Now my first choice was be a Bambu printer, most of the people I know who have a 3d printer use a bambu of sorts and they produce amazing prints. However, Bambu P1/X1 series don't have a print bed that would fit my fursuit base, they're only 256x256mm (my previous printer was 350x350mm). Add in some drama about them locking down their printers I was like... nah.
Next up. Prussa. The Core One had been on my mind and I'd almost put down cash for one. Thankfully I did not as after I figured out my raw design, the Core One can't fit it. 250x220mm build plate.
Both Prussa and Bambu do have bigger printers but those are overkill for my needs and for a one-off project I'm not buying a Prussa XL, come on. Would love a prussa though, they have pushed the consumer 3d printing industry very far with their open source contributions. I would love for prussa to release a smaller prussa XL, something say, a 300x300mm bed with 2 toolheads, one to use for printing support material.
Lots of fursuit makers used the Creality CR10, so I went looking there first. First up. I have no fucking clue how to differentiate their printers. Like come on people, have a table or something that lists out the specs for each. At least a quick link from the top of the page to the specs so I don't have to bloody scroll all the way down >.>
The CR10s were a bust as I couldn't figure out what they were trying to sell.
Upon examining the Ender 3 range though, the V3 plus seemed to fit my bill:
First up, assembling it was super straightforward. Only had to screw in a few bolts for the gantry and it's support, plug in some wires and the screen. That's about it.
The printer runs an auto-calibration upon startup, after which I upgraded the firmware. Very easy, just put the image on a thumb drive and the printer recognizes it on insertion.
With the firmware updated, the auto-calibration ran again and the printer was good to go. I'd downloaded Orca Slicer a few days before and the few tests I'd ran were flawless.
At the time of this writing I've put about 2kgs of material through it, PLA, PETG and TPU. PLA and PETG printed great using the generic creality profiles included in Orca Slicer. The main thing I've noticed is that there is an option in Orca called "Slow down for curled perimeters". This made the print head slow down to like... 10mm/s in corners and I've noticed that this caused certain prints (Benchy front hull for example) to melt or curl.
TPU though, didn't work that well out of the box. I bought a local brand, BuildItFull's 95A. The printer nozzle seemed to clog very easily with the default profile. Upon some online search, I set all the movement speeds to 30mm/s, with only travel at 60mm/s. After that it seems to be printing great! If very slow. There are different formulations of TPU that allows printing at much higher speeds but I didn't find any locally. Would love to have some of those - one ear takes over 4hrs to print! 5hrs+ if I went for 3 walls.
My previous printers used E3D's V6 style nozzles, and I do not enjoy setting those up. Too many connections that, if not properly done, would result in melted filament leaking out from.
Changing nozzles was also a pain; in order to properly seat a V6 style nozzle, you had to have to tighten the nozzle while it was at operating temperature. This wasn't the easiest to do as I had to have one paw around a wrench to hold onto the heater block, and my other paw tightening the nozzle with yet another wrench. The issue here is you can't just do it slowly, the heat from the nozzle/heater will be leeched off by the tools holding them. Gah.
The Ender 3 V3 series uses Creality's "Unicorn" nozzle. This system does not have any areas for melted filament to leak out from if you messed up the heat tightening. I like it. That said, Creality markets it as a "Quick Swap" nozzle. Lol. There are many steps required to swap the nozzle out as detailed in their own tutorial video. It is hardly Quick Swap compared to their competition like Bambu (cold swap nozzle!!!) or E3D's revo style that doesn't even need tools to change. This might be an issue for you as it wasn't easy to find a 0.6mm nozzle, I had to buy an assortment pack for that. Which means I now have two spare 0.4mm nozzles and a 0.8mm nozzle that I might not use. Ahhhh proprietory things.
Another thing about the unicorn nozzle - the tip is made of hardened steel compared to the more common brass nozzles. Hardened steel is (supposedly, I've no experience) great for use with abrasive materials like carbon fiber etc but it also has a downside, it doesn't trasfer heat as well as brass. This makes me wonder if that's why my TPU jams so easily, the filament might be leeching the heat away faster than the nozzle can recover. But this is speculation on my part.
