Make sure the screws are snug and the beams don’t move. Level the bed, Youtube how. Then get a micro SD card and a slicing program. Slice the model, save to card, insert in printer, hit print from file and select the file.
That’s like 95% of it. The other 5 is endless struggles and troubleshooting, but you can worry about that when it comes to it lol. Oh also keep filament dry.
People give the Ender 3 a bad rap all the time, but it’s honestly a great little machine. I far prefer it to the $2500 printer we have at work that has “automatic everything” and can’t easily be adjusted to manually correct its bad settings.
With that said, how far have you gotten with it? Do you have any software installed? Have you tried printing anything (and was it successful)? You didn’t give much clue as to where you’re stuck. Yes you need to take some time to learn how to fine-tune the settings, and yes it can be frustrating because there is SO MUCH to learn about 3D printing, but once you get over the hump you can start cranking out all kinds of fun things.
Not the person you responded to, but I had mine set up. I had the software installed, I (thought) I even had the bed leveled, but every print either failed to stick to the plate, or eventually stuck to the nozzle. I ended up with a lot of spaghetti. I got frustrated and decided to take a break. I’d come back to it fresh, and see what I could do.
Not op, I got a free Ender 3 from a frustrated co-worker, and am now the frustrated co-worker. I’ve tried getting a new glass print surface, tried using glue sticks, tried changing print temps and speeds, tried levelling and re-levelling and re-levelling the bed, but I just can’t get the print to stick for love or money. It’s now been re-homed to the garage, as a parking obstacle for my bicycle.
Honestly at that point I would tear down the whole thing and use this video as a guide for reassembly. The most important thing to do is to make sure the framework is all squared up, otherwise all prints will suffer.
As for bed leveling… A lot of people think the paper test is all you need, but really that only gets you close enough to start leveling the bed. First thing is to tighten all the springs to within 1 turn of being closed, then adjust the Z switch so that the head homes to roughly that same height. After that you use the paper method to get the bed roughly level, then move on to live testing with a 5-point bed-leveling test print to dial it in. Ideally you want the nozzle gap to be about 75% of the nozzle size, so for a 0.20mm tip you would want a 0.15mm gap to get your print to stick.
As I mentioned to someone else, Creality’s QC is garbage. My first glass bed had better adhesion than PEI and worked beautifully for a few years until the coating wore out. My second glass bed was trash, I never could get anything to stick to it without using hairspray, and now it sits in its box. I have a PEI bed now, which seems to have solved the problem. If you decide to try using the printer again, don’t forget to clean the glass with 90% ISO. Worst case try flipping the glass over to the smooth side, clean it with ISO, then use glue sticks on that surface (you won’t get any adhesion on bare glass without the glue or hairspray).
Honestly when it works it works wonderfully. Most of my problems with my ender 3 come down to me being a dumbass and not taking care of it properly, and/or just the nozzles they ship with it being cheap as fuck and impossible to cold pull.
No joke my first ever successful cold pull was 2 days ago, because I had finally gotten a decent set of nozzles.
If you want to get really serious about printing there are better options out there, but for the cost they really are awesome beginner printers (to be fair I haven’t kept up much with printers, so I don’t know many other good cheap ones). I mostly only dabble with printing, but my ender 3 pro that I got like 3 years ago has served me very well.
You may be interested in these links, it can reduce or eliminate the problems which require cold pulls. Basically the issue is that the tubing moves up and down during printing and creates a slack space where the filament gets into a region of the nozzle it’s not supposed to reach. This modification uses a short length of tubing inside the nozzle that is pushed down tight, then your regular tubing sits on top of that where the movement doesn’t cause any problems. I’ve never had a single clogged nozzle or needed to do a cold pull in several years since making this change, so I highly recommend it.
Okay but like I was given an Ender 3 for free and idk where to go from there
Maybe the fact that the family member who gave it to me didn’t want it around anymore should have been a sign
Make sure the screws are snug and the beams don’t move. Level the bed, Youtube how. Then get a micro SD card and a slicing program. Slice the model, save to card, insert in printer, hit print from file and select the file.
That’s like 95% of it. The other 5 is endless struggles and troubleshooting, but you can worry about that when it comes to it lol. Oh also keep filament dry.
People give the Ender 3 a bad rap all the time, but it’s honestly a great little machine. I far prefer it to the $2500 printer we have at work that has “automatic everything” and can’t easily be adjusted to manually correct its bad settings.
With that said, how far have you gotten with it? Do you have any software installed? Have you tried printing anything (and was it successful)? You didn’t give much clue as to where you’re stuck. Yes you need to take some time to learn how to fine-tune the settings, and yes it can be frustrating because there is SO MUCH to learn about 3D printing, but once you get over the hump you can start cranking out all kinds of fun things.
Not the person you responded to, but I had mine set up. I had the software installed, I (thought) I even had the bed leveled, but every print either failed to stick to the plate, or eventually stuck to the nozzle. I ended up with a lot of spaghetti. I got frustrated and decided to take a break. I’d come back to it fresh, and see what I could do.
… That was three years ago.
Not op, I got a free Ender 3 from a frustrated co-worker, and am now the frustrated co-worker. I’ve tried getting a new glass print surface, tried using glue sticks, tried changing print temps and speeds, tried levelling and re-levelling and re-levelling the bed, but I just can’t get the print to stick for love or money. It’s now been re-homed to the garage, as a parking obstacle for my bicycle.
Honestly at that point I would tear down the whole thing and use this video as a guide for reassembly. The most important thing to do is to make sure the framework is all squared up, otherwise all prints will suffer.
As for bed leveling… A lot of people think the paper test is all you need, but really that only gets you close enough to start leveling the bed. First thing is to tighten all the springs to within 1 turn of being closed, then adjust the Z switch so that the head homes to roughly that same height. After that you use the paper method to get the bed roughly level, then move on to live testing with a 5-point bed-leveling test print to dial it in. Ideally you want the nozzle gap to be about 75% of the nozzle size, so for a 0.20mm tip you would want a 0.15mm gap to get your print to stick.
As I mentioned to someone else, Creality’s QC is garbage. My first glass bed had better adhesion than PEI and worked beautifully for a few years until the coating wore out. My second glass bed was trash, I never could get anything to stick to it without using hairspray, and now it sits in its box. I have a PEI bed now, which seems to have solved the problem. If you decide to try using the printer again, don’t forget to clean the glass with 90% ISO. Worst case try flipping the glass over to the smooth side, clean it with ISO, then use glue sticks on that surface (you won’t get any adhesion on bare glass without the glue or hairspray).
Honestly when it works it works wonderfully. Most of my problems with my ender 3 come down to me being a dumbass and not taking care of it properly, and/or just the nozzles they ship with it being cheap as fuck and impossible to cold pull.
No joke my first ever successful cold pull was 2 days ago, because I had finally gotten a decent set of nozzles.
If you want to get really serious about printing there are better options out there, but for the cost they really are awesome beginner printers (to be fair I haven’t kept up much with printers, so I don’t know many other good cheap ones). I mostly only dabble with printing, but my ender 3 pro that I got like 3 years ago has served me very well.
You may be interested in these links, it can reduce or eliminate the problems which require cold pulls. Basically the issue is that the tubing moves up and down during printing and creates a slack space where the filament gets into a region of the nozzle it’s not supposed to reach. This modification uses a short length of tubing inside the nozzle that is pushed down tight, then your regular tubing sits on top of that where the movement doesn’t cause any problems. I’ve never had a single clogged nozzle or needed to do a cold pull in several years since making this change, so I highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tCxO17XZtw https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4220059