I know the ender gets shit on here. Entry level, need to tinker, need to upgrade etc. etc.

True I did have to tinker, but once I have gotten it dialed in it's been print after print with smooth lines and drama free printing.





My recommendations:

Gulf Coast Robotics aluminum carriage bed with heating element
https://a.co/d/a4fbb2X

Also the Y carriage to mount the bed to for easier leveling (3 vs 4 points): https://a.co/d/aV1OH0P

I also have the ender 3 support rod kit for a stiffer frame: https://a.co/d/2mk8tAT

Micro Swiss Bowden Dual Gear Extruder: https://a.co/d/5qyt7SI

Honestly once I got the Gulf Coast robotics bed plus the PEI board nearly all fiddling and fuss with the ender went away immediately. It's a thicker bed with tighter tolerances than the stock ender bed (which I believed warped pretty badly in the year I owned it). It also has a superior heating element to the standard ender. Add the PEI board and nothing seems to go wrong on prints these days with PLA.

I think the dual gear extruder is nice to have but I had some pretty good prints without it until my stock brass gear wore down... So I just replaced it.

I will get a bambu one day but honestly I'll wait until my ender kicks the bucket. I'm pretty happy with it.

So to get a reliable Ender I just need to get a new extruder, a new bed, new bed carriage, and a new frame!?

Imagine that. You need to basically rebuild the whole damn thing bro.

Having owned Ender, Prusa, and Bambu... I'll continue to shit on Ender because they earn it.

Genuinely glad you're happy with it. When you get a Bambu I'm confident you'll wish you have upgraded sooner.

If it works, it works.  The point is printing things.  The market wouldn't be here for big consumer items like Bambu if the Enders and Prusas didn't get the hobbyists going first.

The extruder was noted as optional. I had no problems with the prior one other than the brass gear wearing out from too much printing.

The bed and carriage is a major part of reducing the time it takes to get reliable prints over the whole bed. This is a great upgrade for running an ender.

Two support turnbuckles don't make it a new frame. I can't be sure this is necessary... however, a stiffer frame seems like a good idea for dimensional accuracy as it climbs the Z.

I'm sure I would enjoy a new printer, but learning to get good prints from the Ender has certainly given me the experience I need to troubleshoot other issues in the future.

Until then Ender goes Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

My ender has been hit and miss. Ran fine out of the box, but we all know how that goes. Small upgrade here, chase a few ghosts, upgrade there, chase a few demons...

I'm pretty much done fidding with it at this point. If/when I have more problems, I'll just upgrade. Tinkering is fine, but after a while, you just want it to work, period.

What problems and what upgrades have you done? Curious if you had any of the same problems I did prior to the bed.

My ender has been pretty good, but going from petg to pla and back seems to cause problems/clogs/tuning issues from time to time. I like it pretty well for what it is, but I kind of want to avoid spending too much on it, and just save for a bambu and be happy with 2.

I've done this song and dance too many times. I want to print things for my hobbies not make tweaking my printer my hobby.

I come from the OG tevo tarantula and Anet A8 era of 3D printing when the "better" retail/commercial options were a Prusa or a TAZbot and custom builders jizzed their pants over duet boards.  I spent a lot of money and time tweaking my printers to perform where I thought they were acceptable.  Compared to an out of the box Bambu A series printer. They're not worth wasting my time on.

Ender 3 Max.

Added bed leveling, dual Z axis, bed springs, PEI bed, then magnetic bed, relocated the spool, Micro Swiss hotend, Octopi, dual cameras, PSU relocation, Marlin firmware, replaced fans after failure and overheat...

And last night, my BLTouch bracket broke (3D printed).

Love my little ender. Don't think I've so much as had to level the bed in a couple years now. It just prints and prints. It is bone stock.



I do want a Snapmaker Artisan. Played with one quite a bit. Does very good as a 3D printer, way better than the "nice" one that work bought, the laser is worth it and I CNC plastics, fiberglass and aluminum with it.

I hate my Ender 3 v2.  will print once, and then it's hell.  My favorite time was when I spent a few hours going over the bed with a fine tooth comb, leveling it. everything looked good.  Started the print, and the print head stopped about 4 inches above the bed and started extruding!?!  Better than what it normally does which is slam the head into the bed, scratch the glass as it's trying to print 3 inches under the bed surface. I've put in quite a bit of money in upgrades to it, not as much as OP, but more than one should have to do.   I even took it all apart and carefully put it back together, thinking I surely must have had something not aligned quite right somewhere. Still get shitty performance out of it.

