The Ultimate Creality Ender 3 Quick Start Guide

welcome to the 3d printing canada.com under three build video the purpose of this video is to show you basic assembly start to finish and basic calibration leading up to your first prints after opening the box it is always good practice to use a clean work surface with no other clutter on it to make sure that we can keep track of all our small parts that come with the Ender 3 we recommend laying them out in an organized fashion so you can become familiar with all the parts in the kit as well as the tools you will need to assemble it let's go over the contents of the box together a package with an instruction manual a power supply the z-axis motor the extruder and x-axis left hand gantry to 2040 extrusion pieces the x-axis right hand gantry the spool holder the main body the power cord to 2020 extrusions the Zed lead screw the display unit thus Pledger for getting things off of the bed one bag of components that we will go over now spare pneumatic fittings and a spare nozzle an SD card and an SD card reader the x axis right hand belt holder a secondary bag of screws and accessories a tool kit with wrenches allen keys and a screwdriver a wire to help unclog clogged two nozzles the z-axis limit switch a pair of clippers some filament and some trusty zip ties a second bag is full of screws and hardware and let's go over the contents of that right now we have some M 5 by 8 screws some M 4 by 18 screws some tea nuts the rack pipe nut for the spool holder some profile covers for the end of some of the extrusions the x-axis belt some m4 by fourteen screws and t-nuts a pack of m5 by 25 screws a pack of m5 by 45 screws a pack of m4 by 16 screws and a pack of m4 by 20 screws make sure your toolkit is laid out and organized so that we have easy access to it throughout the build process start by carefully cutting open the 2040 extrusions making sure not to score them with your knife one of the extrusions has two holes at the bottom and that will be on the left hand side of the printer whereas the other has two holes running up the one side which will be on the right hand side the left-hand side is for the zet axis whereas the right is for the power supply mount to secure these two extrusions to the frame we will be using m5 by 45 screws we will be mounting this extrusion to the right side of the printer which is the side opposite to the control box take the extrusion and line it up with the two holes on the bottom right side of the main frame you can start by inserting the m5 by 45 screws into the bottom holes which will make aligning the piece of extrusion easy [Music] ensure that these screws have the silver lock washers on them which will help them stay secure over the life of the printer once the screws are in you can align the extrusion and use the appropriate allen key to secure the extrusion to the mainframe these screws have to be tight but not too tight because of the lock washers on them just make sure you screw them in all the way and then add another quarter or eighth turn until you feel them snug up if they're too tight it could strip the screw hole or damage the printer or perhaps cause a misalignment now it's time to secure our other 2040 extrusion to the left-hand side of the printer make sure that the extruder assembly is out of the way and isn't being bent in any precarious manner you can mount this with the holes closest to the main frame repeat the process for the left-hand side that we did on the right hand side inserting the screws and then aligning the piece of extrusion [Music] you may notice that you have two extra screws left over you can put these in a pile of extras but they won't be useful for the rest of the build next we will mount our power supply with the m4 buy 20 screws here are the two holes for the power supply in the extrusion and on the power supply itself there's this top hole and this bottom hole and that's where the screws will thread in to insert the screws into the holes in the extrusion just like we did when we were mounting it this will make it easy to align with the power supply take the appropriate allen key and the screws should line up and thread in nicely to the power supply be sure not to over tighten these screws as they are very easy to strip on the power supply side on the power supply itself you'll notice we have an off-and-on switch as well as a plug that you can plug your power cable into you'll also have an extra screw left over for mounting the power supply that you can put in your extras pile our next task will be mounting the z-axis limit switch begin by loosening the screws on their tea nuts without taking them off completely this will allow us to mount the limit switch to the side of the extrusion on the left-hand side 2040 extrusion align the t-nuts of the z-axis limit switch so that they are vertical this will allow you to slip it in and make sure that the z-axis limit switch goes all the way down to the bottom here you can tighten the screws and they should turn the tea nuts and there's at access limits which will be secured if this doesn't happen try backing off the screws a little bit and then tightening them again and eventually the t-nuts should catch don't over tighten these as it's possible to break the bracket after the z-axis limit switch is mounted it's time to plug in the 3-pin z-axis limit switch wire it should just be hanging around there you can just take it and plug it in making sure it's secure next it's time to mount the z-axis motor you'll need 2 M 4 by 16 screws and the z-axis motor assembly which aligns to the extrusion begin by taking the motor assembly and inserting the 2 m4 screws into their holes there shouldn't be any threads there and they should just pop in nicely align the assembly with the back of the left hand 20:40 extrusion and the holes should line up properly when screwing these in we're not going to tighten them completely and in fact we want the motor mount to have a little bit of play this is to make sure that the motor is properly