I have had my Creality Ender 3 Pro for a while now and I have upgraded it quite a lot. Lately I have been thinking about wether I should put in some more money (better hotend, maybe new steppers, maybe enclosure, maybe part cooling fan) or if I should buy a new printer that is a more of complete package. A bit more build volume would be nice as well.
I am intrigued by the Bambu Labs printers but I don’t like their somewhat proprietary approach. So I have been looking around for competitors and I saw that Creality has shown their new K2 Plus with an AMS. I wonder if it’s worth waiting for that. The specs sound good. Is the K1 good now? I heard it had some problems in the beginning.
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You might want to check out the sovol V8 that came out not too long ago. It is based on the voran v2.4 but comes mostly prebuilt with mass manufactured parts to lower cost. But still holds true to the open nature of the voran. And is quite cheap for what it is at $579 for the base open frame model.
Only down side is it does not have an automatic filiment changer though I don’t really care for that feature.
Two printers will always beat one printer. Upgrading your ender 3 will be a money pit if you want something that does same as last generations printers.
An designed enclosed printer will let you use ABS that is to my mind one of the best plastics I use.
I don’t know for Creality K1/K2 though.
I don’t have the space for two printers. But I think too that at some point upgrading makes sense. The Ender 3 is nice to tinker but I want something that just works.
Honestly, I don’t think there are any creality printers that “just work”.
I know you threw Bambu out as an option, but man, I love my P1P. The thing just prints with no drama, fuss, or headaches.
Print 24/7 for a week? 100% success rate.
Don’t print for 3 months? Printer levels the bed and immediately makes a successful print.
Yes, closed source bad, and propritary bad, and cloud bad, but in terms of pushing a button and a thing gets printed without even thinking about having to fuck with it? Pretty much unbeatable. (Or, at least, light years ahead of any of the other printers I’ve ever had.) It’s so good and reliable I don’t even sit there watching the first layer to make sure it’s going to print successfully because of course it is.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am very impressed by the performance of the Bambu printers. They really gave the established brands a kick in the butt price and performance wise.
Still it makes me uneasy to have a closed source system. I don’t mind butting some effort into my printer if it is more open. I mean my ender 3 is a lot of work. I’d assume it gets better than that.
If open source is a big deal for you I would look into Prusa, they have a great track record and a lot of other companies are using forked versions of their slicer. I have a Prusa MK3s and absolutely love it. I had a self sourced RepRap before this and compared to that it absolutely “just works”. I bought the multi color add on and was expecting it to be very finicky, but other than some initial filament loading issues (have to make sure the end of the filament goes to a point) I absolutely love it.
I think the idea of prusa is cool but I feel like they are a bit behind. Especially regarding price to performance. That is what I gathered from the reviews at least. They are pretty reliable but not the latest and greatest tech.
The Mk4 made up a lot of ground, but I agree they are a pricey option. Personally I was able to justify the price by the benefits of open source, if the company disappears tomorrow I’m confident the open source community could continue issuing firmware/slicer updates.
Oh I fully understand and appreciate your position. I’m pro open-source-everything, but I made the pragmatic choice in this case because, well, years of fiddling with cheap printers made me realize that I really am not into this for the fiddling but more the end product, and if nothing else, the Bambu printers are really good at damn near being appliances.
Hell, my 2d printers are more of a pain to keep working than this thing is, heh.
Start to spread into your friends/parents/kids place and send them virtual files to print :p
Qidi has been fantastic for me. Amazing customer support. They’ve sent replacement parts as well.
Same, I have a Smart3 and Max3 and both have been great! The Smart3 came first and it made me absolutely hate my other printers because it just worked without me needing to mod it or fiddle with it.
Do the math.
Buying new might be cheaper than upgrading the ender 3:
hotend+extruder: orbiter v3 110€
stepper (not sure why you would want): 2x (5-phase 0.72° stepper and 5 phase stepper driver): 200€ [2 phase 0.9° would be significantly lower cost but even less of an upgrade]
cooling fan: larger 6023 blower: 13€
enclosure: Not great for a bed pusher. Core XY is compact. Regardless approx. 100€
Between those, you would already look at approx. 425€ in parts and still have the basic Ender 3 frame and electronic that if you haven’t done might want to upgrade to.
Yeah I did that math myself. I would only do that because I like my Ender 3. But in the end a complete package sounds very tempting.
