Ender-3 V2 3D Printer, Is it any good?
Ender-3 V2 3D Printer, Is it any good?
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Hey, I'm a complete newbie when it comes to 3D printing. I have a chance to pick up this printer second hand, and I was wondering what the community thinks of the product. Would this printer be decent for a beginner? Thanks!
I might be a bit late with my answer, but overall the ender 3 is a decent beginner printer. I've had no major problems with mine.
You and others please note that there are 4 different models of the ender 3.
- ender 3: loud board and stock everything
- ender 3 v2, new screen, silent board, adjustment knobs for belts and a glass bed
- ender 3 neo. silent board, old screen, auto bed leveling (BL-Touch), glass bed
- ender 3 v2 neo: Basically a v2 + neo
IMO the neo is a sweet spot for beginners. It has most of the upgrades people do on their printers, while being cheaper than doing them yourself.
EDIT: just read that you're buying used. Depending on the price the v2 would be completely fine. Just add bltouch later if you want.
Seconding this. V2 has been awesome for me, but I had to add a bltouch to get consistently good results without fiddling with leveling all the time. Now, V2 gives me flawless prints with minimal tinkering.
Neo adds this by default, plus those other few upgrades that I think make it perfect for a newbie who just want to print.
V2 is good if you want to spend a little more time getting to know the machine and putting it together. Gives a good feel for how the machine works and is a good experience on its own.
Have a ender3V2 as my first printer, buy it, hopefully no second hand issues, use it, enjoy it, but resist the urge to spend time and money upgrading, you want a better printer after running through a few spools, buy a better printer (sovol sv06, perhaps)
only 'upgrade' i've done is a filament guide and lots of time levelling the bed, frequently.
I have a e3v2, and I already have more in upgrades in it than I paid initially for the printer, each one to "fix" an issue I was having - dual z to fix x gantry from sagging, microswiss NG extruder when my regular extruder broke, the "yellow springs" and now a cr touch as I was getting real sick of manual leveling after a year of use. If you buy that printer, you will learn a lot about how it works and how to fix it. It says you're getting an automatic leveler, but take the time to learn how to manually level. The ABL helps but it's not a magic bullet. Also, if the 2 rolls of filament you're getting are open to the atmosphere you'll want to make sure to dry them, otherwise you'll learn a whole other aspect of 3d printing that will drive you nuts.
Ender-3 V2 is a solid entry level printer. I enjoy mine and once I put the "silent" board on it I could print nearly non-stop without any complaints from my wife or kids.
So the upgrades I would suggest are: BL-Touch/CR-Touch "Silent" control board
Nice to have: Dual gear extruder Higher quality PTFE tubing
I am the go-to guy for 3D printers for quite a few people. Everyone who has an Ender 3 had them up and running in a short time, and all of them printed out of the box without issues.
I had one guy who fell into the trap of buying every possible upgrade and it took a while for us to get it going with all the upgrades, but other than that, an Ender 3 is a solid first machine.
Sure, it's not as great as some other machines out there, but these other machines don't cost <€250 on Amazon.
Anything better than the Ender 3 v2 will get you into diminishing returns territory very fast.
If you want to tinker with the printer a lot, sure. If you want something that reliably Just Works, you’ll probably need to increase your budget. I’ve heard consistent stories from friends that their various Ender 3’s required lots of tinkering or upgrades to make them happy (one who found it so frustrating he gave up twice before finally getting it working ok, and this was with help from our “expert” friend who had lots of experience with Ender 3’s). And consistent stories from friends that their Prusa MK3’s Just Work and they don’t understand what the Ender 3 friends are talking about for how to solve various problems, because they just didn’t happen.
My personal suspicion (owning neither) is that the QA on the Enders is probably not great, so some of them work pretty well and others are miserable. Any given user has no way to tell whether they are doing something wrong, or just got a machine with really poor tolerances. Ender 3’s are really common on support forums like this one, but I’m not sure how much comes from the low price leading to high sales volumes vs. users on average having more trouble getting jankier machines working well. But Ender clearly has many fans so…?
According to a post on the 3dprinting subreddit that was recommending different budget options, they were not recommending the Ender 3 anymore because QA would have in fact went down like you said. (Their name is made, they can cut cost to increase profits now...)
They were only recommending it if you went for the Ender 3 S1 since it had more features than the base Ender 3 / Pro / V2.
I have an older Ender 3 Pro that I modded quite a bit over the years and would also agree this is more a machine if you want to tinker with it. One important thing to note is that almost no upgrades will result in higher print quality when compared to a well tuned base Ender 3. The mods simply made it a bit more reliable IMO or reduce how often I need to calibration it.
I also agree that if you don't want to tinker with it, get something else. It will be more expensive upfront but if you take a cheaper printer that you mod over time, the cost will end up being similar. But it's a decision hard to make if you are not sure you will like the hobby, and an Ender 3 or other similar budget printer can still be OK without modding if you don't mind the limitations.
And if I were to buy a new printer today, I'd definitely go for something better with more features built in that I wouldn't have to mod to achieve the same functionality.
Ender3 is an outstanding entry point to the 3d printing hobby. It's open source hardware, so no other printer has cheaper parts. And may be the most common 3d printer, so plentiful modification options and tutorials.
Where's the source?