Creality Ender-3 S1 In-Depth Review: Including almost all upgrades you want, is it worth $399?

[Music] welcome back to aurora tech channel today i will be reviewing the latest ender 3s1 that i recently received from creality i would like to thank reality for sending me this printer to review in this video i'm going to go over the features of this printer do a quick walkthrough of the assembly do some test prints and most importantly talk about what i like about this printer and what i think it can improve on i first started 3d printing with an ender 3 and i have an ender 3 pro that i spent around 300 upgrading before we look into the ender 3s1 let's see how this 300 was spent on the ender 3 pro the most expensive major upgrade of the sender 3 pro is the my 3d omg dual gear direct extruder this set also came with an espina lightweight stepper motor which makes the whole hot end assembly just around 200 grams which works really well this upgrade costs 85 dollars the second upgrade is a dual z axis i made some diy parts for this upgrade but if you buy a complete kit it would cost around 50 the third upgrade is the auto bed leveling the cr touch sensor cost around 40 dollars the fourth upgrade is the big tree tech 32-bit board with silent stepper drivers which cost fifty dollars the fifth upgrade is a spring steel print surface this os eq print surface from the czech republic cost around 35 dollars the sixth upgrade is the x and y axis belt tensioners a set of these cost around twenty five dollars the final upgrade is a filament sensor and it only costs five dollars so the total amount i spent is 290 dollars the price of the ender 3 pro as of today is 209 dollars so the real cost of this heavily upgraded ender 3 pro is 499 plus the time and effort to install all the hardware and edit the firmware if you think this part is fun that's fine but for the people who enjoy 3d printing more than playing around with hardware upgrades and firmware code editing the new ender3s1 may be a better choice it included all the upgrades i made to my under 3 pro plus some extra features let's take a look at what we can expect from this new ender3 s1 it has a new lightweight dual gear direct extruder which is just 210 grams it's similar to the my 3d omg on my ender 3 pro it's lighter than the e3d hamara which is over 350 grams and also lighter than the bqh2 which is 219 grams it's upgraded to a dual gear compared to the single gear old creality direct extruder there is a dual z axis with a timing belt to synchronize the motion of both sides a cr touch auto bed leveler a 32 bit board with silent stepper drivers a spring steel print surface x and y belt tensioners and a filament sensor these are the same 300 upgrades that were on my ender 3 pro it also came with some extra features that my under 3 pro didn't have like the color screen full size sd card support a drawer cleaner cable management some cosmetic upgrades and a better overall appearance the price of this ender 3 s1 is 399 which is not cheap but its hardware specifications and features are way above an entry level 3d printer if you buy a basic 200 3d printer and all these features it would cost you more than five hundred dollars so on paper i would say it is worth the price okay i am quite excited about this printer so let's open up the box and see what's inside [Music] [Music] we have the base the gantry the extruder assembly the screen and the screen mount a cable clip some tools sample filament the power cord and the manual like all other new generation 3d printers this printer is pretty much pre-assembled you just need to put the gantry on the base install the screen the extruder and the filament holder let's start with the extruder assembly you need to grab a bag of m3 by six millimeter screws from the tool bag just put the extruder on the x-plate align these screw holes and then insert five m3 screws and tighten them i will flip it over and install the cable clip this clip is used to clip the ribbon cable which will connect with the hot end assembly later next i will put the gantry on the base it's a little bit tricky to tighten the screws underneath without letting the gantry fall it would be much easier if you have someone else to hold the gantry for you insert two long m5 by 45 millimeter screws and finger tighten them first now i can flip it to the side and insert the other two also finger tighten them for now use a hex driver to tighten them but don't tighten them completely i will move it to the edge of the table and tighten them completely in the next step do the same to the two screws on the other side i will then push it to the side of the table i want to make sure the guarantee is perfectly perpendicular to the base so i will tighten the screws when it stands straight do the same to the other side next we will install the screen we will use three m four by eighteen millimeter screws to secure it i will flip it to the side align the mount with these three screw holes and insert three m4 screws tighten it with the hex driver and the screen will just snap on this mount finally connect the ribbon cable we will connect the other cables starting with the filament sensor then one of the dual z axes followed by the other dual z axis this cable was taped on the base so just remove it and the cable length should be just enough to reach the motor next we will connect the extruder everything was integrated into this ribbon cable in the middle of this ribbon cable we have two smaller cables the wider one is the x-stepper motor and the narrower one is the x-submit switch we can now mount the ribbon cable on the cable clip we installed earlier move the extruder to the top