I have an Etina printer, it is 100%, never had an issue with it. Only issue with it is its small and low res. (I mostly just want to print minis for my various games)  I also picked up a resin printer and it's mostly good, I've had a few failures but so far those seem to be User error on things making the stl itself, but the printer is fine. Resolution is great, and it's an older model with 'only' 2K resolution. Resin is just a lot more 'work' compared to the filament printers.

I need to get rid of the Ender and get a different large filament printer.  I have so much stuff I want to print, and I need the larger print area than either of my other two printers have. (Mainly for scenery bits.  Houses and castles and stuff like that)

Good lord.

1) im sorry
2) were the upgraded an attempt to fix an underlying problem?

My main issue was inconsistent prints over the bed. So if I printed a larger item one edge may be ruined due to the bed not being level in zone A vs Zone B being a perfect print.

Eventually I started doing calibration prints and confirmed my suspicion that the bed wasn't flat when the heating element warmed it up.

Since then the Gulf Coast robotics bed made all the difference being that it's a thicker piece of aluminum milled flat with a full coverage heating element. I level the bed and go for print after print.

I skipped the dual z as the bed is leveled to the carriage arm and even if they are both like this / / it's gonna print ok.

Tightened up the turnbuckle screws on the tiny skateboard wheels (technical term) to the point when I disconnect the z motor I can raise and lower it with a smooth firm pull and push. If I let it go it doesn't just fall at the speed of gravity. It's got a light rolling resistance.

PEI bed is mandatory regardless of what printer you have.

Also the filament makes a huge difference here. I have numerous awful filaments courtesy of my children who seem to desire glowing rainbow silver neon purple articulated rainbow dragons. Some stuff just prints awful.

I use Overture PLA+ from Amazon for all firearm related prints.

I bought an Ender 3Pro as a microcenter special sale for $100.

Planned on using it to speed up my small print farm production. I spent a year fighting that thing to print good. Never could fix the sagging gantry on the right side. Even dual Z didn't help and actually made things worse.

One day I completely tore it completely down to square everything up using aluminum foil folded up as shims. I went with a Belted Z Mod that would support the gantry and use only 1 stepper motor. I also took my dragon high flow hotend from my converted Ender 5 to Zero G Merc 1 (installed Rapido on it) and put it on the Ender 3.

It now prints pretty awesome for an Ender3, but it's just slow. I could probably speed it up after input shaper tune, but I'd have to upgrade my Raspberry PI Zero to the Zero 2W.

I keep it around and use it for tasks that aren't print farm related now.

I just got a P1S but my old Ender 3 will continue to get used. Printed direct drive mod, Hero Me printed cooling system with stock fans and hot end, Klipper, Dual Z, stock steppers, PEI bed, relocated spool to top of the machine using a spool holder I designed.  It has it's moments but they are far and few in between. Generally speaking it can sit unused for weeks then get fired up, quick bed level and it prints like a champ.

I'm never getting rid of my old Ender 3.  I know it inside and out and can fix everything.  It can knock out a very fine benchy in 36 minutes.

My S1 Pro on the other hand is a piece of shit that's only redeeming quality is that it prints TPU really well.

Printed these unseen killers in yellow PLA and hit em up with spray paint today. A trip to Lowe's for metric hardware and all done.





Another excellent print.

The best mod for an Ender3 is a flexible spring steel build plate. Every other mod is just because you want to not because you need to. I changed stuff on my Ender3 because I just couldn’t help myself. On my other printers, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Come to think of it I did the PEI build plate on a spring steel base.

I also tried the levelling springs everyone says it needs. They made no difference and I put the originals back on.

too many shittubers pushing crappy 'upgrades" that have ZERO bennefit ...

Lets face it, aside from an all-metal hotend and good set of tuning parameters, your E3 should work fine.

Dual-z is hit-or-miss for most folks when it comes to quality.

Get the same frame square and all the tension setup correctly, then its fine. Not fast, but fine.

42-34 X/Y/Z steppers still suck... glad you got around their limitations.

If building an Enderwire, get all 42-40s and don't look back. The speed is addictive