Ender 3: The new standard in budget 3D printing? Now $190

This is my 1st week with my 1st 3D printer and the slight adjustments were :-
It rocked, so I put in on a flat surface and loosened and re-tightened the feet so they seated in their natural position.
The Z jammed, but all I did was loosen and re-tighten the Z stepper after final assembly so it fell into it's natural unloaded position. I didn't loosen the screws on the carriage nut.
The bed surface curled a bit, but it came with clips so I just moved them further out.
The only thing is I never see the control unit fan spin. I checked it, and it was unplugged, but after plugging it back in it still doesn't spin. Maybe it temp controlled.

I've got my Ender 3 working now but my first problem was the print would start not in the center but on the left corner closest to the front. The print would start half off the bed!

I had to move the object in Cura to the northeast quadrant on the bed before it would start properly. After that it was fine. Still searching for a solution before starting my 2nd print.

Edit: I should say, I had "autohome"'d it before and it failed then I tried to position the extruder in the middle of the print bed but same outcome.

Summary: this review is QUITE good.

Heyyy!!! In love with your videos!

Mine worked perfectly put of the box. I leveled the bed and started the puppy print and it already blows away my 2 m3d printers and my restock mini

Hey there, can you share your profile for the ender?

Waiting for mine

I’ve had mine sine June and I found that after a fair few prints the bed surface has become smoother in places and adhesion isn’t as good. Mu solution to the mainboard fan was to simply add a mesh filter to the inside

Try the geeetech a10

Great work love your reviews :-) My question is I have an Anet A8 fully moded and it prints well would the Ender 3 be an upgrade for me or just a sideways step ? Cheers

great review/build, thanks.

I had nothing but trouble with this printer. It would barely extrude properly and I could never level the warped bed. I am sending mine back. Desktop 3d printing is not in a good place yet. Maybe soon. But this is basically a RepRap from 10 years ago with a few upgrades..

I'm stumped when it comes to Cura settings. I've seen several sites that host Cura Ender 2/3 'profiles', in .ini format, but don't know what it takes to get that printer's settings imported into Cura. The Cura program (mine is as up to date as they'll go) does not have the Ender 3, so I'm having to stumble around and put together a group of settings and pray that they work. What am I doing wrong? Is there an Ender3 profile that you've used with Cura that you could post? What's the process of 'importing' a printer into Cura? If that's not possible and I have to enter settings manually, what would those settings be? Thanks a lot for the video and any help you could provide.

Terrible printer, bad assemble quality from the box, good for small models (pla plastic). abs plastic models have cracks if you want to print medium sized models. This is my first 3d printer, because each channel about 3d print sells you ender 3. I not recommend to buy this printer

TT, thanks for your videos I enjoy watching them. I'm really new to 3D printing and slicers. I have an XYZ Davinci that has done well but as you know its designed for the new people for a plug and print situation. Now that I seem to have a real printer :) I have a lot to learn. I know the slicing programs are the key to most any good print and knowledge is as well. I have a decent understanding of printing and the results of but really lack the Slicer knowledge since the Davinci and its accompanying slicer pretty much did it for me. Now I want to learn from the ground up. Any links to starting this journey? I'm confident I can slap a print into Cura and produce something but I want to learn so if you have any good links (yours as well) please let me know. Thanks

Us $260 with Aus plug though 🙄

Great video...but i just ordered an ender 3 for my classroom using donorrschoose. The preassembled main frame was wobbly...that is to say the four corners would not lay flat on the table. I expected some issues and do not mind assembling stuff. . But that is a huge oversight in quality even for a $200 printer.i wouldnt waste your money.

How hot should I heat the bed for abs?

Nice Vid , I want to buy this printer but the Coupon code expired, any idea where can I find a new one? 🙂

Hi Michael

I've just received my Ender 3 and, never having been 'hands on' with a 3D printer before, my experience of building the printer was very different to yours.

