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I am a career 3d designer and additive manufacturing professional, I've worked with 100k$+ 3d printers, and I have been in machine shops since I was 10. The ender 3 has beaten me.
This is not a call for help but more so a scream into the void
The ender 3 s1 pro has defeated me.
I've serviced SLS printers bigger than most cars. I've been working with printers professionally for just short of a decade, and CNC and other automated subtractive manufacturing machines for even longer than that. I'm a successful jeweler who has built his business on resin 3d printers the likes of which I have more in my shop than I have room for. I was an official beta tester all the way back during the early days of Rhino 3d.
So when I decided that I wanted to print fun little accessories from my D&D room at a larger form factor than my resin printers allowed and with less cleanup and rigamarole it was time for me to get my own FDM printer I already knew what I was going to get. This was supposed to be a toy a fun little thing to fool around with after I'm done working for the day, I'm not going to spend 1000$ on it I said it's just a goofy little side project I said. The Ender 3 s1 pro is dirt cheap and liable to be half broken out of the box but if you know your way around printers and don't mind a little DIY you can make it into a workhorse everyone else said.
Started out fine got the box from China, put it together turned it on z-axis won't move an inch. Alright expected as much. Pop her open z-axis was never plugged into the motherboard easy fix. Get her started on her first print shuts off about 10min in try again and repeat 5 or 6 times. ok. pop her open again faulty soldering on the motherboard. Easy fix. get her started prints okay but not great. The first layers are a mess two weeks of on and off tinkering later realize I have a warped bed. It's all good nothing automated mesh bed leveling can't fix. Install customer firmware. Prints are still not good, tinker with the mesh bed, and realize my z touch is defective replace z touch with bl touch. still not great. Realizing that this fun little toy is starting to feel a lot like work, I saved 300$ by going with the ender over a more consistent model I can throw some more cash at it and order 2 replacement beds. get them 2 weeks later and pull out the calipers both of them are just as warped as the first and even worse after being heated. okay this is fine return them apparently I didn't do as bad in the initial bed lottery as I thought. It's okay less convenient but I can settle for a glass bed that won't warp with the bed like the stock removable print surface. Still not printing well. DO quite a bit more digging and realize I'm experiencing a mesh bed reading error known to be present in the custom firmware that is rare and without a known cause or fix. But it's okay UBL settings can be used to circumvent this. After some digging realize that my Ender 3 is a later model with an inferior chip that doesn't have enough memory for ubl without disabling z-touch and installing manual z-axis calibration. Throw my hands up, spend hours with a feeler gauge, test printing and manually enter bed mesh into the g-code. hallelujah, I get a perfect print! The tribulations are over finally made it work and I can print some dice towers and dungeon tiles. the second print is good but not as good. third and fourth are acceptable but just a few prints later I'm back to where I started. get out the feeler gauge and graph paper and realize that with each heating cycle my bed was warping ever so slightly more and slowly rendering my manual bed mesh inaccurate. realize that using this printer is committing to doing this on the regular. Realize that my fun little toy has become the exact kind of tedious work that I started my own business to not need to do anymore. I give up.
Thank you for reading my rant, catch me in the purchase advice mega thread because the idea of never needing to turn my Ender 3 on ever again has radically increased my budget for my fun little toy, also if you're driving around Georgia and see an ender 3 unattended on a porch it's yours take it.
This is not a call for help but more so a scream into the void
The ender 3 s1 pro has defeated me.
I've serviced SLS printers bigger than most cars. I've been working with printers professionally for just short of a decade, and CNC and other automated subtractive manufacturing machines for even longer than that. I'm a successful jeweler who has built his business on resin 3d printers the likes of which I have more in my shop than I have room for. I was an official beta tester all the way back during the early days of Rhino 3d.
So when I decided that I wanted to print fun little accessories from my D&D room at a larger form factor than my resin printers allowed and with less cleanup and rigamarole it was time for me to get my own FDM printer I already knew what I was going to get. This was supposed to be a toy a fun little thing to fool around with after I'm done working for the day, I'm not going to spend 1000$ on it I said it's just a goofy little side project I said. The Ender 3 s1 pro is dirt cheap and liable to be half broken out of the box but if you know your way around printers and don't mind a little DIY you can make it into a workhorse everyone else said.
Started out fine got the box from China, put it together turned it on z-axis won't move an inch. Alright expected as much. Pop her open z-axis was never plugged into the motherboard easy fix. Get her started on her first print shuts off about 10min in try again and repeat 5 or 6 times. ok. pop her open again faulty soldering on the motherboard. Easy fix. get her started prints okay but not great. The first layers are a mess two weeks of on and off tinkering later realize I have a warped bed. It's all good nothing automated mesh bed leveling can't fix. Install customer firmware. Prints are still not good, tinker with the mesh bed, and realize my z touch is defective replace z touch with bl touch. still not great. Realizing that this fun little toy is starting to feel a lot like work, I saved 300$ by going with the ender over a more consistent model I can throw some more cash at it and order 2 replacement beds. get them 2 weeks later and pull out the calipers both of them are just as warped as the first and even worse after being heated. okay this is fine return them apparently I didn't do as bad in the initial bed lottery as I thought. It's okay less convenient but I can settle for a glass bed that won't warp with the bed like the stock removable print surface. Still not printing well. DO quite a bit more digging and realize I'm experiencing a mesh bed reading error known to be present in the custom firmware that is rare and without a known cause or fix. But it's okay UBL settings can be used to circumvent this. After some digging realize that my Ender 3 is a later model with an inferior chip that doesn't have enough memory for ubl without disabling z-touch and installing manual z-axis calibration. Throw my hands up, spend hours with a feeler gauge, test printing and manually enter bed mesh into the g-code. hallelujah, I get a perfect print! The tribulations are over finally made it work and I can print some dice towers and dungeon tiles. the second print is good but not as good. third and fourth are acceptable but just a few prints later I'm back to where I started. get out the feeler gauge and graph paper and realize that with each heating cycle my bed was warping ever so slightly more and slowly rendering my manual bed mesh inaccurate. realize that using this printer is committing to doing this on the regular. Realize that my fun little toy has become the exact kind of tedious work that I started my own business to not need to do anymore. I give up.
Thank you for reading my rant, catch me in the purchase advice mega thread because the idea of never needing to turn my Ender 3 on ever again has radically increased my budget for my fun little toy, also if you're driving around Georgia and see an ender 3 unattended on a porch it's yours take it.
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