Creality Ender-3 V3 SE : Great Price - Solid Printer?

[Artur5]

I will say this: I've never had many issues with bed-leveling. In fact, I can level once super fast (paper method) and then not have to touch any leveling for dozens and dozens of prints. Maybe I'm lucky and/or not as meticulous about the first layer?

Bed leveling depends a lot on the type of bed. I expect that it’s far easier to manufacture a perfectly flat glass sheet than one made of glass fiber or a thick aluminum plate. Glass fiber beds, as used Prusas, and static aluminum beds, used by many core XY machines, always need to perform a mesh bed leveling before printing, in order to store in the memory of the printer a relief map of the bed, which is never perfectly flat to the micron. In spite of that, the machine has a hard time making a perfect map if the bed has small bumps and hollows. That’s often the case with beds made of glass fiber sheets, Same for aluminum beds, specially the cheap ones from Ali-Express. Good luck finding one with +-0.1mm tolerances.

Anyway, manually leveling the bed with a sheet of paper may be good enough for your practical purposes, but not really a very accurate system when compared to inductive probes or micro switches. If you only print PLA on a cold bed , then the paper system is fine. If you printed different filaments with a hot bed at different temperatures that’s another story.
Also, imagine you want to print with glow-in-the-dark PLA ( very abrassive stuff ). A brass nozzle would wear noticeably after a few hours and you’d need to redo the bed leveling every other day (or use a hardened steel nozzle).

 

[The Hat]

Bed leveling depends a lot on the type of bed.

My fall back and go to levelling system has always been a piece of 100 gm paper, despite all the different ways that 3D printer companies have come up with, I find it faultless, the first 5 minutes of a print is the most crucial, and if your fingernail can’t move it then it’s going nowhere.. Works for me.. My bed is heated to 50c and the nozzle is 213c, for PLA..

 

[Nifty]

I'm so confused.
I don't know why Creality needs like 20 versions of the Ender 3?!?!?

So, I guess the upcoming "Ender 3 V3" is different from the "Ender 3 V3 SE"?

I think they need to:

1) Simplify their offerings
and/or
2) Improve their naming convention

 

[Redbrickman]

Bambu are bringing out at least one new printer this month. It appears to have a smaller bed size than the current models if the rumours are true. I wonder are they going to target the bed slinger market or make a mini version of their surrent models with a multicolour toolhead?

 

[Nifty]

Well guys, while I figure out if I want to eventually try a core-XY printer, I pulled the trigger on getting the new Ender-3 V3 SE!

It was just too tempting at $195 not to give it a try... especially since I've always wanted to try auto-bed-leveling and direct-drive extruder.

... but now that I think about it, maybe I should have just paid $25 more from Amazon to get it sooner and have free / easy returns:
https://amzn.to/3sFWFgL


View attachment 15532

New printer comes today!!!

Bambu are bringing out at least one new printer this month. It appears to have a smaller bed size than the current models if the rumours are true. I wonder are they going to target the bed slinger market or make a mini version of their surrent models with a multicolour toolhead?

Yup, lots of interesting speculation about it!

 

[Nifty]

Ok it's here!!!

Assembly was super fast / easier. More than any of the other Creality printers I've had!

Bed leveling was insanely easy:

... and I appreciate I can choose not to do it for future prints unless I want to re-calibrate / level.

I was very surprised and bummed that there wasn't a "speed benchy" on the SD card, so I did some digging and was VERY pleased that this guy did a 30 min benchy and in the comments linked to the file!!!

Here's my result:

Mostly really clean, especially for such a quick print!!!

(there was an artifact that looks like a little bit of a layer-shift, but I think that's when the free filament that came with the printer... no spool, just a winding, got hung up).

Two issues so far:

1. Since it's so new, Cura doesn't have a profile for it (I'm just using the V2) and there's not a ton of community discussion / information on best-practices, tweaks, etc.
2. There is a clicking in the extruder that I think others have mentioned Hopefully there will be a fix for this in the future.

For the most part I'm pretty happy so far.

 

[Nifty]

I think I got it for even less than $200. And I'm very pleased with this purchase. I don’t even know what could be better in this price category.

It's a great printer at that price!

I saw the Ender 3 V3 KE on sale for $250 the other day and was tempted... but then I asked myself: "Why? You're happy with the SE, and haven't needed it to do anything it hasn't be able to do."

 

[Nifty]

Dropping-into this thread to say that I'm still quite pleased with this little printer. Unlike all my other printers, I haven't made a single adjustment to it. Everything just works fine for me... even the bed I'm happy with.

I will say that I'm REALLY liking the direct-drive!

I never realized how annoying a bowden tube was to deal with. On the Ender3 V3 SE I can just SUPER easily feed filament in and pull it out.

The fact you can get one for only $169 is pretty crazy and awesome for anyone that wants to give 3D printing a try.

 

[The Hat]

I’m on the opposite side on this, I went for the direct drive system to test out if it was easily or better to print with, but found it a disaster..

For constant use of just one colour filament its ok, but when changing to other colours it was a curse, it mis-feed or jammed up more times than I could remember, give me the Bowden tubing system every time, it’s much more manageable, at least you can see what it’s doing..

My direct drive printer is down right now awaiting a complete re-build (refit), for me it’s been so unreliable to manage, maybe I should have got an Ender3 printer.. (Better build)

P.S. I’m in the process of converting over to use Bowden tubing, I’ll take my time over the winter to do it

 

[The Hat]

I will say that I'm REALLY liking the direct-drive!

I was just looking over at an Ender-3 V3 KE and I reckoned I might have mis-judged the direct drive system some what, because they have clearly moved on quite a bit from what I bought some time ago..click to enlarge..