First problem was that the right-hand upright refused to sit down correctly. The holes through the base piece (or in the end of the vertical extrusion, not sure) were slightly out of alignment - easily fixed with a few touches from a round file.

Second problem was with steps 6 and 7. The ferrules on the ends of the drive belt are huge and there is no way on earth that they will pass beneath the roller wheels, so the belt has to be fitted around the extrusion before the extruder carriage is fitted (i.e. before step 6).

Then the real problem came at step 9. The leadscrew is way off centre from the Z Stepper coupling - about 4mm in one direction and a bit less in the other.

The problem appears to be that the extruder mount bracket, that holds the floating guide bush, is simply wrong. It's not bent at 90°, the line of the bend is not correct and, as a result, the extruder is at an angle of about -5° and the floating guide bush is a) at an angle to the leadscrew and b) about 4mm offset from the axis of the Z-Stepper.

There is absolutely no way that this will ever work satisfactorily (let alone well). It is possible to assemble it but everything is strained, the leadscrew is nowhere near vertical and it's incredibly difficult to move then X-Axis bar assembly by hand in the Z direction and the error is so great that it really struggles to reach the bottom of its travel.

Both the X and Y travels feel very 'lumpy' and the X has a distinct 'hole' that the hotend carriage encounters with a distinctly audible clunk (I need to disassemble it all to try and discover the cause.

I'm inclined to abandon the whole 3D printing idea and throw the Ender and the rolls of filament back at Amazon.

There's no way that my example can actually work correctly and it's not 'fit for purpose' - unless I'm not seeing some way to compensate for the out of alignment bracket and that the travels will eventually smooth out after a few rolls of wasted filament.

I'm a pensioner, this was a big spend for me and I'm extremely unhappy with what I have.

"Benjamin Franklin: The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten"

Any ideas on fixes before it goes back???

No joke the test print won't print without the heated bed on. There's a little logo on the bottom of the model that comes up in my experience 3 times. Skip the pre sliced model and go get your own and slice it yourself.

Absolutely blown away by my E3. My paid upgrades are limited to a replacement aluminum extruder hardware for $6.60 on AliExpress and a replacement Capricorn bowden tube which was the left over bit from my delta upgrade so it was kind of free. Also a bit of 3mm glass from a picture frame plus Aquanet is my build surface. It's perfectly level and I don't need to re-level the bed because I'm not yanking on it to get prints off. Therefore I have no interest in auto level because the bed rarely goes out of level anyway.

I bought one... Its still on a ship somewhere

Got one on order! Can’t wait.

Thanks for the video. There is now an upgraded version for around $260. I'm leaning toward this one. Monoprice  has one that is supposed to print other materials not mentioned here namely, a support material that allows for harder material to be printed on top of. others such as food safe and harder materials as in roller skate wheels. the monoprice was having some electrical issues. So, it looks the Ender is going to be my best option. as a side note, I must have been living under a rock because anytime I heard 3d printer I assumed thousands of dollars and never checked further.

Quick question my ender 3 is not a week old yet I ha e printed a few small things on it printed a small snoopy dog for my daughter and when it was done I was going to print a owl for my wife but I had a over heat error on the screen. So I shut it down for a few hours and now as soon as I turn it on the extruder heats up really fast until it gives me a over heat error on the LCD. Would any one know what the heck is going on I am new to 3d printing and I'm at a loss. Thanks for any help.

is the printer crooked?

ive loved mine, but just had my mainboard die after 3 days :/ both thermistors are reading -14c even when i swap them out for known good ones

Hello, great videos thank you for sharing your knowledge.

I am a beginner, and wondered if I needed to add any adhesive to the ender 3 bed?

Hi,
I am an absolute newbie to 3D printing and have bought and assembled the Ender 3D. Can it be connected to a laptop and controlled from there rather than SD card, if so how?
Also Is there a guide as to how you send G Code to the printer? (I am totally in the dark)

so far...so good for me. Went together super easy and the first print was perfect. Nice and quiet compared to my old Makerbot too. lots of great mods for this one. Good quality.

