Up until a month ago, I had a (modified) Printrbot Simple Metal. One of the motor drivers failed, and, since they are built right onto that board, decided to replace the board with a newer one.
My wife and her brother said they thought it would be better to just get a new printer. They decided that they were buying me a new printer for Christmas (I’m a lucky guy!). They asked which one, and I decided on an Ender 3 Pro, because of the enormous amount of community support and modifications that can be made.
I spent the last two days building it, and spent an inordinate amount of time (even for me) squaring up everything during the build.
I have the CR Touch auto bed leveling probe installed , but not connected or enabled yet.
I manually leveled the bed, and attempted a first print of a 20X20X20 calibration cube. I expected it to fail in some way, as the first one after levelling always does.
It came out PERFECT
I literally cannot find a single thing wrong with it. I have witnessed a miracle!
A lot of people denigrate Creality printers because they are cheap but they do work very well. I printed a cube right after I assembled mine and it came out perfect as well.
As you said there is a lot of support out there and they are completely repairable and can be infinitely upgraded.
Any of you old enough to remember the CARtoons magazine (1960’s/70’s) it was like MAD magazine but all about modding cars and street rods. One of the jokes they had was a guy with a Volkswagen reading a parts catalogue and then ordering parts and installing them on the Wagon. One day he goes out to his garage and installs the last part and as he stepped back to admire his work he now had a Cadillac. Creality printers are like that. If you keep modding and upgrading them, a little here and a little there, you can end up with something better then anything you could ever afford to buy straight out of the box and maybe have some fun doing it.
I am (sadly) old enough to remember CARtoons magazine, and I remember the one you mention.
I am planning to try some printing for sale on something like Etsy or WIC, and to that end, I am upgrading with the goal of having Octoprint running fairly soon. With the mods I have done so far (and plan to in the future) it should be able to churn out a few things.
If I do make any money, I plan to add to the printer stable, maybe even add a resin printer for fine detail.
We’ll see. Something fun to do in my recent retirement.
