Stuff your 3D printer has made today...

[Prajna]

Nuttin. I didn't print nuttin today, however, ... my band new Creality Ender-3 V3 KE is purported to be arriving this evening! Sadly, I'm off to the Algarve for the weekend so I might have to curb my enthusiasm until I get back on Tuesday.

 

[Bki26]

Nuttin. I didn't print nuttin today, however, ... my band new Creality Ender-3 V3 KE is purported to be arriving this evening! Sadly, I'm off to the Algarve for the weekend so I might have to curb my enthusiasm until I get back on Tuesday.

Surprised people are still going for enders when you have the likes of the A1 mini lol

 

[Prajna]

The Benchy in front was printed in 16 minutes on my new KE. First print, right out of the box. The one behind was printed on the delta printer I was using. @Bki26, if the A1 mini is A Bamboo Labs thing then you can keep it. I will stick to open source. I boycott companies that lock you in, siphon up all your data and lock you out of modifying things

I've only printed one Benchy on this printer but I'll tell you now that it arrived very well packed, was a breeze to assemble and set up and I'm impressed with the engineering, speed and quality.

 

[Onoff]

View attachment 463877
quality.

Erm...the one in the foreground isn't great but the one behind, that's dog rough tbh.

 

[Prajna]

Erm...the one in the foreground isn't great but the one behind, that's dog rough tbh.

Haven't done any tweaking yet. That's just an out-of-the-box print. I put the thing together, turned it on, went through the 1st run routine, stuck the USB stick in, found the Benchy and pressed print.

 

[jmp49]

Surprised people are still going for enders when you have the likes of the A1 mini lol

Why do people still bother with enders? because with a bit of work, and bit of tweaking and suitable mods the ender5 is a very capable and modifiable printer, even more so in the plus variant. If you buy a recent ender5 plus now you get a 32 bit motherboard (stm32), a cr touch and dual z screws same as the pro model, swap the bowden extruder for a direct drive titan, pei build surface, pom anti backlash nuts on the z, silicon spacers in place of bed springs and some corner reinforcements for the frame and its nice and repeatable. And with a mercury1 conversion, its a beast (I'm most the way through this for mine).

So on the bed of my ender5 plus in this shot is :
black cap and weird hex nut at the foreground is PA-CF (nylon reinforced with carbon fibre)
off white body housing bit is Taulman T-glase (but really old, a reel open for 6 years, hence the print quality & horrible colour, it should print transparent)
white rabbit is creality's default test model and done in the free pla you get with it
the grey iso30 shank parts are a old reel of hatchbox abs.

Apart from the rabbit, they are parts for a own designed touch probe in qc30 for my bridgeport cnc. I originally made them on my resin printer a few years back and made the probe wired, but it broke recently when it fell on the floor, so I'm revisiting with fdm with different filaments, and the iso30 holder integral to save height in the machine vs having a er32 collet and a shank above the probe body.

 

[ukracer]

Why do people still bother with enders? because with a bit of work, and bit of tweaking and suitable mods the ender5 is a very capable and modifiable printer, even more so in the plus variant. If you buy a recent ender5 plus now you get a 32 bit motherboard (stm32), a cr touch and dual z screws same as the pro model, swap the bowden extruder for a direct drive titan, pei build surface, pom anti backlash nuts on the z, silicon spacers in place of bed springs and some corner reinforcements for the frame and its nice and repeatable. And with a mercury1 conversion, its a beast (I'm most the way through this for mine).

So on the bed of my ender5 plus in this shot is :
black cap and weird hex nut at the foreground is PA-CF (nylon reinforced with carbon fibre)
off white body housing bit is Taulman T-glase (but really old, a reel open for 6 years, hence the print quality & horrible colour, it should print transparent)
white rabbit is creality's default test model and done in the free pla you get with it
the grey iso30 shank parts are a old reel of hatchbox abs.

Apart from the rabbit, they are parts for a own designed touch probe in qc30 for my bridgeport cnc. I originally made them on my resin printer a few years back and made the probe wired, but it broke recently when it fell on the floor, so I'm revisiting with fdm with different filaments, and the iso30 holder integral to save height in the machine vs having a er32 collet and a shank above the probe body.