CAN YOU DO A STEP BY STEP GUIDE ON HOW TO USE THE PRINTER DIALS THE y, THE z, AND THE x, AND THE MEANING OF THEM

Yesterday I put together my Ender 3. Today I tried to test print and it seems that my x axis motor isn't moving. Do you have any suggestions as to why that is?

I bought an Ender 3 Pro in January. I hate to say it but they have some quality control issues. It came with a warped bed, on an inconsistent gantry, the screw holes were not properly aligned and I have not been able to get a completed print out of this thing yet. The customer service is non-existent and seems like a bot with canned messages. Thanks for the review.

My Ender 3 has been printing with no problems whatsoever straight out of the box but I did follow the Luke Hadfield assembly guide which gave some excellent instruction to get everything dialed in 1st go and I installed his profile for Cura

That heat sheild is an filament holder 👍🏻

Beware, DONT print with these magnetic folding surfaces above 70 degrees, they lose their magnetism around that temperature

I really like your knowledge and presentation style. I have, just this afternoon, assembled a Creality Ender 3 Version 4 3D printer. I have done a few prints. They are the dog on the micro SD card - I wish I'd taken notice that the sample PLA was insufficient; it got through 75%! I've made the display cable clips without any issues, and installed them. At the time of writing the "benchy" is printing. I used an A4 sheet of 80 gsm paper for the manual leveling. I am amazed that it works with so little trouble. The SD card dog uses 45 deg bed temp which seemed to work very well with a raft so I'm not sure why you recommend 60 deg, perhaps you could expand on this topic. Incidentally the version 4 ships with the little clips to secure the PTFE bowden cable and I think there are other improvements over the one you reviewed.


incidentally; did you shorten the Bowden cable. as supplied it seems to be far too long but as a noobie I'm reluctant to cut it shorter yet.


I was tempted by the Cocoon or the UK equivalent as offered by ALDI but they ran out of stock so I missed out... So I bought the Ender 3. BTW how can the buyer tell if they are buying an OEM machine or a clone?


Since I have down loaded an STL file from ThingyVerse, I am wondering, as a newbie, how to optimise the slicing for the machine and the object to be printed? The files on ThingyVerse do not generally give any clues, as far as I can see, The display cable clips did say to print on the side but that is fairly obvious.


Please keep up the good work and thanks for all your advice and suggestions.

I got this printer for Christmas and I have to say the person who chose to send me this printer made a good choice for my habits. I like tinkering on stuff and this printer is great for tinkering as well as quick to setup.

Only gripe I would say I had was the Z binding, but there is a mod on Thingiverse that takes care of that really well. After the mod, when you disable the steppers the Z actually drops on its own to the bed. So you do have to be careful in that case. Especially if you have all the bearings well lubricated and there is almost no friction.

Otherwise I would have to say this printer would be a great starter printer for anyone.

For the tinker type people the Marlin firmware that is in this unit isn't to bad to upgrade. You do have to flash the bootloader to it first before you can upgrade it to the more current versions of Marlin.

For me the test filament worked out fine when making the "dog" test print

So this printer earns his spot as s great beginner printer, now I wonder, which printer would you recommend when someone wishes to go to the next step? Spend a bit more, what would be the next choice?

OK, just got one. My Brother bought it. In the Box still. Am going to pull it out after work monyona and put it together. I personally hate weed eater string melter's, because I want to print parts for models and dont want to sand off the lines, but we are going to make parts that go on archery bows, that it doesn't matter. Later on I can get a Stereolithic on, and or Aluminimum powder one.
Anyway I will let you know how well this one does for us.

I love the feel of this video, much more candid, relaxed and "real". I love all of the content from this channel; it's all got lots of good info, however the newer content feels much more scripted and produced which is is neither better or worse, just different.

Nice background music!

Hello I want to ask you, can I replace the extruder on Anycubic Cobra Max with extruder from Creality ender3 V2 neo I mean completely with stepper motors and all. Because of the electricity and e steps.