3D Printer Kit review: Creality Ender 3

Mystery Box

     New year, new printer in the workshop. Over the 2018 holiday season, I purchased a Creality Ender 3, so this is my mini-review of what's in the box and my experience using it to date. On first getting the box, it comes with just the shipping label stuck to the outside of the printer's box, so it's clearly marked as to the contents, it weighs about 6 kg at a rough guess, so be ready for a large and heavy package.

Interior of shipping box with top foam removed

    Opening the box reveals that much of the interior is packed with this grey plastic 'foam', quiet dense and sturdy. Unpacking revealed that all parts were securely nested in fitted holes, wrapped in cling film for the extrusions, and in multiple bags for the smaller parts.

Gantry parts fresh out of the box

Ender 3 base and Power supply freshly unpacked

     The printer is about half built straight out of the box, all the electrical systems are pre-installed and it's mostly just a matter of following the instruction sheet that's at the top of the box to get it fully assembled. I would recommend plugging the included microSD card into a computer, there's an animated video clip on it that goes through the entire build process step by step, it helps clarify a couple of points in the printed instructions. I did make a couple minor changes to the printer during assembly, mostly optimizations that the user community has come up with over the past year or so. 

Part cooling fan ducts, stock on the left, thing:3079610 on the right

     Probably the single most crucial change I made was to replace the stock part-fan ducting with thing:3079610, a 360 printed duct that puts the air where it's needed and not into the side of the heater block like the original will. I've been down the road of part-fans blasting the heater block on the Sculptor i3MK3 variant ducting, once is quite enough for that issue. This silly piece of plastic is probably why early versions of the Ender 3 shipped with the firmware thermal watchdog disabled, a problem that's apparently been solved on the one I received since a cold snap a couple of days after assembly set off the 'Min-Temp' error code.

thing:3303879 installed backwards

thing:2934313 installed

     Other than the part duct, the other changes were mostly minor optimizations, a cover for the milled slot in the base that the electrical bundle runs through (thing:2934313), and one of the many side-mount adapters for the stock spool holder (thing:3303879). But aside from those, I assembled the printer as designed and set about testing it.

Assembled Ender 3 almost ready to print

     After a bit of research turned up that Cura was the best slicer option for the Ender 3, I loaded up Cura 3.6 and discovered that it has a perfectly tuned profile for the Ender 3 baked right into the default preset package. Overall print quality is quite good, I've still got some slight nozzle drool issue, but I'm fairly sure that's just the PLA that I'm using. One issue that I found with the default 'Fiberboard' bed surface plate is that it warps under the stress of large surface prints, this lead to a couple of layer shift incidents during a long print, so I sourced the magnetic bed that's included on the 'Pro' version to try instead.

Early test print with default 'fiberboard' showing bending issue.

Ender 3 Magnetic Bed Sheet freshly installed.

     Once switched over to the magnetic version of the build plate, it's been fantastic performance all the way. I'd definitely recommend this printer to anyone who is just getting started with 3D printing, the quality and performance can't be beat at this price point.

Ender 3

Mega Kossel Upgrade: Direct Drive Effector with Titan Aero

Titan Aero Heat Sink

     Happy New Year! Over December 2018 I was experimenting with flexible filament, 90A TPE specifically, and ran into issues with running it on the Mega Kossel, so I decided to upgrade the extruder to full direct drive to correct the issue. I've had an old Titan clone in my parts bin since 2016, so the logical route to go was upgrading to the E3D Titan Aero with a pancake stepper motor.

Motor and Titan body mounted to modified Ultibots effector

     While I was waiting for the parts to arrive I started looking for an effector design to mount it on. The Ultibots D300 series design files turned out to have what I needed, but it was meant for some specialized type of rod-arm joint. Pulling the source files into Fusion 360 made it easy to customize both the effector and part-cooling duct. The remixed files are on Thingiverse (thing:3321195).

Titan Aero Volcano 90% installed

    Once the effector was sorted out, it was simply a matter of following the Titan assembly instructions to get it mounted and mostly assembled. Getting the drive gear in is probably the hardest part, it kind of has to be slid in sideways before the motor is installed, I ended up using the screw that connects the motor and extruder body to hold the body in place during that step. The idler arm is the other tricky bit, you need to slide it into its slot before installing the motor, otherwise it's a pain to mount, I ended up sliding it in at an angle and snapping it over the end of the motor shaft, not the best way to mount that bit.

Cooling fans installed, Noctua 4010 on the left, 40x40 radial on the right

    With the mechanical side of stuff assembled, it was time to mount the fans and sort out the electrical side of things. For the main heat-sink fan, I decided to get one of the much vaunted Noctua fans to see what all the fuss was about. The difference going from a 3010 axial fan for the heat-sink to the Noctua is instantly noticeable on initial power up, the 30mm fan was loud enough that I could always tell if the printer was on when in the workshop, the Noctua is completely silent by comparison, I can't even hear it unless I'm right next to the effector to clean the nozzle, so I'm probably going to replace all my constant on fans with them over time. Installing the part fan is slightly odd, there is one short screw to connect the fan duct to the effector that goes in first, then the fan gets slotted in and bolted down, the top hole needs a longer screw since it doubles as the second connector to the effector.

Wiring nest under the print-bed

    The last bit of installation was figuring out why the pancake NEMA17 wasn't working. Plugging in the working wire from the old extruder just resulted in the motor sitting there and making noise, so I thought one of the coils might be connected backwards or something. Digging into the documentation, it turns out that 25mm NEMA 17 motors have the coil pinouts reversed relative to longer models, so I had to use some jumper lines to build a cross-over cable to fix the issue, it's the black/grey/yellow/orange set of wires in the picture above.

Mega Kossel ready to print