View attachment 464427

I have an ender 5. But never printed with it yet.
I am hoping to get round to it next week as I need to print some gridfinity bases and I think 8 x 8 will print on ender 5 max.

 

[Screwdriver]

The Ender was and still is an excellent 3d printer at its price point. Not only are they ridiculously cheap (I paid £120 for mine, brand new) they are also incredibly reliable.

For the same price I paid for my Bambu Carbon X1, I could have set up a rack of ten Ender 3s with enough change for a mountain of filament.

Horses for courses really. The Ender series was an extraordinary device in the early days of 3d printing. The Bambu series are equally extraordinary albeit at a much higher price point and yet still delivering extreme value for money with its game changing feature set .

 

[Bki26]

Why do people still bother with enders? because with a bit of work, and bit of tweaking and suitable mods the ender5 is a very capable and modifiable printer, even more so in the plus variant. If you buy a recent ender5 plus now you get a 32 bit motherboard (stm32), a cr touch and dual z screws same as the pro model, swap the bowden extruder for a direct drive titan, pei build surface, pom anti backlash nuts on the z, silicon spacers in place of bed springs and some corner reinforcements for the frame and its nice and repeatable. And with a mercury1 conversion, its a beast (I'm most the way through this for mine).

So on the bed of my ender5 plus in this shot is :
black cap and weird hex nut at the foreground is PA-CF (nylon reinforced with carbon fibre)
off white body housing bit is Taulman T-glase (but really old, a reel open for 6 years, hence the print quality & horrible colour, it should print transparent)
white rabbit is creality's default test model and done in the free pla you get with it
the grey iso30 shank parts are a old reel of hatchbox abs.

Apart from the rabbit, they are parts for a own designed touch probe in qc30 for my bridgeport cnc. I originally made them on my resin printer a few years back and made the probe wired, but it broke recently when it fell on the floor, so I'm revisiting with fdm with different filaments, and the iso30 holder integral to save height in the machine vs having a er32 collet and a shank above the probe body.

View attachment 464427

Yes they might be good but still require massive amounts of mods/upgrades like you said when you can get printers now which work out the box with amazing quality.

They're a bit like the gopro brand of the printer world, first out there in the field but plenty good and perhaps better options now.

 

[jmp49]

Yes, I looked at the bambu x1, but went with the ender5 plus & priced in klipper/mercury1 conversion and a diy ams for a similar price to get the build volume I wanted (256x256x256 of the bambu with ams vs 350x350x400 for a standard sized ender5 plus) and I liked that I'd know how it all worked and it wouldn't be riddled with cloud features and other stuff I didnt want & it would still be made from standard 2040 extrusion making it easier to make even bigger in future. I should mention I bought the ender5 plus new from creality this summer expressly to modify out the box, and have no regrets as I've used that larger build volume several times already.
Heres a ender5 plus with the mercury1/hydra and a diy ams fitted.

My next printer I plan on just buying some extrusion and scratch building it even bigger.

They were far far from being first in the field of consumer 3d printers, I have a (much modified) printrbot simple metal I bought in 2015 still, way back in the heyday of reprap's.

 

[Screwdriver]

Yes they might be good but still require massive amounts of mods/upgrades like you said when you can get printers now which work out the box with amazing quality.

They're a bit like the gopro brand of the printer world, first out there in the field but plenty good and perhaps better options now.

I disagree. I bought a bog stock Ender3 and deliberately avoided the hobbyist upgrde this and upgrade that approach. A few nips and tweaks were all that was required for it to be a super reliable little 3d printer which cost peanuts.

There were dozens and dozens of 3d printers around before the Ender3 and they were all way out of my price range. The ones hovering around the entry level price bracket were universally rubbish. Creality changed all that and effectively started a revolution in 3d printing by making relatively turnkey solutions for the masses.

