3D recommendation for newbie

[Sinksalot]

Okay, you 3D guys got a hook in my mouth. What would be a printer for the new kid on the block? Reliable and a proven starter printer but big enough where I could make parts for a 1:72 scale boat. I was looking at the Comgrow Creality sender 3 Pro.

There are many good 3D printer out there. As other people have said, the Ender 3 is a good printer. If buying a Ender 3, buy the newest one, the Ender-3 V2 3D Printer. As for the Ender 5 pro, its a good printer too, but cost more then the Ender 3 V2. three of my friend own Ender 3s. They all love them and like that they are cheap to fix or updated. My current printer is a Tronxy X5SA Pro. Its a large size printer, with prints as high as 400mm. I do use it to print parts and Sub hulls, first out of PLA filament then later out of stronger ABS and ASA filament.

Now for your other option, a 3D Resin printer. Resin printers print at a higher detail then a reg 3D printer can. There good for printing deck and AA Guns, conning towers, railing, dive planes, rudders and other small parts in very good detail. You just need to use a good tough resin. I just bought a 3d Resin printer, an Elegoo Saturn. I wont get it till Sept as its a brand new design. As this is a mid size resin printer I should be able to print hulls out of resin too.

This is a current print I did with my Tronxy printer of a submarine hull i am working on for the last 8 months. Lots of redesign and more redesign.. I had downloaded a model of the sub I wanted from thingiverse, it was a ok model. But after printing it I just didn't like it. So using Fusion 360 and Netfabb programs I made my own, which was a pain in the ass for someone who had no idea what they were doing. But its getting there, as you see from the one picture the sections can be bolted, glued, or both glued and bolted together. smoothing out the hull in the program was hard. The print you see came right off the printer, no sanding at all yet. If there is a will, there is a way. So is a 3D printer worth it, Yes.

[Subculture]

I got my Ender 2 from Gearbest, and although it took an ice age to ship, it all turned up okay. Creality aren't the best on quality control, I believe they've raised their game a bit since the earlier days, however my machine did require a few upgrades which I didn't originally expect.

The supplied PSU was of poor quality and put a lot of electrical noise onto the mains creating a ticking noise on my workshop intercom. I replaced it with a good secondhand xbox 360 psu. After a couple of months of use, my main board went south, I replaced it a MKS Gen L and TMC2208 drivers for XYZ. I think I was just very unlucky here as many Ender owners run their original boards without issue, but it's not uncommon for boards to fail. The MKS Gen L has been rock solid and the TMC2208 drivers are nice and quiet.

Apart from that it's just been general tweaks, made a new bracket to better align the z-axis, improvements to the extruder nozzle, self printed parts like belt tensioners, part cooling duct, added bed levelling sensor. I replaced a couple of the allen bolts as they seemed to be some strange size that fell in between metric and imperial- poor quality. The rest of the hardware is pretty good.

Many of these enhancements have been dealt with in later editions.

[Das Boot]

Ed,
No, no subs. Just parts and stuff like you do. Little things. One thing I’d like is a drive shaft support for the Skipjack. Maybe later some scopes and such.
Casey

[ffr2608]

Buy from the official Creality site if possible. Some clones out there on the Ender 3. With the new 5, You should be fine.

DH

[QuarterMaster]

Casey,

There are as many answers as there are people on this forum.

Ask yourself what your end use will really be! I WILL NOT print hull's, kudos to those that do. It's just I prefer 'glass hulls, NOT a rule for humanity. ($10 says someone comments on this as a bad statement, $20 someone comments on it period)

I DO print components. Both prototype and working.

Ray Mason and I purchased the Monoprice Voxel, a re-branded Flash Forge Adventure III. We are beginners.

I regularly print in both PLA (for rapid prototyping or mold masters) or ABS (for working, practical use "one-off" items)

Does a great job with both. Bob M. actually was impressed when he saw the resolution.

Absolutely Loving the Monoprice Voxel 3D Printer


The possibilities are ENDLESS. ALL parts were designed online with TinkerCAD, easy enough for a 5 year old or me (And I have SolidWorks!!)


U25 ABS Motor mounts (working)) with PLA Shaft Alignment JIG



USS SHARK SSN-591 Rudder mold master: ABS
STL File available at the SubCommittee Forum "Vault"






USS SHARK SSN-591 Tail Zincs, (working): ABS
STL File available at the SubCommittee Forum "Vault"


U-91035 "PROTEUS" Motor Mount (Working): ABS


S3 2500 Watertight Box Rail Mount mold Masters: ABS


MK148 1/48 Scale Mk48 ADCAP Tailcones prototypes (working): ABS



Blocks, Valve Mount, Servo Horns, "PROTEUS" nozzles, working: ABS after "Acetone Bath" treatment.


Have at it dude!!

[Subculture]

If you're looking to print submarine hulls, worth looking at the delta/kossel type printers, as they're considerably quicker than Cartesian style printers for this type of print.

[RanSan]

Short answer Enders have good reviews and lots of information on line about them from upgrades to troubleshooting. Many knock off cheap Chinese printer are modeled after the Ender.
Long answer
I have two printers which cost under $300 Canadian so like $50 US, kidding not that bad yet, a Tronxy XY2 and unidentified Chinese acrylic thing (may frankenprinter, I love it). I can do prints that I would put up against any Ender.
Something to know, although slicer programs (Cura is my preference) come with preset for many many different printers you should fine tune it to your printer.
You can print the same file on two different settings and get two very different prints.
Also not all filaments are equal. You can do a 7 hour print only to be disappointed with the result because the filament was crap. I like Spool3D and so far AMZ3D is ok. ERYONE didn't work on my printer.
Two good resources for understanding 3D printers are Thomas Sanladerer and Makers Muse on youtube.
Hope that helps

Randy

[Das Boot]

Looking at the Ender 5 Pro now.

[type7]

Make sure you get the latest version of printer. The Chinese have a habit of selling under-developed product. They wait for the hobbiest to modify them to work right and then sell an upgraded version with the fixes. There is a long string of upgrades for the ender.

[Subculture]

Unless you want to start cranking out very large prints, it's all you need.

I have an Ender 2, which is no longer available, but is a bit smaller than the Ender 3 and it does everything I want. I have made a lot of tweaks here and there to improve the reliability and quality of the prints. the Ender 3 has many of these tweaks built in, as it's a later design. You may need to replace the cooling fans at some point, mine went very noisy after a short period of time, and oiling only provided temporary relief. I used some surplus computer fans I had in my junk stash, and they've been perfect. A bit of threadlock on strategic nuts and bolts helps keep the machine solid.

In terms of quality the prints look as good as machines costing multiples, so they're good value. Clearly FDM can't rival resin printers for fine detail, but you can get good detail adequate for most parts.

[Das Boot]

Amazing. That’s the one I was looking at.

[Subculture]

Creality Ender 3.

[Das Boot]

Okay, you 3D guys got a hook in my mouth. What would be a printer for the new kid on the block? Reliable and a proven starter printer but big enough where I could make parts for a 1:72 scale boat. I was looking at the Comgrow Creality sender 3 Pro.