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Common printing questions
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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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
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.
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