What is my experience using the printer so far? Generally good, so long as you can accept several failings and work around/fix them.
First, the way filament is loaded onto the printer SUCKs. The printer has the spool on the side of the printer, but due to the way it homes, it's very likely for the filament to tangle around the spool, stopping any filament from extruding. This video demonstrates it perfectly. One way around this is to print the included top mount spool holder. Even so, I will monitor the printer to ensure the first layer is down before I leave it be.
I've also experienced several times, the head "crashing"... into nothing. When homing, the head would move upwards.... and then randomly jerk loudly to the right, for no apparent reason. I've been keeping an eye out to make sure the cables running to the head aren't jammed against the gantry. UPDATE: This IS caused by the cable running to the print head getting squished between the filament runout sensor and the rear cross bracing. I've re-routed the cable to the back, with the PTFE tubing used to give the cable more firmness so it won't drag against the bed. Will update again if this fails.
Also, there were two times (at the time of this writing) when I started a print, and after the hotend reaches working temp, the print head would just grind to the left into the gantry (!?)
A power cycle later and it works fine, but damn what is up with that?! A search online I've seen some comments that doing a hard reset of the firmware can fix this, so I'll try it soon.
Finally, this being a bedslinger requires a fair amount of space to operate. My tape measure says it needs around 70cm-ish to accomodate the full range of movement of the bed, but 80cm for a better margin of error. The product dimensions on Creality's site are accurate, but not practical at 445mm XD
The printer's auto bed leveling and auto Z offset are just amazing. Usually for the first print of the day I'd let it print with calibration enabled and it's been flawless. I do not enjoy slipping a piece of paper under the nozzle and then adjusting the z offset. No more!
This is also my first time out with a magnetic bed with a textured PEI surface and OH MY GOD IT IS SOOO GOOD! PLA prints pop off the bed with a slight flex, and PETG prints come off with minimal hassle once the bed cools down.
TPU I've read can adhere too well to PEI, and it is best to lay down some painter's tape when printing tpu. This definitely is a good call, I've had some bits of TPU overshoot the area where I'd laid down painter's tape and it was pretty well stuck on! I'd imagine the full print might just pull off the pei coating without the painter's tape. The magnetic build plate also has slots at the back that align neatly to a pair of hex bolts at the back of the print bed, making it very easy to put the build plate back on. The build plate also appears to be double sided.
The hotend itself has a 60w heater and it feels like it gets to working temperature really fast. Similarly for the bed. This is my first time out with a direct drive extruder it's been quite a positive experience.
I've had the extruder jam once (tpu filament, sigh), and Creality has a very good tutorial on how to take apart the hot end to clean it. I must say, because this printer is pre-assembled, I have no clue how to take it apart. Having such detailed video tutorials helps alot!
In their marketing spiele, Creality also mentions a "silent mode". It is a setting you can access while printing to change the speed of the print from normal to silent, even a 125% speed mode. I've used it a few times and it works reasonably well. These days though, I just set my speeds in the slider manually to ensure things don't get too noisy.
Next, the printer's user interface.
The touch screen on the printer is responsive and accurate, but the software on it could be improved.
Creality also provides a web interface to the printer. I was hoping it would provide controls similar to Octoprint but it's far more basic.
I am not familiar with this, it does give access to some configuration files that _might_ be able to configure say, amount of filament to extrude when using loading/unloading filament.
Last point to bring up is the lack of an enclosure. Creality sells a "tent" that fits this printer, so if you're wanting to print ABS for example, that would work. So far PLA/PETG/TPU prints fine without the enclosure.
Would I recommend this printer? If you're fine with the limitations and able to get your paws down and dirty to sort out how it loads the filament, I think this is a great printer for the price. If you need speed and enclosure for specific filaments, probably look elsewhere.
(Note: My experience with 3d printing is rather limited. My first 3d printer was a delta, and Anycubic Kossel, followed by building a Voron 2.1. I also 3d printed and sold my own designs online. Nothing like a 3d printing youtuber.)