Garden Railway Forum

In the market for a new printer or considering buying one?
Creality has just released a new budget model,
https://store.creality.com/products/end ... 3d-printer
At $370 Aud I think it good value all I have to do is sell my Ender3 V2 and get it past the household board of control.

Disclaimer have no connection to Creality just saw this on the net when looking for fixes for my ender3 V2.

It certainly looks sleek, and the auto bed leveling and filament loading/unloading might be nice. Curious to see what kind of speed increase it is over the Ender3 V2. I've only had my V2 a year and only put a few hundred hours on it, so I'm not ready to trade it in just yet... it's barely broken in!

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2023 4:30 am It certainly looks sleek, and the auto bed leveling and filament loading/unloading might be nice. Curious to see what kind of speed increase it is over the Ender3 V2. I've only had my V2 a year and only put a few hundred hours on it, so I'm not ready to trade it in just yet... it's barely broken in!

Same here only less hours that's why I really can't justify it
The filament loading/unloading might be nice I already have a BL Touch fitted
The Sprite extruder might be an upgrade for the future.
https://www.crealityexperts.com/crealit ... tall-guide

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 18, 2023 4:30 am It certainly looks sleek, and the auto bed leveling and filament loading/unloading might be nice. Curious to see what kind of speed increase it is over the Ender3 V2. I've only had my V2 a year and only put a few hundred hours on it, so I'm not ready to trade it in just yet... it's barely broken in!

My Ender 3 V3 arrived and I have done a test print with it the auto bed level, filament loading/unloading make life so much easier when compared to the V2 (no messing around threading filament through a tube)

As for the speed they are chalk and cheese; the V3 moves much faster and printed the Creality cat in about half the time of the V2.
This is a comparison between V3SE and V2 I'm not sure about the max speed claimed but the print speed was noticeably faster on the V3.
https://worldoflilliputs.com/ender-3-v3 ... -3-v2-neo/

Ive decided to keep my V2 and do some upgrades as I can afford them, the dual Z axis, and and Sprite direct extruder,
I have already printed the Filament Guide Snap In and it works well by keeping the filament away from the Z drive screw.

The next thing I am going to do is play with octoprint for the V2 but I have noticed that I could control both printers from the one Raspberry pi I have so that may happen.
Lot of learning to do on the octoprint front ahead.

I've got Octoprint set up on my V2 (though running on my Windows PC, not a Pi). The file upload, video feed, and "cancel" button have really made my life easier and enabled longer prints with better supervision. I haven't messed around with the plugins yet but I've heard of one that attempts to detect failed print spaghetti on the video feed, could be useful!

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 11:22 pm I've got Octoprint set up on my V2 (though running on my Windows PC, not a Pi). The file upload, video feed, and "cancel" button have really made my life easier and enabled longer prints with better supervision. I haven't messed around with the plugins yet but I've heard of one that attempts to detect failed print spaghetti on the video feed, could be useful!

How did you get octoprint to run on your Windows PC, I have just heard about that and it would save me a lot of mucking around with a pi which I can task for another job.
The plug in sounds promising I haven't gone to the camera option yet.

I believe I followed this guide: OctoPrint Community - Setting Up OctoPrint on Windows

I seem to remember the install going smoothly but it did take some extra time and effort to get Python, Build Tools for VS, and Yawcam set up as well. Never tried it on Pi so I can't compare, but this way had its own share of mucking about. It's since notified me that there's an update but I can't get it to install from within the web interface, so one of these days I'll need to take some time and try to figure that out.

The plugin I was thinking of seems to have been The Spaghetti Detective. It seems they now sell it as part of an all-encompassing OctoPrint enhancement suite. A quick search showed a plethora of other plugins doing the same thing, but I haven't looked into any of them yet.

Filament unloading is a great idea, but there are different versions of it, some pause the print and some unload and lower the Z axis. In most cases you will not get a perfect print after a filament change, I have actually given up on this part way through a print as it either burns a hole where it pauses or when the Z axis retracts and goes back, it is always at a marginally different height and you can see and feel it in the print.

Also if you are using Octoprint, just forget about filament changes as it really doesn't support it on a Creality printer as it doesn't understand the M code required to do this. I have tried many work arounds and none are any good thus far.