I am looking to get a 3D printer in the near future, and wish to get an Ender 3 Pro due to it’s open source nature and enough mods on the market to basically match it throw for throw with a Prusa i3 MK3S (both of these printer I have experience with, as they are the printers my team uses). I understand with the Ender specifically there are some mods that are worth doing out of box, such as stronger bed springs and relocation of the filament holder, maybe a BL-touch for auto bed leveling. Other than that, I want to see what other people are doing to their printers, Ender or not.
I don’t have a picture, but one of our mentors made a little drawer that sits underneath the bed and holds all the tools that come with the printer. He also made a filament guide and some drag chain for the wires (which, I’m pretty sure, is really common for 3D printer owners to do).
I hear concrete slabs are pretty good for absorbing a lot of the vibration from your printer. I personally don’t have one, but a few of my friends do.
I love my Ender 3 Pro. I just run it stock because it does a really good job and I don’t want to mess it up. I have another Anet A8 that I do all my mods to. I recommend you start watching CHEP videos. He knows everything about Enders and is a great resource. CHEP Youtube
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A mod that’s highly recommended for my Wanhao Duplicator i3, and I’d imagine the Ender 3 as well, is an all metal hotend. The biggest reason for this upgrade is the temperature range it unlocks. With an all metal hotend, you should be able to print ABS, PETG, and some low-mid temp nylons, whereas a PTFE tube limits you to ~235 and pretty much just PLA.
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I’ll show off my latest project.
So before I start with how I have “modded” my printer, I should probably to over what I started with. I build a Prusa i3 in 2014, back before they were sold as kits. It was a culmination of lots of different mods / variants on Prusa’s i3 design. It was really cool back when I made it. Best picture I have of the original is here. I had made a number of small mods up to this point, but overall it shows the idea. E3D V5 hotend (with the thermistor held on with tape as it was done). Big 3D printed gears on the extruder. Little threaded rods on the Z axis. Original Ramps 1.4 on an Arduino mega running a pretty early version of marlin
I finally decided recently that I wanted to try to bring it up to the times.
-I replaced the ramps board with a Duet 2 wifi board.
-Replaced all the printed parts with the modern mk2.5s parts from the latest Prusa design.
-Got all my belts/Pulleys updated to gt2.
-Replaced by threaded rod with PTFE coated ACME rods that are build in to the motor shaft.
-I build it all into an IKEA lack table (electronics are underneath).
-I also am running the new E3D Hemera Extruder.
-Got the printer running at 24V rather than 12V
-I have 2 beds I can change out with a connector that allow me to change between a PEI print surface and a garrolite one depending on what materials I want to print.
I am very happy with the results. Print quality is now really good. My future plans include building the Prusa Ikea Lack Enclosure and experimenting with an IDEX system by using the back of the frame. I have also found that the Pinda Probe cannot sense the aluminum bed under the thick PEI sheet. Thinking about just going with the BL touch, or perhaps a different induction probe.
So useful upgrades.
The Duet 2 is really cool. The trinamic drivers make the printer extremely quiet and the interface is really good. For people, like me, that want to experiment with lots of firmware settings and do really cool things with their printer, it’s fantastic. That said, they are about as expensive as the entire Ender 3.
The E3D Hemera has also been really nice. Its very small (at least compared to my giant Wades extruder from 6 years ago). It has a very short path between the cold and hot end as well as 2 drive gears. This gives really good control of the filament, and prints flexible materials like a champ. I think this would be a great mod for a Ender 3 for maximum extrusion control. Would be much more control than the bowden setup it comes with.
The BL touch or Induction probe (with a bed mod) would be really convenient for auto bed leveling.
The Ikea Lack Table can probably work for an Ender. That offers some nice advantages though. To realize that it does require a LOT of filament to complete. My estimates are 2 spools per enclosure.
A hardened steel nozzle is a great upgrade if you want to run filament with Carbon Fiber. I have had good luck with NylonX from matter hackers if you want strong parts. I really like CF PLA too. Carbon fiber PLA doesn’t offer a huge strength advantage over normal PLA, but looks REALLY nice when printed and has even more resistance to warping.
