Official Creality Ender 3 3D Printer with Resume Printing, Stable Power Supply, Precise Printing, and V-Slot Rails, DIY 3D Printer, Printing Size 8.66x8.66x9.84 inches, Ideal for Mold Sample Printing

Watch the third-party free YouTube on-line beginner videos BEFORE building. The included assembly sheet is VERY confusing … and I’m an engineer! The videos make good points about how extremely important it is to make sure the printer’s frame is absolutely square in all three dimensions. Just gradually tightening the bolts in a rotation (like when tightening the bolts/nuts on a vehicle wheel) isn’t good enough.The Z limit switch mounting bracket has a nub on the left front corner (looking from the front of the printer). Some videos say to clip it off (e.g., with diagonal wire cutters or heavy-duty shears), which is the only way that I could get to perform the bed “leveling” process. The process actually positions the bed parallel to the X-Y plane of the printer’s frame (left-to-right, and front-to-back).Some people mistakenly try to use a carpenter’s level to “level” the bed, but if the printer isn’t sitting on a perfectly level table/bench surface, and the bottom of the printer frame isn’t exactly parallel to the supporting table/bench surface (not likely), a carpenter’s level won’t be of any use.Threading the printing filament past the gripping feed rollers and into the white feed tube to the print head is very tricky. Some videos show that it helps to unscrew the brass fitting attached to the feed tube and get the filament to protrude out of the right side of the feed mechanism about an inch (25 mm), then screw the brass fitting back into the mechanism after pushing the fitting over the protruding filament.That makes it possible to get the filament into the feed tube - I couldn’t have accomplished that step without that hint. Getting the end of the filament into the hole beyond the gripping feed rollers was extremely frustrating, as the hole is impossible to see, even with bright lighting, as the hole passes through a black plastic housing behind the very close rollers.The menu items are somewhat different on my printer from any of the manual versions (included on the USB thumb drive, on the Creality.com site, elsewhere on-line, or what’s shown in the videos. I was able to guess that the Motion menu item was what had to be selected from the main menu in order to get to the Auto Home and Disable Steppers menu items, needed to perform the “leveling” steps.Once I had stumbled through the assembly sheet, then discovered the YouTube videos and done things right, printing was pretty straightforward using the built-in micro-SD card reader. I haven’t been able to scale a model down in the included Creality subset of the free, open-source Cura “slicing” software.The provided gcode files print just fine, but not the .stl files after scaling and saving as gcode files. The printer only displays and prints from gcode files that the slicing software generates from .stl (3D Object) files. I’m trying to resolve this issue via on-line searches and forums.

Let me start off by saying that I am an educator and that I have been using 3D printers for the last four years. We wrote a grant at my school and purchased 2 printrbot simple metals and 4 printrbot metal plus printers. They range in price from $699 - $1100. I assembled two of them and they were very somewhat difficult. I ordered the Creality ender 3 to have something to mess around with at home and see if it would be something that I could really push to be used in the classroom because of the price difference. I have ran this printer really hard for about two weeks now and I am very impressed. The assembling was really easy. It took me a little over an hour. I watched a youtube video that made the whole process very easy. The quality of prints I am getting are just as good as the printrbot and it seems to be a little faster. I really like not having to use painters tape to get prints to stick to the print bed. I also love the option of being able to take the top layer of the print bed off and pop the prints loose. That is an awesome feature. The bed leveling was tricky at first but once I watched a video on it, it is not a problem. It is a little warped on one corner, but the prints still cover off very accurate. I do want to upgrade to the glass bed to see if that makes any difference, but I do not feel at this point it is a necessity. I will be talking to my administration soon to discuss purchasing several of these printers to have in our school. Thank you for making an affordable printer for everyone that gets the job done and has a pretty big print area.

I'm writing this review after a long first day of printing. I'm pretty happy with it, honestly. This is great value. After having built a larger but remarkably similar printer from scratch, I'm also not convinced they're losing money on it. So at least this isn't a case of Chinese dumping. It's simply a good product at a fair price, for once.My first two prints came out looking fantastic. The provided white PLA wasn't enough to complete the dog model, but my somewhat old and probably wet yellow PETG printed just fine as well. Adhesion was quite good on the provided print surface.Obviously, your results may vary. I don't know how good their quality assurance is, but most Chinese manufacturers seem to struggle with it. It could be that I got one of the good ones. The rails aren't bent, the belts are intact, the steppers all work just fine.The electronics are noisy, though. Given the price, this isn't surprising, but it is something most people will probably want to upgrade. Going with something with TMC2208 or better stepper drivers will almost certainly solve the problem.Overall, I'd say it's a good printer for beginners, but not if you're a buffoon or just not mechanically inclined. Learn how to tune this in, and it'll serve you very well. Ultimately, I gave this four stars instead of 5 because of the noise issue and because the manual doesn't mention the single most important detail for making this printer really shine: adjusting the delrin wheels.Since the manual doesn't mention it at all, I'll give a quick explanation here: the delrin wheels that form the linear bearings for this printer need to be properly tensioned. Do _not_ expect the factory setup to be anywhere near correct. Even if they got it perfect, the shipping process can knock them out of alignment again. The printer comes with little wrenches just for this purpose, so use them!On each set of wheels on the X and Z axes, there is one wheel that is mounted on an eccentric spacer. You can identify it because it has a hex shaft instead of a round one. The larger wrench in the kit should fit this hex. If you turn it, the wheel is pushed slightly inward or outward because it's mounted a little off-center from the bolt hole. This is how you adjust the wheel spacing to make the bearing tighter or looser. You should make it tight enough that you can't feel any play when you try to twist the bearing set, but not so tight that it's difficult to make it roll along the rail. You shouldn't be able to turn the wheels against the rail without the whole thing moving along the rail too.If you still have trouble, take your printer apart again and make sure the ends of the rails weren't damaged in shipping, causing them to not mate up squarely. Since the rails are aluminum, it's relatively easy for the sharp corners to be deformed from minor bumps. If the corners are deformed from impact damage, you should file/sand the deformity off so that the face of the end of the rail can mate flatly against the side of the rails you're bolting them to.If your rails are bent, you'll have to take that up with Creality. There's a warranty for a reason, and that definitely counts. If you aren't sure if your rails are bent, take two of them and place them together lengthwise. Rotate one of them 90 degrees a few times, checking if you can see light coming through between them. If you can, at least one of them is bent. Get a replacement. You spent money on the damn thing, make sure you get what you pay for!