Are modified 3D printers better? Stock vs upgraded Ender 3 comparison

should you modify your 3d printer today we've got a detailed comparison to answer just that [Music] [Music] this here is an end of three it's a budget thready printer which is definitely the current king for beginner 3d printing although not perfect its performance out of the box is simply outstanding for the price this one here safe from a firmware upgrade is completely stock it doesn't even have the printed fan cover to stop debris from falling into the electronics this is also an end of three except I've had it for a lot longer and it's been heavily upgraded the subject of which you've seen in many of my videos the question is which one is better stock or modified and it's a debate that rages all the time and community groups so we're going to attempt to tackle the question today we'll start by looking at the specs of each printer and then going into some print quality tests we're going to start with base specifications and then modifications the end of three is an FTM 3d printer for the two 35 by two 35 by 250 millimeter build volume it's very popular for two reasons the print quality versus the price as well as a huge range of aftermarket support and upgrades on my printer I've switched from the V rollers to linear rails and guides the entire extrusion system has been changed out with the modular direct drive kit easier strata and all-metal hotend I've replaced the two cooling fans with Soylent not to us and the park cooling has a bigger blower with a custom here I'm a fan duct my bed has a magnetic flexible spring steel sheet and I have various surfaces I interchange between them and it uses a bale touch for automatic bed leveling I've replaced the 8 bit mainboard with a plug-and-play 32 bit SKR mini III that comes with silent stepper motor drivers and I've also changed the screen to one that can switch between touch screen or the traditional LCD all of my electronics including a Raspberry Pi a housed in a customary case at the back of the machine and finally the firmware on these printers is very similar apart from the changes needed for these mods and the addition of linear advance so with our specification out of the way let's do some back-to-back print tests I tried to keep everything as comparable as possible which means I used the exact same type of PLA the same slicer profile - the changes required for direct drive 0.2 millimeter layer height 60 millimeters per second base speed and each print was started at the same time printing side by side in the exact same ambient conditions and to kick things off we're styling with a 3d Vinci overall these are quite two reasonable benches with only one major difference and that's a zebra stripes on the standard bench II that come from the a4 9 8 8 stepper motor drivers apart from that they're not perfect but neither of them show any glaring issues next up a tolerance test and I've been printing this one for a few printers that I'm reviewing at the moment the gaps between the parts aren't actually that small the difficulty comes more from the fact that they're all overhangs this one was done on another printer we can see what the part cooling is not up to scratch there's artifacts and that actually fuses the parts together when I try to separate the two halves I actually had a breakage both of my into threes outperformed this other printer significantly as you can see the two halves of the pyramids are trying to twist apart simply from me holding them and when I do actually twist them apart we can see that the underside of the overhangs has no wispy bits that would fuse them together only sums it's from where the new layers start this is the same for the model printed on the modified n23 this is a nice model to print because it's a good test for your printer as well as a handy puzzle to play with afterwards next up a very detailed model this one is a serpent wrapped around a castle I can't really split the difference here I'd say that both of these are excellent prints with a lot of detail and no blemishes both these printers are capable of really attractive prints next up something printed in Foz mode and I always include these in my review because I finally show up any extrusion issues this model has a bonus of being mesmerizing when you turn it both of them printed extremely well and I can't see any defects anywhere my final test print was a torture test with some print in place chainmail normally this would be really hard on a standard ender 3 because of the Bowden tube and all the mini retractions but I guess I've got the profile dialed in pretty well from the direct drive modified into 3 I've never actually tried to tune the retraction and a print like this comes out very well with little to no effort so the print quality test results are in and it's game over right there's a little to no improvement between the prints from the two machines well it's not quite as simple as that let me tell you why in three points firstly these are pretty conservative prints that we're doing here if we're going to up the speeds or maybe even up the acceleration the mods added to this one would start to pay off secondly most of these prints are quite small and I had to keep it that way because of the warped bed on this standard end of 3 if I did anything much wider it's gonna give me a lot of troubles on the first layer unless I decided to add erupt thirdly and most importantly most of the mods that I do on 3d printers aren't necessarily to improve print quality to answer our original question on which one is best there's a whole lot more that we have to factor in let's start by talking about versatility what the two printers are capable of I fitted an all-metal hot end but standard there's PTFE tube going right up against the nozzle as we can see in this diagram from Capricorn tubes PLA is going to be fine with this but as we start to up the temperatures we start to get dangerous off gassing and degrading of the PTFE tube so on the standard model PE TG and abs can be done occasionally but on my modified printer I can do it as much as I like another advantage my printer will have is in printing flexible filaments the easiest route I fitted is designed specifically for this the standard end a3 is actually quite capable of printing flexible filament but if we want to print a really soft filament at a reasonable speed the easiest route is going to win out particularly when mounted in direct drive configuration as I have on my end of 3 another area the modified printer winds out is on the choice of surface finish on the underside of my parts I can choose between textured and glossy and all I need to do is loft one spring still sheet and then put the other one in its place the magnets hold it in place and the BL touch