aligned with the gantry when we put the lead screw in for now we're done with the main body assembly of the printer and now we're going to go on to the x-axis gantry assembly for this next phase we'll need the extruder and x-axis assembly the right hand side x-axis gantry assembly and the two 2020 extrusion pieces let's start by cutting open those extrusion pieces just like we did our 2040s making sure not to score them of the two pieces of extrusion in that package you'll notice one of them has two holes very close together near the sides this piece will go on top of the printer and will be the mount for the spool holder and can be set aside for now the piece we're looking for has two large screw holes and four smaller screw holes that aren't an equal distance apart for this step we'll need our M four by 16 screws first let's get a handle on the orientation of the parts you'll notice that on the x-axis extrusion there's three holes but on one side there's a larger hole that makes room for the big screw that's on the X motor and extruder motor gantry assembly make sure that you align it so that that screw fits in that hole and everything looks flush to attach these parts together we'll take one of our M 4 by 16 screws and put it through the front hole of the x-axis and extruder motor assembly making sure it's pointing outwards flip the assembly over and you'll notice that there's a hole that you can put your allen key through to engage the screw this will allow you to thread it in to the x-axis extrusion remember the orientation we just talked about because we want to get this right thread the screw into its hole but just like on the z axis assembly we don't want to tighten this down completely yet we're going to make some adjustments and then tighten it down take the second m14 by 16 screw and do the same thing holding it and taking your allen key through the back and inserting it and threading it in being careful not to tighten it completely this next step coming up is an important one that many builders at the Ender leave out you'll notice that there is a bit of play between the motor assembly and the piece of extrusion we want this piece of extrusion to be flush with the assembly on the top there not too far in one direction or the other if this piece is out of square that might make the printer very hard to use so take very good care and make sure that you're visually aligned these pieces here you can see that after tightening this is nice and flush with the top there at this point we need to integrate our main body with the partially assembled gantry [Music] before completing the gantry we need to mount our extruder assembly onto the x-axis extrusion slide the extrusion assembly onto the rail and it should go easily take note of the orientation of all the parts we have our extruder motor facing up and we can see the gear we can see the top of the extruder and the Bowden tube and we see the nozzle is facing down towards the bottom now we can mount the right hand side x-axis gantry it will mount and align to the back of the x-axis using 2 M 4 by 16 screws hold the assembly in place insert a screw and use the appropriate allen key to screw it in just like the left hand side x-axis gantry piece we are not going to tighten these screws all the way because we need to align the piece before we do that [Music] here's another familiar story you'll notice this piece has a bit of a range of motion so what we want to do is make sure that it's flush with the top of that x-axis extrusion before we tighten things down [Music] now we can insert the x-axis belt with the teeth facing down simply run the extruder assembly over it we're gonna take it and thread it towards the motor side at the x-axis gantry we need the x-axis motor to drive the belt so we're going to thread it over top and then thread it through again to the bottom making sure that we're engaging the teeth on the x-axis motor now we can attach the belt to the bottom of the extruder assembly you'll notice that there are two slots on the extruder and the belt simply straps in so that the brass part is facing outwards ensure that these are aligned so that the belt is aligned with the center of the extrusion next we can install our x-axis belt tensioner which will go on the right hand side of the x-axis similar to the z-axis limit switch this has two tea nuts that we are going to back off but not completely take off and that will allow us to mount it to the extrusion on the x-axis gantry take the belt tensioner and thread it so that the pulley is threaded over the belt then you can slide it into place on the X gantry at this point we can tension the x-axis belt to make sure it's nice and tight I do this typically by taking another allen key and slipping it in between the space of the belt tensioner and the extrusion then putting a bit of force on it this will tighten up the belt and allow you to tighten up the tensioner properly once the tensioner is tight it will hold things correctly make sure that the x-axis feels free when you move it and that the belt feels nice and tight once you are satisfied you can tighten up the tensioner at this point our x-axis gantry is complete make sure the motion of the extruder feels nice and linear and that there's no wiggling or obvious snags or grinding take the lead screw now and insert it into the top of the Zed motor assembly next we will mount our x-axis gantry to the frame we want to make sure that the leads for the extruder are in the back and not in the front of the printer we want to orient the X gantry said that the nozzle is facing down towards the bed of the printer then we can align the wheels with the extrusions and things should pop into place before pressing down on the X gantry align your lead screw with the lead screw rod holder on the X gantry on the left hand side then you can slowly thread it down you'll notice that our lead screw on the X can tree has two bolts that are holding the nut in what we want to do is make sure that these bolts are actually slightly