The Creality Ender 3 V3 SE is very good. There, I said it!

this is the creality Ender 3v3 SE and hey you know what despite the ridiculous name it's pretty good but didn't I just make a video heavily criticizing creality and telling you not to buy an Ender 3 well yeah I did but this isn't the original Ender 3 or any of the inferior permutations that City still insists on selling it's a budget I3 style printer with modern ease of use features that allow total beginners to get into 3D printing at a bargain price but it's not without its faults either let's get started now you can explore microscop World how's it going guys Angus here from makers M and this is probably a review no one saw coming I recently called out CR for selling the original Ender 3 alongside many permutations for years and causing frustration among the 3D printing community as a result and during the making of that video they dropped yet another ender3 this machine the ender3 V3 SE and many of you in the comments made it known that this printer was actually pretty good and I got a very nice email from pergear a distributor of creality printers asking that I check out the V3 SE and let everyone know what I really think of this lest budget offering from kity and honestly I think it was a pretty fair request so I said yes at the same time I started putting together the original Ender 3 that I showed in the Box in my previous video to compare the both during the review process and let me tell you these two printers are Worlds Apart we'll start with the unboxing and setup experience the V3 comes securely packed in foam and you're greeted out of the box with a quick start guide a packet of tools and spare parts and the power cable from there you've got the interface and spool holder and then just two main assemblies which are bolted together to assemble their printer this is significantly easier than the original Ender 3 which comes in a lot of smaller sub assemblies and requires about an hour or so to fully assemble even if you have experience in assembling 3D printers it's just a little bit finicky and these days I don't seem to even bother including assembly instructions I had to find them on the micro SD card which as a newv would be ridiculously confusing in contrast the v3's quick start manual is actually pretty good with a clear parts list and steps for securing the components together and connecting all the wires to the appropriate components it's about a 15minute setup time at most just make sure the voltage switch at the back is in the correct place this is something I'm seeing much less these days as companies are moving towards using power supplies that can just handle both voltages once fully assembled the V3 SE resembles a more Sleek streamlined I3 than its predecessors but they've kept the use use of Kit injection molded parts to a minimum like the original it only has one steper motor for the Z axis but it uses this belt at the top to rotate the two lead screws so that means it's kept in sync and it won't go out of square which is sometimes an issue on the original under three cuz the whole Gantry could sag which is not great for accuracy these vertical V roller extrusions are particularly interesting because they look like a fully custom part which is a big hint at the kind of production capability that cality has these days so let's take a look at the specs end3 V3 SE has a print volume of 220x 220 X 250 mm in Zed it's the same as the original but the V3 has this nicely upgraded color screen with click wheel interface it's not touchscreen but it's nicer nonetheless and connectivity is via a fulls size SD card or USBC if you'd like to tether it to a computer or something like octoprint or run Clipper it's a much welcome durability upgrade over the micro SD card and micro USB slot in the original end 3 this machine also has a direct drive extruder which is awesome for the price point and a 32-bit control board with silent stepper drivers it's done a great job at reducing print noise you can still hear the travel movements but honestly the loudest part of this printer is the cooling fan yeah how many times have I said that this year printers are getting quieter but cooling fans they sound like tornadoes now let's talk V rollers despite City being well known for them the bed on this machine is actually running on linear rods which is a welcome change because although the Z axis and xaxis are using V rollers the ones on the bed tend to wear out the fastest in my experience so what they've done here is actually gone with linear rods but if you look at this bed you notice something else there's no more leveling knobs no springs that's right this budget price 3D printer has automatic mesh bed leveling the automatic bed leveling routine certainly isn't fast but it's one of the best I've seen from creality at this price point not only does it drop this BL touch style probe to create a mesh bed level but it also has this sneaky Force sensor which allows the machine to calculate the nozzle offet automatically this is a GameChanger for beginners as it's all too easy to set this number too high and print don't stick or too low and they dig into the print surface and ruin it you can change it yourself after the calibration routine is complete but I found mine was a good distance away for this kind of sticky print surface however the force probe assembly does create a significant High spot on the bed and the only way to remedy this is to physically sand down the little black plastic spacer it rests on the only major detail I don't really like about this machine is the choice of print surface it's that build Tac like surface which is magnetically attached to the print bed I I do like the fact you can remove it and put it back in place of the magnets but I don't like how much the prints stick to it often people complain about print services not sticky enough but this sticks them way too much so if you want to use the provided print surface make sure you drop your bed temperatures to 40° C for PLA and don't even think about printing TV on it without a healthy layer of glue stick now let's move on to City's Cura reskin that comes bundled on the SD card I say reskin but it's been a very long time since I loaded up cality slicer