right and make sure the length of the cable can reach the farthest point of the gantry we can now snap the filament holder on top and then connect the filament sensor cable insert the sd card and remove the screen protector there is a sticker to remind you to check the power supply voltage it's located at the back of the printer with another sticker covering it as you can see the printer is set to 230 volts by default as i am in the us i will flip the switch to 115. finally i will check the belt and pulley wheels on all the axes to make sure the belt is tight if not you can use the belt tensioner to adjust it for the wheels make sure there is no single wheel that can spin alone if so adjust the eccentric nuts to make them closer to the extrusion slots okay the assembly is done we can now connect the power cord and turn on the printer this menu is quite familiar it's almost like the one on the ender 3v2 let's do autobet leveling so it will home the printer to test all the axes limit switches and run 16 point bed leveling one thing i noticed from the cr touch is that it works differently from the older one i added to my ender 3 pro the pin doesn't need to retract all the way when it probes the bed i'm not sure if this makes the sensor work better but i will test it out okay since this is the first time we are doing auto bed leveling we need to adjust the z offset to save the distance between the nozzle and the pin of the sensor the value is 3.14 i will select this number and adjust the value use the paper test by putting a paper between the nozzle and the bed move this number up and down to adjust the distance once the paper is slightly scratching the nozzle we can save this number go back to the main menu and the number will be saved automatically before we preheat the printer to feed in some filament i will do auto home as i don't want to heat up the nozzle to 200 degrees when it's touching the bed let's feed in some filament select preheat pla and once the nozzle reaches 200 degrees push the lever to release the tension from the gears inside the extruder and feed the filament in now we can do some test prints since the sample files inside the sd card don't include the printing time i don't want my first test print to take too long i will just go to my computer and slice a model so i can also show you how to set up this printer in cura you can use your own slicer or install the creality slicer that came with this printer which you can find in the sd card after the slicer is installed just click get started next select the printer model ender 3s1 next if you want to use your own slicer please copy the start and end g code to your printer profile i prefer to use my own slicer so i'll switch back to my own cura if you use your own slicer besides the start and end g-code that you need to change you'll also need to change the retraction settings as this is a direct extruder it doesn't require that much retraction and the speed can also be slower according to the manual creality suggested the distance to be 0.8 millimeters and 30 millimeters per second for speed okay we can save this profile as ender 3 s1 pla let's start with a simple calibration cube i won't change anything and just stick to the default settings let's put the sd card back in the printer the first file is the cube so let's print it [Music] [Music] okay it looks pretty nice i can't see any problems on all the x y and z axes as well as the flat surface next i will print a set of bolts and nuts and see if this printer is accurate enough to make them fit with each other when i zoom out you can see this set is tiny let's see how it does [Music] the threads on both the bolt and inside the nut are clear and i can screw them together without any issues then i will print a 3d benchy and see the overhanging cooling and stringing [Music] the benchy is quite nice with no stringing at all and the overhanging and cooling are all good to test how this new extruder works i will give it my favorite tough test the eiffel tower i will also use up the full z height of this printer let's make this tower 270 millimeters tall and see if i can get a good result it should reach the top of the gantry i am a little worried about the tiny tip as when you max out the z height the top part of the print may not look as good as the bottom but let's see how it does so far it looks quite nice let it finish and we will see the result [Music] [Music] this is one of the best eiffel tower i've ever printed with a completely out of the box setup the retraction is really nice with very minimal stringing the structure is much cleaner compared to all the other towers i printed another possible reason for the cleaner look of this print is because i enlarged the tower to 270 millimeters tall as you can see the tip of the tower also has no issue even with maximizing the z height of the print volume i put the link in the description so you can try it out with your printer and see what kind of results you can get as this is a direct drive extruder i will also try to print with some flexible filament i'm using this overture high speed tpu let's print an iphone case and see how it works [Music] [Music] the texture of the print surface actually makes the bottom look pretty good personally i'm not a big fan of 3d printed phone cases but it's at least a flexible phone case which is totally usable okay these are all the models i've printed using this ender 3s1 so far the print quality is outstanding but no 3d printer is perfect so i would like to talk about what i could suggest for improvement one i think we don't need these manual leveling springs and instead use a wider extrusion to form a base to make