loose the lead screw should wiggle around and have a bit of play inside this is to make sure that any imperfections in the lead screw system don't translate to your prints once everything's set up in a line there we can secure the lead screw into the threaded Apter simply take the appropriate allen key push down on the lead screw and make sure both bolts are nice and secure at this point we can also fully secure our z-axis motor because it will be properly aligned simply snug in the bolts they don't have to be too tight just enough to hold it in place properly after all is said and done the lead screw assembly should turn freely by hand with little to no resistance believe it or not we're almost near the end our next step is to take our remaining 20:20 extrusion and take our m5 by 25 screws and we're going to use these to mount this to the top of the printer notice on this piece of extrusion as well on one side the holes look bigger than the other that is because they've made room for the top of the m5 screws on the top of the extrusion take it and place it on top of the printer and you can carefully thread in your m5 screws [Music] included in the kit are two end caps which will actually go in the sides of the extrusion that we just put on the top of the printer they will simply plug into place when oriented correctly next we will install our spool holder we will need all the parts for the spool holder itself plus 2m 5 by 8 screws as well as their corresponding T nuts carefully insert one of the M 5 by 8 screws into the bottom of the spool holder and hold it in with its allen key then you can take a T nut and thread it on to that screw this seems to be the easiest way to do this repeat for the other side just like our other parts with T nuts on this printer we are going to align them with this slot of the extrusion on the top of the printer and then use our allen key to secure the screws until the T nuts catch make sure you are orienting your spool holder so that the flattest part of the spool holder is facing the front of the printer for an added cosmetic effect [Music] after the spool holder mount is secure you can take the main part of the spool holder and then not associated with it and simply thread the nut on it should twist on and lock into place very quickly overall the whole printer should be taking shape and look pretty good formatting the display will need two more M five by eight screws which will simply thread into the two holes on the front of the display and into the front of the printer on the right hand side insert one of the screws into the LCD display hole and you can screw it on although less crucial just like other parts of this printer the LCD does have a little bit of play in it so you can align it properly before tightening down the screws it's cable time you'll notice that we have one wide six pin x axis connector as well as a smaller three pin one the 3-pin connector will connect to the x-axis and stop well the six pin one will connect in the motor the sixpenny connector will connect to the extruder motor take the connector labeled e and insert it into the 6 pin extruder motor making sure to push it in evenly next take the 6-pin x-axis connector and insert it into the x-axis motor finally for this cable set use an allen key to help you connect the three pin x-axis limit switch to the connector let's move to the back of the LCD you'll notice that it has one two three connectors we will be wanting to connect our LCD display cable to the third connector which is the closest to the inside of the printer [Music] while our printer is tilted over it's time to connect the power supply to the main board you'll notice that the power supply has one yellow lead and the main board has another one these simply click together and are impossible to reverse while we're under here even though they come connected from the factory we want to make sure that our y-axis limit switch is securely connected as well as our Y motor next we want to retrieve one of our pneumatic fittings from our spares bag this is going to fit into the threaded hole on the side of the extruder simply thread it in by hand and tighten it up the tool for tightening it is a little wrench that's included in our tool kit make sure not to over tighten it as the extruder is made of plastic next take the Bowden tube and what we're going to do is insert the tip of the Bowden tube into the opening of the pneumatic fitting it should simply lock in and should feel fairly secure and snug on any piece of machinery cable management is extremely important and that's why Corey ality has included some zip ties for you to help you along the way let's take our extruder wire and we're going to bunch it together with some of the x-axis and extruder motor wire cable assemblies there is no real science to this but just make sure you don't over tighten the zip ties because you may risk damaging some of the wires if you do we just want to keep them together and out of the way on the heated bed at the printer we have four knobs underneath which help us with leveling the bed we have four clips and we also have a removable build plate let's begin by removing all four clips they should simply clip off once we have all our clips off we can see the parts of the bed better we have our aluminum build plate and we have our build surface which protects the aluminum and also helps prints to stick to the bed take your clips and clip them to the front and the back of the build plate clipping on your build surface as part of a preflight check for the printer it's very important to make sure that your axes are all moving without any sort of imperfections when you move your extruder back and forth it should move freely without any sort of lumps or bumps or any sort of scraping happening if you feel any resistance or uneven movement of the extruder we need to address that by adjusting the wheels on the x-axis gantry notice that the bottom wheel has a hexagonal standoff which you can adjust by using one of the wrenches included