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Don’t forget gatekeeper replies to honest newcomer questions
And the hounding if you don’t get a Bambu. Somehow “Bambu printing” and “3D printing” seem to be two different things now, given the cult-like fervor.
I want to hound people for getting a Bambu. Look at the bullshit we’re dealing with on 2D printers because they aren’t open source with standard parts.
all very accurate but I want to add that eveb if you want to resin print in your bedroom you wont be able to. It’s not only that it’s toxic but the smell is so strong that, at least for me, it’s impossible to be around it. My printer is outside in the garage and when it’s printing you can still smell it inside the house. I can feel my cells mutating in real time
Okay but like I was given an Ender 3 for free and idk where to go from there
Maybe the fact that the family member who gave it to me didn’t want it around anymore should have been a sign
People give the Ender 3 a bad rap all the time, but it’s honestly a great little machine. I far prefer it to the $2500 printer we have at work that has “automatic everything” and can’t easily be adjusted to manually correct its bad settings.
With that said, how far have you gotten with it? Do you have any software installed? Have you tried printing anything (and was it successful)? You didn’t give much clue as to where you’re stuck. Yes you need to take some time to learn how to fine-tune the settings, and yes it can be frustrating because there is SO MUCH to learn about 3D printing, but once you get over the hump you can start cranking out all kinds of fun things.
Honestly when it works it works wonderfully. Most of my problems with my ender 3 come down to me being a dumbass and not taking care of it properly, and/or just the nozzles they ship with it being cheap as fuck and impossible to cold pull.
No joke my first ever successful cold pull was 2 days ago, because I had finally gotten a decent set of nozzles.
If you want to get really serious about printing there are better options out there, but for the cost they really are awesome beginner printers (to be fair I haven’t kept up much with printers, so I don’t know many other good cheap ones). I mostly only dabble with printing, but my ender 3 pro that I got like 3 years ago has served me very well.
You may be interested in these links, it can reduce or eliminate the problems which require cold pulls. Basically the issue is that the tubing moves up and down during printing and creates a slack space where the filament gets into a region of the nozzle it’s not supposed to reach. This modification uses a short length of tubing inside the nozzle that is pushed down tight, then your regular tubing sits on top of that where the movement doesn’t cause any problems. I’ve never had a single clogged nozzle or needed to do a cold pull in several years since making this change, so I highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tCxO17XZtw https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4220059
Not op, I got a free Ender 3 from a frustrated co-worker, and am now the frustrated co-worker. I’ve tried getting a new glass print surface, tried using glue sticks, tried changing print temps and speeds, tried levelling and re-levelling and re-levelling the bed, but I just can’t get the print to stick for love or money. It’s now been re-homed to the garage, as a parking obstacle for my bicycle.
Honestly at that point I would tear down the whole thing and use this video as a guide for reassembly. The most important thing to do is to make sure the framework is all squared up, otherwise all prints will suffer.
As for bed leveling… A lot of people think the paper test is all you need, but really that only gets you close enough to start leveling the bed. First thing is to tighten all the springs to within 1 turn of being closed, then adjust the Z switch so that the head homes to roughly that same height. After that you use the paper method to get the bed roughly level, then move on to live testing with a 5-point bed-leveling test print to dial it in. Ideally you want the nozzle gap to be about 75% of the nozzle size, so for a 0.20mm tip you would want a 0.15mm gap to get your print to stick.
As I mentioned to someone else, Creality’s QC is garbage. My first glass bed had better adhesion than PEI and worked beautifully for a few years until the coating wore out. My second glass bed was trash, I never could get anything to stick to it without using hairspray, and now it sits in its box. I have a PEI bed now, which seems to have solved the problem. If you decide to try using the printer again, don’t forget to clean the glass with 90% ISO. Worst case try flipping the glass over to the smooth side, clean it with ISO, then use glue sticks on that surface (you won’t get any adhesion on bare glass without the glue or hairspray).
They have like 236 ender 3’s nowadays, ofcourse i’m not asking google as i’ll end up on some website that’s shilling for creality and completely ignores the other brands.
Can google be used at all for any product recommendations anymore? Anyone with a buck to make is gaming the algorithm.
I want to get started 3d printing, partially because I bought a house and farm and need to replace some little bits and bobs that don’t necessarily need to be super strong. It just seems a bit too much to try to figure out right now.
I went a little crazy on 3d printing during covid. I had a single printer prior but purchased two more. I haven’t printed on ANY of them in like 2 years. I end up just printing stupid shit or because I go so long between printing wasting way too much time to get everything dialed back in. Now I don’t even know what my slicing settings were and I would have to probably start from scratch. I should probably just sell my printers…
I printed a lot of custom stuff that I designed for specific uses in Fusion 360 when I got my computer, and for about two years afterwards. But I don’t have any more custom stuff that needs to be printed, and I don’t have a D&D group any more, so my printer has been sitting for about six months. I’d say it’s a success though, since I made everything I need, and it’ll still be there if I ever need anything else.
This was the second half of my problem honestly, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to 3d model stuff. I’ve gone through tutorial after tutorial so clearly it’s me.
I actually have stuff I’d like to print but I’m not competent enough to model it. I’m the n00b just printing stuff I can download from the internet. Or was I suppose…
Depends entirely on the program you use.
Most CAD programs has all the features, but difficult to learn and just isn’t needed most of the time.
For simple stuff things like Tinkercad and MatterControl are much better. They are basically drag, drop and rotate.