offering and man has it changed this thing looks way more professional than it did a few short years ago which I guess is what competition can do and it comes loaded with profiles for all their printers and print quality out of it for the most part was very very good with minimal to no stringing on the pla prints like you can see in this stringing test however I encountered this really weird bug that I hope someone in the comments can help me understand some prints caused the slicer to create these crazy green aberration you can see in the print preview and these areas of the print were printed absolutely horribly it seems like the extruder width for the inner perimeters just randomly explodes for some reasons when print trying to slice some models and I don't know why it's doing it but I'd love some answers if you know in the comments below so I did what I often end up doing during these reviews I made my own custom profile in prusia slicer because at time of recording there is no good profile for the V3 SE this actually took way longer than expected as the direct drive hotend seems quite prone to wispy stringing and I needed a significant WIP portion on retraction to remove them but one benefit of the custom profile is the print speed I really sent it with a Max print speed of 150 mm a second and some tasteful acceleration changes and the results speak for themselves this thing can move it's no bamboo lab 3D printer or even close to the speeds I can get of the soille sv7 running Clipper but this is a budget I3 and it's a heck of a lot faster than the original and at these print speeds the quality is acceptable there are some vibration and ringing artifacts that are evident but nothing that's that makes it a deal breaker that's say you did want to print faster well then cral also has on offer the ender3 V3 ke which swaps a linear rail for the x-axis a more powerful control board with input shaping and a different hotend to push print speeds and quality even further but such is the way of cality they simply have too many 3D printers on offer because I don't have that machine I'm not reviewing that machine I'm reviewing this one CR really needs to consider thinning out the herd when it comes to their offerings and focusing attention on a handful full of awesome products that occupy key 3D printing markets but you can hear that rant in this video here because this machine has a direct drive extruder versus the Bowden extruder on the original Ender 3 it can print TPU with a sh hardness of 995a or higher really well even at the same print speeds and retraction settings as with pla for my TPU test prints I just stuck on a prusia Pei spring steel sheet with glue stick and the prints were able to be released without too much issue I highly recommend your first upgrade of this machine just get a sheet of G10 or Gite or just Pei on Spring Steel and replace it and it's going to be a fantastic first upgrade you'll thank me later before deciding if this machine is for you let's quick fire some key details you might have missed in the pages of fluff on their site the ender3 V3 SE may have a color screen but it's not a touchcreen it's driven by the jog wheel instead and the menu is pretty limited and can be laggy at times becoming completely unresponsive if you run automatic functions like bed leveling lastly while this machine does have power outage recovery which is always handy it's lacking filament outage detection which is a bit of a ridiculous oversight in this day and age yes it's a budget offering but with the direct drive extruder a single switch here between the the filament spool holder and the extruder could have saved so many fail prints for people because inevitably people will try to use end spools and there's plenty of time for that filament to run out and alert you but this machine has no way of doing so at a price of only $179 or $296 Australian isend 3 V3 SE the machine to Kickstart your 3D printing Journey or add printing capability to your workshop on a budget perhaps there's no question that this machine is superior to the original Ender 3 that cality still insists selling today and it's still one of the cheapest 3D printers you could buy but you really have to literally be unable to spend just a little bit more or love to Tinker if you go for that offering over this seriously the user experience is night and day that said if you could scratch together just a little bit more coin then the s spo7 from soille is a very impressive offering for the price it has Wi-Fi connectivity runs Clipper for Fast Printing speeds and it has one of the best direct drive planetary extruders around if you want to print flexible filaments it's the sv7 that I think K's K version of this printer is clearly targeting and I can't tell you which is better I only have experience with sv7 and you can watch my review Linked In the video description and finally if you want a completely seamless 3D prin experience and you can spare $29 us well the A1 Mini from bamboo lab is my vote for the best printer for beginners this year hands down it has a much smaller print volume yes but it has an absolutely Flawless user experience and I still use mine all the time from my review a few months ago even though I have access to much larger 3D printers it's just so easy to use I want to say a big thanks to pergear for sending across the ender3 V3 SE for this review free of charge after seeing my previous video criticizing cality for still selling Ender 3s so many years ago like they invited my genuine opinion and zero influence on the video so that commands a lot of respect and you can find their purchase links in the video description below of the V3 SE if it seems like your kind of thing and also you can find my custom PR slicer profile which isn't perfect but I've been getting some pretty impressive prints off it and a big thanks to you guys for watching this review I hope it helps you make an informed decision in this wonderful world of 3D printing and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future reviews tutorials and guides catch you later guys bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 130,499

Keywords: 3d, printing

Id: EL8ehEYPTCk

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023