in the kit the standoff is actually oblong meaning that if you turn it it will tighten and loosen as you turn it usually if you're getting some bumping it means that the extruder assembly is too tight which means it needs to be loosened a bit the same goes for the y-axis as you move it back and forth it should feel very smooth and linear and shouldn't feel any resistance or unevenness along the way just like the x-axis you'll notice the y-axis as well has some hexagonal standoffs which can also be adjusted with your wrench there is a balance that must be struck between having too tight or too loose an adjustment if the adjustment is too loose it means the whole y-axis is going to rattle if it's too tight it means you're going to feel every little bump along the gantry so it's important to take your time if you do you feel imperfections and make your adjustments properly here is an example of what the y-axis will look like if it's far far too loose notice how the whole bed shakes back and forth one more thing we have to look out for is the actual squareness of the frame itself put the frame on a flat surface and see if you can rock it back and forth this means that the frame is at a square and there's a very easy way we can correct this if you'll notice on the side of the frame there's going to be two screws on either side what we need to do is simply loosen these screws only a few turns not very much on both sides [Music] once the screws are loosened we can take the frame and press it down firmly on a very flat surface while you're pressing down and putting some weight on it simply tighten the screws back up after this process the frame should be squared if you are in North America make sure that you have switched the power supply to the correct voltage if you look on the side of the power supply there's a red switch and you can change it from 230 V to 115 V plug the printer in and turn it on you should be greeted with the main Enders screen use the click wheel and you can click in and let's prepare the printer for heating go to the prepare menu and then you can scroll down to preheat PLA click that and you will notice that on the screen it has now set a temperature of 185 degrees for the hot end and you should see the hot end starting to rise [Music] after the hot ends at temperature we need to go back to control and then go to temperature and now let's set the bed temperature set the bed temperature to 50 degrees Celsius [Music] after navigating back to the main screen you can confirm that indeed the bed has been set to 50 degrees Celsius and you can watch the temperature climb at this point we're ready to auto home our printer go to prepare and now we can click in to Auto home after clicking it you should see the x y and z axis start to home if everything is configured correctly and connected correctly the end stops should work properly and stop the movement of the axes at their zero points now that everything is successfully home we want to disable the stepper motors for leveling the bed going to prepare and you can select disable steppers this will cause the stepper motors to disengage so you can move them by hand let's start by getting an idea of just how flat our bed is right now if you move your x gantry along the axis you should see that the nozzle is a uniform distance from the bed if the bed approaches the nozzle what we need to do is lower it by turning the wheels counterclockwise until the nozzle isn't hitting the bed this is important because we don't want our bed to scrape our nozzle do the same thing for all four corners of the bed so that no matter where you move your bed your nozzle is going to be a uniform distance from it and also not going to scrape it you'll notice during this process I'm going to all parts of the bed and I'm using all four corners in all four knobs to make sure that the nozzle isn't going to hit [Music] once you've done this you should be able to move the nozzle to all four corners of the bed without any scraping or without the nozzle touching the bed this puts us in a position where we can properly start the leveling process for the bed for levelling the bed we use a piece of paper and we're actually going to put that between the nozzle in the bed don't worry about the fact that the nozzle in the bed are hot it's not going to set the piece of paper on fire the paper is crucial because it's going to tell us exactly how far our nozzle is from the surface of that bed we start by placing our nozzle directly over the first knob of the printer the one on the lower left-hand corner what I'm gonna do is start turning that knob clockwise which is going to raise the bed towards the nozzle in this instance you'll notice that the nozzle doesn't actually touch the bed because the bed itself is too low so what I'm gonna do is move on to my next corner and see if I can get that one to raise until it can touch the nozzle you might have to do this a couple times depending how your bed is set up take the piece of paper and move it back and forth underneath the nozzle and turn the knob of the bed clockwise until you start to feel some resistance from the nozzle pressing the paper down on the bed surface you don't want to feel so much resistance that the paper won't move but you definitely want to feel that the nozzle is applying some pressure to the paper this is when you know that the nozzle is the correct distance from the surface of the bed repeat this on all four corners of the bed going around and turning the wheels clockwise until you feel that pressure on the nozzle notice that in this beginning stage some parts of the bed are much further away than other parts of the bed this isn't always going to be the case and once you get your bed dialed in leveling should be fairly easy when you do it routinely after dialing and the other three-quarters of my bed now it can come back to the first one that I wasn't actually able to touch the paper with and now it should be adjusted to the point where I can actually get some resistance going don't