Post by Xayoz on Jul 23, 2020 12:38:50 GMT
This was my first 3D printer and I have absolutely no regrets. It does require a lot of maintenance, and I did end up needing/wanting a lot of upgrades, but I learned a lot about the machines from this printer, making me more confident in building/maintaining all my printers. This is even the one that prompted me to learn a bit about Marlin.
I was able to get good prints right out of the box. As with many Ender users, I wanted to improve or fix perceived issues as they came up.
My first upgrade was yellow springs. That made bed leveling much more reliable, but I still didn't like how often I had to adjust the bed, so I installed a BLTouch ABL.
That was a huge improvement for me. The next thing I wanted was a 32 bit board, so I got SKR Mini E3 v1.2. I was amazed at how quiet the machine got. All I could hear after that was the fans, but that didn't bother me.
The Ender does require a lot of maintenance. Between leveling (yes you still have to manual level sometimes even with ABL), replacing nozzles, clearing clogs, and replacing hotends damaged by bad clogs, and replacing bowden tubes (upgrade to capricorn tubing at first replace) it got to be a lot. I decided to look at direct drives. I wanted E3D Hemera, but they were sold out everywhere, so I instead went with MicroSwiss Direct Drive kit with all metal hotend. After some minor tinkering with Cheetah 5.0, it turned out to be a great upgrade. It was light enough that print speed could be increased without losing too much quality, and clogs were much fewer and less severe.
The next thing that happened was my BLTouch started to fail on probing, but would continue to print, causing a mess and damaging the probe. I decided to go with a PEI spring steel sheet and an inductive sensor.
The spring steel sheet is amazing and I would recommend to anyone. As far as the inductive probe, there is very little information online, so installation was interesting. I wound up connecting it to the servo port on my SKR Mini E3 board. This left making work in the firmware. As this wasn't in the basic setup for Cheetah 5.0, I had to look to vanilla Marlin. That was a daunting task as I am unfamiliar with programming, but with what I learned from Cheetah 5.0, I was able to apply to Marlin. After playing with several settings in several different ways, my inductive probe is now working. And because it is on the servo ports, the OE endstop also still works. I'm sure I have something set wrong in the firmware as I had to move the wipe line in Cura over a few mm to get it to print on the build surface, but I haven't had anything else print past the surface, so I'm not concerned.
I feel like I am finally happy with the performance of the Ender 3 Pro and feel like I am done upgrading it. At this point it is almost as good as my Prusa MK3S.
I was able to get good prints right out of the box. As with many Ender users, I wanted to improve or fix perceived issues as they came up.
My first upgrade was yellow springs. That made bed leveling much more reliable, but I still didn't like how often I had to adjust the bed, so I installed a BLTouch ABL.
That was a huge improvement for me. The next thing I wanted was a 32 bit board, so I got SKR Mini E3 v1.2. I was amazed at how quiet the machine got. All I could hear after that was the fans, but that didn't bother me.
The Ender does require a lot of maintenance. Between leveling (yes you still have to manual level sometimes even with ABL), replacing nozzles, clearing clogs, and replacing hotends damaged by bad clogs, and replacing bowden tubes (upgrade to capricorn tubing at first replace) it got to be a lot. I decided to look at direct drives. I wanted E3D Hemera, but they were sold out everywhere, so I instead went with MicroSwiss Direct Drive kit with all metal hotend. After some minor tinkering with Cheetah 5.0, it turned out to be a great upgrade. It was light enough that print speed could be increased without losing too much quality, and clogs were much fewer and less severe.
The next thing that happened was my BLTouch started to fail on probing, but would continue to print, causing a mess and damaging the probe. I decided to go with a PEI spring steel sheet and an inductive sensor.
The spring steel sheet is amazing and I would recommend to anyone. As far as the inductive probe, there is very little information online, so installation was interesting. I wound up connecting it to the servo port on my SKR Mini E3 board. This left making work in the firmware. As this wasn't in the basic setup for Cheetah 5.0, I had to look to vanilla Marlin. That was a daunting task as I am unfamiliar with programming, but with what I learned from Cheetah 5.0, I was able to apply to Marlin. After playing with several settings in several different ways, my inductive probe is now working. And because it is on the servo ports, the OE endstop also still works. I'm sure I have something set wrong in the firmware as I had to move the wipe line in Cura over a few mm to get it to print on the build surface, but I haven't had anything else print past the surface, so I'm not concerned.
I feel like I am finally happy with the performance of the Ender 3 Pro and feel like I am done upgrading it. At this point it is almost as good as my Prusa MK3S.