Things I would like to 3D print

This seriously cannot be understated enough. When I was in my final year of high school (2012) my shop teacher was the first person in the entire school board to get a 3D printer, one of the cheapest machines on the market (I can't remember the brand, or the name, only the number at the bottom of the invoice - $11,374.38). He got the machine in February and tasked me to help him set it up. After months of dicking around with it, levelling the bed, using different slicers, trying all kinds of different models, nothing would print properly past the first ~5 layers. Dealing with tech support gave us files that printed absolutely beautifully, but no help getting our stuff to print.[0] After this experience I threw 3D printing to the back of my mind and didn't think about it again until last year...

When I bought an Ender 3 V2 around November. $250 at my door, an hour to put it together, another hour of tuning everything in, and I can count on one hand the number of non-user-error-related failed prints. With software packages like Octoprint and hardware mods like the BLTouch, I will argue that my 3D printer is significantly more reliable than any inkjet or laser print I've encountered.

[0]: That shop teacher retired the same year I graduated, so the printer got moved to the media/broadcasting room. As far as I've heard, that printer was put into permanent storage around 2015 because nobody else could get it working properly.

> But before this happened, I had an experience that prepared me, helped me see what to do, helped prepare me to see what to do when this happened, because at certain point, Xerox gave the Artificial Intelligence Lab, where I worked, a laser printer, and this was a really handsome gift, because it was the first time anybody outside Xerox had a laser printer. It was very fast, printed a page a second, very fine in many respects, but it was unreliable, because it was really a high-speed office copier that had been modified into a printer. And, you know, copiers jam, but there's somebody there to fix them. The printer jammed and nobody saw. So it stayed jammed for a long time.

> Well, we had an idea for how to deal with this problem. Change it so that whenever the printer gets a jam, the machine that runs the printer can tell our timesharing machine, and tell the users who are waiting for printouts, or something like that, you know, tell them, go fix the printer. Because if they only knew it was jammed, of course, if you're waiting for a printout and you know that the printer is jammed, you don't want to sit and wait forever, you're going to go fix it.

> But at that point, we were completely stymied, because the software that ran that printer was not free software. It had come with the printer, and it was just a binary. We couldn't have the source code; Xerox wouldn't let us have the source code. So, despite our skill as programmers -- after all, we had written our own timesharing system -- we were completely helpless to add this feature to the printer software.

Interesting to think how cheap and almost disposable printers became and how that might apply to 3D printers.

I too bought an Ender 3 V2, it was about £280 I got it the second it launched in the UK.

Print quality is greatz and once you learn its limitations you can upgrade.

First upgrade is to replace the bed springs with stronger "yellow springs", look them up on Amazon. They're stronger than the stock ones and you'll need to level the bed less often.

Learn to level manually, give it a year even then buy a BL Touch, you'll still need to level manually occasionally.

At this point I have upgraded mine to the point it's barely an Ender 3v2. Replaced the extruder/hotend with an E3D Hemera (direct drive) which prints flexibles like a champ, got a Pi official touch screen for OctoDash and a Pi 4B 4GB running OctoPrint (Pi 4B is overkill but I have a bunch of them at home).

If you do go for a direct drive the X becomes slow and heavy so next upgrade is a Dual Y-Axis, I went for the dual motor option but it splits the power from the board so torque is appalling, go for the belt type instead.

At this point you'll want to be custom building Marlin firmware because the Creality version which comes as stock is lacking. If you don't want to do it yourself there a bunch of community versions you can use if you can deal with their defaults (if you switch to a Hemera or other hotend/direct drive though, you're pretty much going to be custom building forever. There are nice easy to use build tools for VSCode/VSCodium called "AutoBuild Marlin" which sorts out the hard work, you just follow the instructions to tweaks some numhers and hit build. Firmware if installed by sticking it on the microSD and power cycling the printer with it inserted.

I also removed the bottom cover over the driver board and printed one with a 92mm fan slot and put an always-on Noctua with a buck converter, quieter and cooler.

Final mod I want to make is to cut holes in the metal shroud covering the PSU. The Creality design covers all of the vent holes on it leaving only the tiny, loud fan hole cooling the PSU.

Other upgrades include a magnetic bed for easy print removal, a webcam for remote viewing and time lapse / octo lapse (these are beautiful time lapse you see where the print hotend is out of the way) and perhaps a shroud/cupboard if you want to print ABS etc (not recommended with stock hotend or inside your home).

Wrote all of this on mobile so apologies for lack of citations/links, this should all be very searchable, happy to answer questions.