with the experience of thousands of other Creality purchasers.
You're literally, purposely not listening here. You're comparing a machine that came out nearly 8 years ago to a modern one, and refusing to compare the modern one, with ANOTHER modern one. You simply cannot compare the vanilla Ender 3 - a GENERATIONS old machine, with a machine designed and sold within the past year. The Ender 3 v3 SE can be had for around $180-200 on Amazon. And it solved all the issues you're complaining about. But here you are, FESTERING on like a cancerous boil because you can't be bothered to listen to what a professional is telling you.
THIS is what I'm talking about. YOU are Creality's problem here. An inexperienced, uneducated user, who purchased what was at the time an enthusiasts machine, crashing out hard, and then bitching for all of eternity even after the machines have been fixed. Creality isn't bad any longer. They did exactly what you said they needed to do for you to stop giving them shit, but here you are giving them shit.
OF COURSE a 8 year old machine is shit compared to a 1 year old one. That's why I literally said not to get an older generation Ender. Your "experience" (and by that I mean lack-thereof) echos all the other new to the hobby people that walk in my store. You landed in the same shit they did. Literally a textbook case of you not knowing what was going on. And Creality will be bashed by you forever, because you - like everyone else - seemingly can't be arsed to learn, and instead blame it on whatever you're doing at the time.
This is getting ridiculous. While I only have an associates degree in CAD and machine design, I'm pretty sure I can pick out when a piece of 4040 extrusion is BENT, and i own and know how to use engineering squares. It wasn't an assembly mistake on my part. Since you buy them literally all the time on Ebay, someone must've snatched mine up before you could, since this NEVER happens. By your own admission, that extruder, from my generation, was junk. Yes it was only a $15 fix, and really, if you're going to get into this hobby you should be able to swap this part out, but the point stands-
First machine I bought was an OOB failure. When I brought it back to the store they opened the box and confirmed this with me. They did not need a finely honed straightedge to confirm it, the top gantry extrusion was bent.
Round two, the machine did okay, aside from the bed seemingly "losing" it's trimming. I purchased the "yellow springs" and installed them. This, at the time, seemed to resolve the issue. Until it didnt. At that point, I purchased and installed Creality's own ABL, I believe it was the CR touch, but you'll surely correct me if I'm wrong, after looking into several reviews/yt videos and multiple installation guides (somewhere during this time the extruder went, and yes, this was an easy fix with the red aluminum one). This is when I learned that the glass PEI bed that came with my machine was no longer flat. Fair enough, I figured this was a consumable part and bought another one. This did solve the problem again... until it didn't. This one had warped as well, as confirmed with a good, flat straightedge (an 18" Starrett 385, to be exact). It wasn't from improperly tensioned belts. Rather than attack someone personally over their experience, you scream Creality's praises on the internet and seem to insist that my experiences could not have happened. Sure, I bet you and your team are able to resurrect broken down machines, and that is fantastic. It keeps junk from filling up landfills and may even be able to get someone into the hobby at a lower price point. I commend you on this, honestly. However, after dumping time and money into the second machine Iexperienced from them, I decided it was no longer worth the effort. Mind you, these things all happened in about 8-9 months. I got some pretty good prints from it, but I also got a lot of failures, and when those kept piling up I cut my losses. As I've repeatedly stated, this was MY experience. Yours has clearly been different. I'm fully aware that scores of people likely fuck up these machines by putting them together incorrectly- I assure you this was not the case on mine.