ensures no calibration is needed in seconds I can have textured or glassy on the underside of my prints next up we're going to compare reliability and maintenance required the V rollers on the end of three require adjustment to remove excessive play and some users have commented that they need to do this quite regularly to keep their printer working properly however the linear rails fit into my end of three require no adjustment so that's one less item of maintenance for the future another failure point are the couplings used on the end of the PTFE tube in fact early into three batches had a big problem with this where the little teeth would break off inside the coupler as they fail the Bowden tube will start to slide it back and forth during retractions if the couple on the hot end starts to fail you're gonna have a little gap which is gonna fill up with filament and you're going to have clogs all of the time the all-metal hot end I have fitted looks exactly the same but there's one important difference the tube only inserts to the very top and nowhere near the melt zone which drastically reduces the chances of clogs especially when you consider mine is mounted in direct drive as the required tube is very short and in a straight line one of the most common problems for 3d printer users is the bed not being level and inadvertedly making spaghetti while correctly leveling the bed is an essential skill for anyone who owns it's ready printer it doesn't mean I want to have to do it regularly particularly after a sudden and violent release of apart from the print bed might knock things out of whack and that's why I am such a fan of Auto bed leveling in this case the BL touch it doesn't matter whether my bed is crooked or warped it's gonna probe it before every print and assuming I've done a one time calibration of the Z offset I know I can start a print walk away without even looking and the first layer is going to be perfect so for me ABL is a huge increase in print reliability refinement is an area where this printer is vastly improved over stock firstly the touchscreen and I know not everybody likes them but the interface appears far more polished to average person than the LCD and encoder knob that were used to it's hard to imagine 3d printing appealing to the masses when this is the way they have to control it personally I do prefer the touchscreen but with this T of T 35 from b3 tech I can swap back and forth between it and the traditional display whenever I like by far the biggest improvement in refinement comes from a reduction in noise and this is from the TMC stepper motor drivers but also the quieter Noctua fans just check out this back to back comparison [Music] this means you can have the printer in the room and still have a conversation with someone or concentrate on your work it makes a huge huge difference with these mods my ender 3 is even quieter than my pressure mark 3 which has a reputation for being relatively quiet my final comparison is in how user-friendly each printer is this is another area where the modified printer really outshines the standard one I've already spoken about how the touchscreen makes it really easy to do manual position changes it's also more efficient in preheating the nozzle and changing things like fan speed on top of this it has a convenience of a choice of using a USB flash drive instead of an SD card I've also already spoken about how I no longer need to manually level the bed thanks to the auto bed leveling added by the Bale touch but by far the biggest improvement in user friendliness comes when the print is over both the wham-bam and ever flex sheets work beautifully you can flex the parts off when they're warm and they also both self release as soon as the part cools down let's compare that to standard where the bed sticks well during the print but doesn't unstick that easily afterwards this pyramid was more or less a best-case scenario when we considered the chain maille however you can imagine it's a much more difficult task it took me a solid 5 minutes to remove everything and even being as careful as I could you can still see a lot of the edges have been marked from where I've tried to get the scraper blade underneath not very user-friendly and definitely a good chance of injuring yourself if you have your hand in the wrong place at the wrong time if we only compare back-to-back print quality results you could easily argue that the modified printer is not really worth the time money or effort but in my opinion when you factor in the overall user experience I'm very glad with the direction I've taken my printer and how much it's improved overall this end of 3 has been modded to suit my needs and my wants and that's going to be different to everyone so there's only one accurate answer to the question should you modify your 3d printer and that answer is it depends because everyone's different and what everyone wants out of the 3d printer is different too some people might choose to use it as a tool and they want to manufacture things and never touch it otherwise some people might treat it more like a hobby where they enjoy working on the printer as much as they enjoy actually using it and I think both of those are fine both positions are okay because they're both the best solution for the person with that 3d printer I would add one note to that and that's that if you're inexperienced and new to 3d printers I wouldn't necessarily modify anything until you understand the printer well you want to learn the basics first so that when you upgrade it you appreciate the improvement in usability or whatever else that you've added and secondly you know how to troubleshoot if something goes wrong so that's my answer to the question but I'd still like to know yours please leave below in the comments your position on this and try to consider things from other people's points of view thank you so much for watching and until next time happy it's already printing in whatever form that takes g'day it's Michael again if you liked the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click Subscribe and make sure you 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Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 291,729

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d print, 3d printer, 3d printed, upgrade, mod, modification, worthwhile, better, comparison, tested, value, print, print test, print quality, refinement, reliablility, reliable, standard, stock, refined, quiet, silent, touch screen, abl, auto bed leveling, bltouch, wham bam, everflex, all metal, direct drive, maintenance, user friendly, user friendliness, versatility, creality, ender 3, linear rails, bigtreetech, skr mini, tmc2209, x3d

Id: 5ipVDnm3AKY

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020