the bed as level as possible even if the bed is not perfectly level the bed leveling sensor is supposed to do the job of making it level two the remaining print time on the screen is added which is nice but it's only based on the percentage of the number of layers finished to calculate the remaining time a better way to do that is use the cura estimated time inside the gcode file minus the time since the current print job was started this should be more accurate four the most weird thing about this printer is that the leveling sensor must work with the cold bed when you have g29 in the g-code which will heat up the bed and nozzle first the auto bed leveling process will keep pausing and wait for the temperature to match the exact preset numbers it will still pause leveling and wait even if it's a few degrees off but as long as you don't put g29 inside your g-code file it works perfectly fine but this brings up another concern for example when the printer is idle i preheat the printer and then select auto bed leveling from the menu it will automatically cool down the bed and nozzle before auto leveling starts when leveling is done the printer automatically moves the z height of the nozzle to zero and lets you set the z offset that would be fine if you are leveling it for the first time with a brand new printer but if the printer has been used for a while and you would like to re-level the bed for some reasons the nozzle tip is going to have some filament residue as the nozzle is cold it can't melt the residue and it may affect how you set the correct sleep offset as you can't feel if it's nozzle or the filament residue that is scratching your test paper the way to avoid this is to manually heat up the nozzle after bed leveling and then set the z offset once the residue has melted and the nozzle is clean or you can simply adjust the z offset in real time when you are printing i really don't understand why the firmware works like this but this issue can be fixed easily i hope the next firmware update will address this issue besides that i would also like to suggest two low-cost upgrades that i think are quite useful one add a usb a port to support usb drives two add an esp8266 wi-fi module to the motherboard and make a cura plug-in to support wi-fi printing i know that creality has a wi-fi box that's controlled by a phone app and it can monitor the status of the printer remotely choose the 3d model from the phone app and send print jobs from the phone but it doesn't support wi-fi printing using computers okay let's talk about what i like about this printer it prints really nicely right out of the box and it's actually not only nice it's impressive the best part and the most significant upgrade of this printer is the newly designed dual gear lightweight direct extruder it can handle the crazy amount of retraction from a 3d model like the eiffel tower it's really precisive and responsive if this extruder was sold separately i think that many people would be interested the print bed is upgraded from the magnetic sheet to a spring steel sheet the print surface itself is also upgraded it's different from the one you can see on the ender 3 and it's more like the one on my cr-10s pro v2 which is better quality and sticks really well i have also tested the accuracy of this new cr touch the hardware should be same as the one i installed on my under 3 pro but the printer firmware has been modified to improve its accuracy before the accuracy of the sensor from my test was around 0.02 millimeters but now it's around 0.0077 millimeters which is a huge improvement if you're interested in watching my previous videos to see how i tested out these five bed leveling sensors i put a link under this video this printer is also beginner friendly the manual is simple and clear or you may not even need one to put it together as the assembly is pretty straightforward there isn't really much you can go wrong with during this process the user interface on the color screen is based on the ender 3v2 which was already pretty good there are also many minor improvements like the connector cover the sd card being moved to the front higher quality limit switches with the cover a more durable print bed cable the park cooling fan blowing air from the front so the park cooling is improved and the fan is also very quiet as well i have no plans to do any upgrades on this printer yet the stock setup is very good i have many 3d printers a lot of which are from creality i have an ender 3 another 3 pro a cr6se an ender 5 pro two cr-10s pro v2 printers and my new favorite the ender 3s one it has the best direct extruder from a stock setup and the print quality is super impressive right out of the box the hardware configuration and print quality is difficult to beat so if you're considering buying your first 3d printer or if you just have an ender 3 or other basic machines and want to purchase a mid-range printer that doesn't really need any upgrades this is an excellent choice that's it for this video if you like this video please hit the like and subscribe button my brother and i make a new video every weekend so check out my channel on mondays and you'll see something new see you next week

Channel: Aurora Tech

Views: 106,187

Keywords: Ender 3 S1, Ender-3 S1, Creality Ender 3 S1, Creality Ender-3 S1, Ender 3 direct extruder, Ender 3 lightweight direct extruder, Ender 3 S1 price, Ender 3 S1 worth $399?, Ender 3 S1 new features, Ender 3 S1 review, Ender 3 S1 print quality, Ender 3 S1 CR touch auto bed leveling sensor, Ender 3 bltouch, Ender 3 S1 CR touch

Id: sbRHZUnmfYw

Length: 19min 57sec (1197 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021