If you are looking for the best bang for your 3D printing dollars, then look no further than the Creality Ender 3. Is it the best printer on the market? No. Is it the cheapest 3D printer out there? No again. It is however, one of the best values in the low end hobbiest field. For just under $200US, you can get a great printer that just works out of the box. You will not need to do too many mods for it to be a production machine.
Creality has designed a solid frame and put a Bowden extruder that will give you butter smooth prints with very little fuss. This little printer prints great right out of the box. Does that mean you don’t need to do anything? Not really. There are a few upgrades you will want to do but you don’t need to do them first thing but you will want to do them.
Upgrades
The first thing I added was a cover for the electronics fan. The fan sits on top of the box right under the print bed. It is easy for bits of filament to fall into the fan so a cover is a good idea. A nice one is available on Thingiverse. Another must have in my book is a knob to turn the extruder stepper motor. You will want one of these when you load or unload filament. Once again this is available on thingiverse. While we are on the subject of extruders, The plastic extruder that comes with the Ender you are probably not going want to keep for long. It is fine for starting out but eventually, you will want a metal version such as this one available from Amazon. Next, you may want to add a bed level sensor such as the BLTouch or the TH3D EZABL. I went with the BLTouch myself. If you go with the BLTouch, you will want a Pin27 board. You can get one from Amazon or TH3D. The other purchase I made was for a glass bed. I really didn’t like the build surface that comes with the Ender. It works pretty good. Really too good. Tough to get parts off sometimes. I tried the EZ-Peelzy but was not happy with that either.
Final Thought
Once again, I cannot emphasize enough how much I like this machine. It is well worth the $200 price of admission. If you are just getting started, then I cannot recommend anything else more than this. There are better machines but the come with stepper prices and the Ender is a great machine to cut your teeth on. Much better to start out here then to spend a bunch of money only to find out 3D printing isn’t for you.