Decided it was time to "sh*t or get off the pot", so I bought myself a Creality Ender 3 3D printer this week! Very excited, arrives today, but still working on setting up my workbench for it. Out of the gate, I bought a few upgrades for it:

• Raspberry Pi and web cam to set up Octopi so I can monitor and run the E3D over the web
• Capricorn bowden tubing
• Borosilicate glass print bed
• Replacement nozzles
• Higher quality Bowden tube fittings

Planning on my first printings to be various upgrades for the E3D, like fan cover, pcb cover, and other bits. Wanted to see if there are any other 3D Printer TF collectors out there with any advice getting started? Thanks!

 

Sounds like you're already on the right track with the upgrades. I'd also advise a super solid and heavy surface to set the printer on. A concrete slab or something. It helps reduce vibrations. Other than that, do a lot of test prints with various settings and speeds to find out what gives you the best results. Also, see if you can find out what the z step in the creality is and set your later height to a multiple of it. For example, on my Maker select, it's around .04mm so I'll use layer heights of .04, .08, .12, or .16. Also, you don't want your layer height to be more than, say, 60% of your nozzle diameter. Typical nozzle is .4mm so max later height would be around .24mm. This is because you want the plastic to squish when it comes out - otherwise it's just laying a cylinder on top of another cylinder and you get poor layer adhesion.

If you're looking to do fine details, you may want to consider a smaller nozzle. I'm using a .2mm nozzle. It quadruples print times but it makes a significant difference in quality. Also, the smallest layer height you can get away. This is both for better resolution and because, as I mentioned before, smaller later height means it's more squished down. The more squished, the less rounded the sides of the layers will be so you won't get as much gap between them.

Beyond that, it depends on just how nice you want your finished projects to be. Get various grits of sandpaper, small sanding blocks (there's a decent set you can print on thingiverse), and maybe a set of needle files. You can use various things to repair holes and such. I used apoxie sculpt if I'm not in a hurry and I want to be able to shape it. Five second fix (it's a uv resin glue) for quickly filling in holes in an area where I won't have trouble sanding. I've also got an xtc 3d kit I've been meaning to try - it's a thinner type of epoxy meant for coating 3d printed objects to reduce layer lines, though you'll likely lose some of the finer details if you use it.

Pla should be fine for just about anything you want to print and it's much easier to work with, not requiring an enclosure and it sands easily. Abs is stronger and it reacts to acetone which you can use to smooth out layer lines.

Find out if your printer's firmware has thermal runaway protection. If a thermoster fails, you can have a situation where it just keeps heating and heating because it can't tell that it's already reached the correct temperature. If it doesn't have thermal runaway protection, make sure you've got a fire extinguisher handy and do not leave the printer running with nobody at home.

 

Man, can't type too long of a reply yet since I'm still at work, but THANK YOU Snaku for all this awesome advice! Because of all the videos I've been watching, everything you mentioned actually makes sense! I plan to have the printer assembled this weekend, so I'll definitely be in touch when I fire it up the first time! Respect...

 

I recommend against doing a load of mods until you get used to the machine. Print a while, find the thing that needs the most help based on your workflow, then mod that.

 

Thanks for the reply! So, off the bat, the only mod I installed right away was the glass print bed, as the stock Ender-3 bed seemed slightly warped. I started off printing some basic attachments for the machine itself (fan covers, filament guides, pcb cover) and the machine knocked them all out with no problems. However, the last 2 nights, I've run into problems, and now can't get through any prints completely, and after trying several things, I'm pretty sure the culprit is clogging in the hot end that seems to be causing my bowden tube to not fit cleanly against the nozzle. I've watched a few nozzle cleaning videos, so I'm hoping to get the machine going nicely again. Since I was already working on it, I've gone ahead and changed the bed springs to a stiffer set, and swapped out the stock bowden tube and couplings. It's been a little frustrating not being able to get anything printed after the initial success, but luckily the machine doesn't seem to have any major problems that can't be readily fixed.

 

There seems to be a general opinion that the tube couplers that come stock with the Ender 3 are a bit rubbish at holding the tube so replacing them is a good idea.