About My Print Setup

Hi, I'm Kathryn, a computer engineering student who is having fun with a 3D printer! Why did I decide to get into 3D printing? As cliche as it may sound, TikTok made me buy it.

It was the summer of 2021 and I was scrolling through my FYP when suddenly: HIM.

I saw that someone had printed out this absolutely magnificent articulated slug in a purple/pink temperature-sensitive filament. I have been trying to print this ever since, but that will be another post. 😒 

    I work in a university library computer lab that offers 3D printing services to students, but we only print in one material and we do not allow guests to bring their own filament. At this point, I was not totally convinced, but then I learned that it was possible to 3D print in flexible filaments (TPU) and I was SOLD. 

I am a fan of Naomi Wu (She's always doing cool things check her out!) and had been watching her release of a conveyor belt 3D printer made by Creality. While the price of the conveyor belt printer makes it out of my reach, for now, I settled on a different Creality printer that has been touted as a great printer for beginners.

The Creality Ender3 Pro. 

    I think the low initial cost and large helpful community make the Ender3 Pro (or any other flavor of the Creality Ender series) a great starter printer. It is all self-assembly which I feel is a strength. By assembling the printer by myself I know this machine from the inside out. I know what all the parts are called, I know parts that I couldn't get to calibrate perfectly and realize that those are areas of possible error when my prints start to get wonky. Because 3D printing is almost equal parts hardware error and software error, it is important to know your printer mechanically to diagnose if the issue lies with the printer itself or with a slicer setting. 

Upgrades to my printer so far. 

    Another big benefit to the Ender3 line is their upgrade-ability.

1. Motherboard. The stock motherboard that comes with the Ender3 Pro does not have a boot loader, meaning that to upgrade the firmware (something very important, as it adds thermal runaway protection) you have to download an image onto an Arduino and connect it to the motherboard and dual boot. While I have experience with Arduinos this honestly seemed like more effort than it was worth, so I spent the cash and upgraded to the silent motherboard which I can update more easily. Bonus: as the name suggests, it also made the printer substantially quieter.  

2. Extruder System + Hot End

The stock extruder system that comes with the Ender3 Pro is called Bowden Tube, meaning that the filament is pushed from a tube into the hot end. While there's nothing inherently wrong with the Bowden Tube system, depending on the length of the tube, there is room for error between the pushing mechanism and the hot end. Remember earlier how I said I wanted to print flexible filament? While printing in TPU (and other flexy filaments) is possible with a Bowden Tube setup, it tends to fare a bit better with a direct drive extruder. A direct drive extruder simply brings the filament moving system and hot end directly next to each other, reducing that room for error that the Bowden tube has by eliminating the length of tube distance. So, I purchased a Micro-Swiss aluminum direct drive extruder system and hot end. This was by far the more difficult upgrade to install and hone in. I was very close to uninstalling the system and returning to the stock extruder because I could not get things to print correctly for at least a month. I stuck with it and found the light at the end of the tunnel, now I can print TPU to varying degrees of success.

3. Raspberry Pi  

My printer is hooked up to the internet via Raspberry Pi 4 and OctoPi. By far this has been the most rewarding and useful printer upgrade. I highly recommend people do this upgrade, it's really not as hard as it seems, and there are tons of mods that allow you to monitor your prints as well as get insights into what your printer is doing. I especially like that I can show my friends what I am printing currently via OctoEverywhere. (Screenshot of OctoEverywhere live feed)

Future Upgrades

As you can see from the screenshot above, my print bed is pretty scratched. This is largely from my difficulties in setting up the direct drive extruder system that I talked about earlier. So, I will be getting a new print bed very soon. I am not quite sold on the glass ones, so I will likely just go for another magnetic print bed. 

Additionally, I have a BL Touch bed leveling system. However, with all the issues that I ran into while upgrading to the direct drive, I had to uninstall the BL Touch to help troubleshoot issues. I will likely install it again soon, I think the addition of the Raspberry Pi will make the BL touch easier to use.