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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I'm a huge fan of Creality printers. If I were starting over today and didn't have my eye on any specific bell or whistle, I'd probably get a Creality Ender 3 V3 or Ender 3 V3 SE. The Ender 3 Pro and Ender 3 V2 Neo I have now are great. Very reliable and easy to maintain.
One bell/whistle I'd 100% pay extra for is autoleveling. (A z probe rather than a z endstop.) My Ender 3 Pro came with an endstop rather than a probe. As soon as I got the V2 Neo that does have a z-probe I immediately decided to upgrade my Ender 3 Pro with a z-probe. With just the endstop, I had constant issues getting the first layer to adhere, especially if I was printing something that used a significant portion of the bed.
Fuck creality. They have issues all the time, no customer support, no auto bed leveling out of the box, the firmware out of the box isn't even good. I would go for Elegoo Neptune printers. They work perfectly out of the box, have amazing support, good firmware, auto bed leveling, and prints faster than the enders.
I've never had occasion to need to contact Creality customer support, and aside from bed adhesion with my Ender 3 Pro before I added a CR-Touch, I haven't had any issues with my Creality printers. "No auto bed leveling out of the box" isn't the case for most of Creality's printers. (I didn't mean to imply by "I would pay extra for autoleveling" that Creality makes you pay extra for that. Their bottom-of-the-line printers have autoleveling now-a-days.) And my experience with my two Creality printers was that they "work perfectly out of the box."
I don't have any experience with Elegoo printers.
Hmm ive dont know much about the players in the 3D printer market, nor the drama, but from the site Elegoo has reasonable prices for something that looks pretty decent
They've sent me parts free of charge 2 times already and their customer support is excellent if you ever need it. Their discord community is also very active and helpful should you need it.
Hey! Thanks for the reply! Auto-leveling is something my roommate has never had so i've never experienced what youre describing, but I do see how that would get rid of lots of faff.
I, like others have mentioned, would love to know how "locked down" a company/brand makes they products. I know there are a lot of Ender 3 clones, and I wonder if going with something like that would keep it really diy while also being based on a tried and tested product.
Yeah, good call. I'd definitely say Creality is good about being open. I've flashed the firmware on one of my two Creality printers. And upgraded it a couple of times, though admittedly only with official Creality parts.
I have a friend who had a printer that I believe didn't have an SD card slot and the Wifi died on it, so it became roughly-speaking useless. I like to lean toward fewer moving parts even if it makes for some inconveniences like having to actually load it onto an SD card and put it in the machine.
If I did really care about wifi connectivity, I'd probably still buy a machine without Wifi built-in and attach a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint to the side.
I'm waiting for the creality k1 max to go on sale again. My manager picked one up for under 500 and he says it's fantastic. Corexy with enclosure and bed leveling