The Print Dry Filament system is also really nice if you want to run Nylon. It even helps a lot with PETG. They have a new design that is expected to be released in a few months that I think will be nice, if you were looking at this upgrade/accessory.
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I have a Monoprice Maker Select that I’ve outfitted with a glass bed, a thicker Y axis plate, a mosfet thing for the bed that makes the control board less likely to catch on fire, and most recently an all metal hotend, allowing me to print PETG parts for my team.
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I just got my Ender 5 plus.
Currently the only mod I have printed so far is a covering for my BLTouch (I have no idea if the Ender 3 has one). Reasoning for this is that I had a print that failed and bent the pin. It comes with a spare, but they are like $4 a piece after that so I didn’t want to have to buy more.
In queue I have a strain relief for the cables going to my bed.
Nothing Fancy at the moment although I hope to add a second extruder head sometime in the near future.
Working with an Ender 5 pro.
So far:
- Cable Strain Relief
- Glass bed
- Cork insulation sheet
- Relocated Extruder Arm
- Top spool mount
- Relocated Screen
- Y axis covers & silent home
- X axis covers (not shown)
- Cable hiding
- Spool holder with 608zz bearings
- Bed supports
- Prusaslicer profile (currently using for PLA)
Still in progress:
- Inductive Proximity Switch 12mm ABL
- Octoprint on Raspi3b+
- Hot end/nozzle upgrades
- Direct Drive (Microswiss) or getting to printing eng materials
edit: We were granted it with PPE work. Overall, that has slowed but last print was proof that we could resume, if needed in our community. Pretty happy with the result.
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I run my Prusa stock, but I know @juchong has some mods done on his.
I just handed off my Ender 3 Pro to my other half’s little brother who has been making it do some work.
I won’t show the mods. I’ll tell you what I’m done with. I’m done with MK 8 and 10 hot ends. Same with E3d V6 and volcano. Forget that thing on Creality printers. We put a Slice Engineering Mosquito on the team printer and love it. No more v-wheels. MGN12 linear slides for us. I’m done with leaving the filament lay around soaking up moisture. Dry Dry Dry for us from now on. Even dry it while printing. I’m done with Marlin 1.9x. Marlin 2.0 from now on. 8 bit boards have done us well but, it’s 32 bit from now on. (with TMC2209 or others serial) Done with inductive and capacitive bed probes. Bl touch from now on. (I admit I bought a clone) And the big one, I’m done with Cartesian open printers. Going forward and we will probably buy and modify a new printer this year, It’s an enclosed printer with a heated chamber. I’m done kudging up a heat box on our cartesian printer. We’re looking at a core XY with mods to enclose it and passively heat at first and then actively heat it. I do not think we will do another design build printer. Covid has cut our meeting times for project like this. Right now I’m looking at a TwoTrees Sapphire pro or plus. We are looking at it as a base to build into the enclosed heated chamber core xy that we want. We do not have the 4000$ plus to go buy the printer we want so we will modify what we can afford .
I built two Bear Prusas during the first COVID wave. Not exactly a mod, but boy, did these printers turn out great! I’d say I ended up shaving about $200 off of each “Prusa.” Since I already had a bunch of spare parts from an Anet A8 I bought several years ago, I was able to re-use a bunch of hardware on my first Bear Prusa for added “savings.”
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I have an ender 3 with a handful of upgrades. One was to upgrade the bowden tube to Capricorn brand tubing (higher tolerances, less friction) which solved almost all of my clogging issues.
Also i added these belt tensioners i found on thingiverse, being able to dial in my belt tension accurately increased the print quality dramatically!
Lastly id say whatever printer you get id recommend replacing any flexible bed with a glass one (just have a piece cut at Lowes, it’ll cost 2 bucks). I have the best bed adhesion with well cleaned glass and good bed leveling, also once the glass cools the print pops off very easily!
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