be afraid to repeat this process with your paper and go to each corner of the bed even a few times the more you do it the more calibrated your bed is going to be and the higher your chances of success are going to be on your first print after you think you're done go back to auto home and home the printer again and then let's disable the steppers and we'll do a final check to make sure that everything is fine this is important because during the leveling process it's possible that the z-axis has shifted lower towards the bed which would mess up our settings a little bit notice in this instance my first corner again is a little bit too tight so I had to loosen it slightly so I could get that paper in underneath moving to the next corner I also feel that it's too tight so I'm going to take my paper loosen it up and readjust it to make sure that I'm satisfied I'm going to repeat this process for the other corners of the bed because I know the more I do this the more successful I'm going to be in my printing [Music] now that I'm satisfied with my bed level it's time to load the filament first of all what I'm going to do is I'm going to raise the z-axis so that I have some room for the filament to extrude edit the extruder so it doesn't just stick to my bed I'm doing this by going to the move axis menu setting a movement increment of one millimeter and then moving Zed up to about a hundred millimetres of height take your spool of filament and we're gonna orient it so that it's coming off the top of the spool going towards the sides of the printer notice also that the filament has a natural bend to it so we want this Bend to curve around nicely into the printer take your clippers and we're gonna cut a 45 degree angle and one side of the filament because this will help us insert it into the extruder with your thumb move the extruder arm and insert the filament notice in this instance we're having trouble getting it to go into the hole so what I'm gonna do is take my hand and just bend it slightly so that the filament itself straightens out after doing that it should insert into the hole properly and go through the Bowden tube keep feeding the filament into the Bowden tube until you start to feel some resistance and you should actually be able to see some of the filament come out of the nozzle the printer itself that's when you know the printer has been properly loaded now it's time to do our first print take the included SD card and insert it into the front SD slot in the printer it should click in and be secured when you press it in going back to our menu if you click in you'll notice that it still says no card even though we've inserted our SD card what we want to do is click in it SD card which will initialize the card then we can go to the print from SD menu the card should have a test dog g-code test file on it which is a great benchmark for this printer press ok and it should start to print beautifully [Music] ultimate Kerkyra is a great piece of software that's going to help you slice your own models successfully for the Ender 3 here's how we set it up let's go to settings printer and then click Add Printer if you look at the menu you can see a Ultimaker custom and other let's look under the other category you can see there's a long list of third-party printers here go down to criolla T and you'll see there's a model criolla T under 3 already made this is great because it's a premade setting for the Ender 3 that takes into account its size limitations and will be tuned for performance with the machine to make sure we have the proper printer selected let's go to settings and then printer and then you should see the Ender 3 you just created as the selection notice also here we have another profile for an under 3 with the BL touch open the model you want to slice in a folder and then drag and drop it into the program it should appear in the middle of the display [Music] right click to rotate your model and drag your mouse to get a better view if your mess has a scroll wheel you can push the scroll wheel and that will let you translate the view with a fixed angle in the print setup dialog let's check our recommended settings and then for material we're going to want to select what material we're printing with generally speaking generic PLA works just fine layer height is the height of each layer infill is the percentage of plastic which is going to fill the shell of the model and we can click customize to get a good view of exactly what's gonna happen during the print we're actually going to want to customize some different settings in here so let's show you what we're going to do under material you can see the different temperatures that we're going to use to print the material in the different phases of printing we have default printing temperature which is the overall printing temperature we have the printing temperature for the initial layer which is for the first layer then we have the final printing temperature stock that's set up as 185 but let's set it to 200 for a good result for build plate temperature 60 degrees is just fine and is standard for PLA flow rate we can leave a loan and retraction distance is set at 5 which is just fine for this printer once we are satisfied with our settings we can go to the bottom and we can press the prepare button where it will slice the model after it's done slicing make sure your a removable SD card from your printer is inserted into your computer and you can press save to removable drive in which case it will save it directly to your SD card afterwards press the eject button and it will safely eject it for removal from your computer insert it into your printer and it should print great just like the test dog [Music] from everyone at 3d printing canada.com we hope this guide has been helpful to you and we wish you well in your printing adventures [Music]

Channel: 3D Printing Canada

Views: 1,015,100

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Id: dQ0q9zLygTY

Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019