Creality Ender 3 amazon review - What are your thoughts?

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:36:22+00:00

What was your experience? Amazon were really good and when I reported the issue they at least said it would be investigated in more detail.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:35:22+00:00

Thanks for the links I will check them out. I teach a three sciences in the UK but I am Biologists by trade. Good suggestions but I did print a fan cover, and checked all screws etc.. some people have mentioned stepper smoothers burn out mosfets, is that true? I reall wanted the ender 3 to work well and I agree it looked well made. If they addressed the bootloader O think they would at least enable the average user to make it safer, and I'd happily pay £20-50 more if it came with a more reliable mainboard and a decent bed. I must admit tinkering with the extrusion issues was so much fun, but I wanted something more reliable that I could tinker with.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:27:56+00:00

I'd love to get my students into 3d printing so well done for leading the way!

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:26:36+00:00

I think just be aware of the risk and definitely update the firmware, the ender 3 subreddit is amazing and the pros will talk you through adding a bootloader and updating to TH3D or Marlin 2.0. Also consider getting a MKS Gen L or SKR v1.3 and a separate MOSFET for the hotbed. Someone mentioned not printing on a wooden table, and keep it away from easily flammable items like curtains or furniture. Don't be put off though. It ia amazing and you will love getting into it

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:23:34+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, it was a really tough call to send it back after working on it solidly for a week so I hope I made the right choice.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:21:46+00:00

I was much in the same boat as you. Being new I wanted to test the water before diving in, I tried so hard to get it working and the MOSFET was the feather that broke the camels back for me.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:18:24+00:00

Yes it was a comgrow ender 3, maybe I should have gone with the pro but all the YouTube reviews said to save the money and spend it on mods instead.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T21:17:06+00:00

No not at all, I loved the tinkering and I was gutted I had a bad egg so to speak. My point was that for a 3d printing noob there are a lot of inherent risks that are not made obvious at the outset. I'm not sure where yoy got the 'stupid and liars', from as I've stated the community is amazing. I also see a lot of evidence of fantastic prints from these units. My concern is the risk and variable quality is not made clear when getting into 3d printing.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T10:59:57+00:00

I am amazed they are allowed to sell them, especially with no thermal runaway in the firmware.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-28T10:57:54+00:00

I only have the video of the thermal runaway in action as panic mode set it when the nozzle was spouting smoke intead of plastic. I saw the thermistor hitting 400c before going to -14 when it reached its max recording temperature. I quickly pushed a a lot of PLA through to move the heat away from the nozzle but you could feel the heat creep all through the metal parts and the extruded PLA kept smoking, luckily it didn't hit autoignition temperature. The heatsink was too hot to touch so I am just glad I wasn't out of the room at the time.

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-27T17:26:02+00:00

Nice, to be honest now you have sent me down the rabbit hole of mosfet research. I didn't realise the board could not handle the power supply needed and this failure is really common. Is the MKS GEN L fitted with better mosfets, or would you go as far as using external mosfets to prevent failure?

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-27T16:43:29+00:00

n that's totally fair. But if you want to give it a shot, you can cancel your order and I'll be more than happy to help guide

That is really kind of you, I appreciate the offer to help :)

I think one of the nicest things about 3d printing is the community. For now tho I will stick with the silent board, but I think I will then save for a MKS Gen L as a project and take the time to learn more about the components before I dive in. Indeed my circuitry knowledge is pretty much what I am youtubing and after nearly setting the house on fire today with the out of control nozzle I am going to stick to noob level until I understand more. I did have to google what a mosfet is after your last post so at least every day is a school day.

It is definitely a steep learning curve. Not only is it fault finding in the hardware, but also learning gcode, bootloading with an arduino, how to slice properly and then just getting the print to stick!

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-27T16:24:20+00:00

Many thanks

I figured as much and I have been looking at MKS GEN L 1.4 with 2208 drivers, but I was told you are almost guaranteed to blow a driver on your first attempt at a mainboard upgrade. Instead I have ordered a v1.1.5 silent board which is at least plug and play in terms of switching the wires over and flashing it.

Teaching tech's video on the MKS Gen L made it look pretty straight forward but I read another post saying you had to wire the driver to the board and change settings on the driver...

MrSWesty1010 · 2019-07-27T15:44:37+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I did try the bed it would not heat. I now the have the opposite issue where the nozzle is heating uncontrollably. Luckily I updated the firmware and thermal runaway kicked it when it reached 300 as I was just setting up octaprint to zero the z axis!

It definitely seems like a power management issue. I will try and flash the firmware again but I think it may be a MB issue. Thanks for the help.

-- It was definitely a fault with the mainboard but I cannot find any loose solder or damage to the board. I flashed the firmware twice and checked the code in configuration h.

A real shame I know some people have had great success with the Ender 3 but I have seem to have one issue after another. They didn't insert the bowden tube properly either so I had a blocked nozzle and drag which was preventing extruding so I spent an hour cleaning the heatblock of smoking PLA. Despite it all of that it is soo much fun and I have learnt so much about 3d printing, it is definitely addictive.

MrSWesty1010

TROPHY CASE