Bambu took things a step further by producing the X1 at an unbelievable price point for its feature set. Including an oft imitated but as yet unmatched multi filament/multi colour option. They have capitalised on that with their newer, smaller and more cost effective developments.

 

[iNf]

My Bosch GST 18V-LI S Jigsaw which I received via a redemption offer has proved to be a very useful tool. The only issue was the switch was tricky to operate, being too shallow and smooth. So I designed a new one with raised ridges and it's worked a treat being much easier to use.

 

[ukracer]

The Ender was and still is an excellent 3d printer at its price point. Not only are they ridiculously cheap (I paid £120 for mine, brand new) they are also incredibly reliable.

For the same price I paid for my Bambu Carbon X1, I could have set up a rack of ten Ender 3s with enough change for a mountain of filament.

Horses for courses really. The Ender series was an extraordinary device in the early days of 3d printing. The Bambu series are equally extraordinary albeit at a much higher price point and yet still delivering extreme value for money with its game changing feature set .

I think at the Bambu price point it's more about convenience and if you can design as opposed to value for money.
Particularly any return on that investment.

 

[Screwdriver]

I think at the Bambu price point it's more about convenience and if you can design as opposed to value for money.
Particularly any return on that investment.

The carbon X1 delivers performance previously only available to high tech systems like the Voron 2.4. Very similar price, very similar performance except you have to build the Voron yourself from parts and there is no multiple filament option. The Bambu system is literally plug and play and the speeds it can achieve are astounding.

I can't see how there can be any kind of "value for money" comparison when there isn't anything out there that can compete. The Voron ercf is clunky and nowhere near the usability of the Bambu ams. Prusa are about as close as it gets currently but they are struggling to deliver a multi filament option (that works).

Plenty of companies out there using X1 based print farms.

 

[jmp49]

There is a much updated V2 of the Voron ECRF filament loader at https://github.com/Enraged-Rabbit-Community/ERCF_v2 , that's the version I'm going to be making for my Ender & Fystec etc on ali express are offering hardware kits to make getting the parts together easier, the same way you can buy mercury1 kits to convert Ender 5's.
Sure you have to wait for stuff to arrive, but you can pay more and order the parts locally in most cases, or if you have access to a cnc mill (which I do), the CAD is all freely available. And if something isnt exactly how you want it, you can alter it yourself.

It is about a different philosophy, bambu offers consumer product convenience that just works off the shelf but smaller and not designed to be expanded or modified vs getting your hands dirty and making/improving something yourself. As you indicate, the print farms are using bambu's for smaller prints because its a known quantity and return on investment & they just want click and go out the box. And having taken the self improved road, I probably haven't saved much money, just spread the costs out over time, and its cost me lots of time, but in return I really understand how my printer is built, and how to improve it further in future.

Anyway, last post from me on this for now, its pollting a what did you make for your printer today. Although today its printing some fan shroud parts so I can run a larger noctura silent fan static on the main frame and use CPAP hose to take the fan output right to the toolhead in place of the toolhead mounted 5010 fan that goes weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee at 200000 decibels during a print, making the toolhead lighter and faster and more importantly quieter and more reliable.

 

[Screwdriver]

Does the new improved ERCF work? Got any vids of it? I might be tempted to stick one on my Voron (when I get around to setting it up).

 

[Screwdriver]

Getting back on topic then. King Ghidorah (nicked off Thingiverse).

Plus the chap it's for in the background. Spray painted with Hammerite gold and it worked beautifully.

Just like the real thing....

 

[Onoff]

Getting back on topic then. King Ghidorah (nicked off Thingiverse).

Plus the chap it's for in the background. Spray painted with Hammerite gold and it worked beautifully.

Just like the real thing....

Certainly one up on turkey dinosaurs!

 

[Prajna]

A battery cover for an Executioner fly swatter for Lana, who gave me the printer. Very expensive battery cover for her but I'm sure there will be other stuff she needs. Didn't have camera but here's the gcode image:

 

[Prajna]

I also knocked up a catch to hold the bonnet stay for Mike's Skoda Octavia. Had nothing to copy so had to knock it up from 1st principles: