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So which budget printer to buy?
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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I've always wondered where this comes from, the thought that a person would spend a huge amount to upgrade an Ender? I spent maybe $100 upgrading mine until I screwed up and fried my motherboard, but even adding the extra $60 for a decent upgrade I've still spent less than the original cost of the printer, and way WAY less than the cost of a Prusa. At this point the main upgrades include a direct drive and dual-Z to handle some NinjaFlex. I've always considered ABL a waste of money, and every other upgrade was just things I printed myself. You certainly can't beat the reliability, I mean my printer has been sitting idle for nearly a year and I just fired it up a couple weeks ago to print some new items -- no leveling or anything else, I just loaded up a spool of PLA and off it went. So what exactly are people spending these exorbitant amounts of money on for upgrades?
Partly, time is money but partly IDK, I've spent at least $200 upgrading mine with scaffold reinforcements, BL touch, a better hot end, and a few other QOL things and I've spent more on the CR10 than I did on the MK3S+ but it still doesn't work as well as the Prusa. Granted, the print volume is bigger but I hardly ever print anything big enough to take advantage of it.
Agreed that time is money, and I've spent a fair amount of time on mine. I think the worst time-sink was after converting to direct drive and basically having to start from scratch on all my slicer settings, and then working out cable management to reclaim my Z height. At one point I was playing with faster speeds (thus the dual-Z upgrade) but eventually I want to switch to a 0.2mm nozzle and try to dial in miniatures (HO scale trains). I would be better off switching to a resin printer for that but I don't have an option for good ventilation so that's not really a consideration right now.
The issue is Crealty makes price point products. Maybe you get a good one or an OK one, a kind of bad one, or a dumpster fire. And there is no way to know what you are going to get, to get the results any one user is expecting - even if you consult Tarot Cards......And add in the total lack of support it can be more than a little bit of a gamble to buy.
My personal opinion is, if money is that tight that's the best you can afford, then you can't really afford cheap - let alone the ongoing costs of 3D printing, (upgrades, repairs, and filament ain't free). And since it's very often new users looking to get into the hobby, (which is great), they have no idea just what the learning curve is like when things go wrong. And how fussy it can be to make those failures go away. That shiny new cheap printer that provided that quick dopamine hit when you first unboxed it, can quickly become a point of never ending frustration and a bit of a money sink for a new user.
Overall, buy what you like. I'm certainly not paying for it. But not a lot of people have ever regretted the "Buy once, cry one" approach.
Hmm I know there used to be the issue with the aluminum beds being warped -- mine is like that but was resolved with some layers of aluminum foil under the glass to flatten it out. And I do hear occasionally of someone getting a unit with an incorrectly cut rail length, but they've always just called Creality and gotten a replacement without any hassle. I haven't heard of anyone having trouble with their customer service though, so I'm not sure what changed there, but that's unfortunate that you had trouble with them.
I do agree about the hit-or-miss quality though. My own experience was the first glass bed I got from them was absolutely fantastic, nothing else beats the adhesion I had there. Then after a few years when the coating wore out I ordered a new one from them... and nothing will stick to that bed without using hairspray/glue/etc, so what's the point? I finally settled on a slab of G10 with a PEI sticker which has worked well, but just the fact that the two glass beds which should have been identical says a lot about their quality control. I would say anyone getting an order from them should not expect a working machine right out of the box, however replacement parts have been easy to obtain for most people. And since you have to assemble these yourself, you definitely need to pay close attention to the online videos (I used the one from Tomb of 3D Horrors) to make sure everything is properly squared up, otherwise you'll have nothing but trouble if you just slap them together.