Ender 3 v2, upgrade or not?

j bjork

j bjork

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Joined
Aug 31, 2018
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Linköping, Sweden
I have printed PLA and ABS successfully, but now I wanted to print TPU.
It seems hard to get reliable extruding as it is now, so I am looking at alternatives.

M1terU4.jpg


51hiG1r.jpg


This is how the printer looks.

And the extruder. By changing the spring to a softer one I got it to work for several hours before jamming.
What I am trying to decide now is if, and in that case, how much I should upgrade the printer to get it working.
Or if it is better to just get another printer?

Option 1, Just get a dual gear extruder like this maybe:

sYbHslD.jpg

spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.2aaa49e5oLUaHK&algo_pvid=6c496e81-76db-40af-9ef0-9f00b4c95e18&algo_exp_id=6c496e81-76db-40af-9ef0-9f00b4c95e18-0&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21SEK%2188.00%2182.44%21%21%2157.45%2153.82%21%402103894417223485954457034e8b24%2112000032251224419%21sea%21SE%210%21ABX&curPageLogUid=l8AeICiJSfOU&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A[/URL]

Option 2, same as one but mount it directly on the heat break and get a budget direct drive.
I do worry a little about the weight of something like that though.

Option 3, One of these Chinese extruders maybe:

NrS3zYL.jpg


4, Enders own:

EAFsBE3.jpg


5, micro swiss:

ITtK6f6.jpg


But I think when going to the more expensive options, maybe a new printer could be a better option?
I mean, a ender 3 v3se is not much more than the most expensive micro swiss upgrade.
A ender 3 v3ke a little more, and a v3 without letters a little more still..
 
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If you want to try out direct drive, you could do a no-cost print of a direct-drive mount for the extruder. There are several available if you search on printables or thingiverse, you'd want to print in ABS for the heat deflection, and it will be very low cost (i used this model on my ender 3, i think, it was awhile ago and I've never needed to change it). It's true that it will add weight to the gantry. You could slow down the prints 5% to compensate. And/or replace the current stepper extruder with a pancake-style extruder motor. But the downsides to the heavier gantry are mostly aesthetic, and you may not care about visual printing artifacts on your functional prints.

I think the dual-gear extruder is a no-brainer, it's a really cheap and easy upgrade that will show results immediately, and will last alot longer. You may need to recalibrate your esteps after, not a big deal. I think you should do the dual-gear extruder, as well as the direct drive (printed) upgrade. Low cost, and I think you'll see benefits.

If you want to upgrade to a better printer entirely, down the line or now, I think you should consider an enclosed printer. You mentioned before that want to print more exotic/speciality filaments, and an enclosed area to print them is going to give you better results on things like nylon or large ABS prints. But if you just want to have a printer around as a useful tool that you don't care about being perfect quality, simply upgrading the V2 that you already have will be a good place to start.
 
Everyone at work is switching to Bambu printers. They apparently just work with no fiddling. That said, for TPU, I think they are limited to the harder rated varieties rather than softer and you have to disable all the fancy color switching stuff to feed it in directly.
 
Edited the first post with the right pictures of extruders 😬
You are probably right, just getting the dual gear extruder and mount it as direct drive probably makes most sense as a start.
How do you do with the wiring for the extruder when moved?
There are these kits that might be something otherwise:

i0EeyNi.jpg
 
j bjork said:
How do you do with the wiring for the extruder when moved?
There are these kits that might be something otherwise:
Click to expand...
If you want to get the "kit", you can, but all it is, is a bracket and a longer wire harness for that extruder motor. A bracket you can print. And for a longer harness, you can just take the current harness, snip the wires one at a time so you don't rewire the motor incorrectly, and lengthen them appropriately. It's just 4 wires, and you probably only need to add about 160-200mm to each. Presumably you have some 16-20awg lying around that would do?

 
lnanek said:
Everyone at work is switching to Bambu printers. They apparently just work with no fiddling. That said, for TPU, I think they are limited to the harder rated varieties rather than softer and you have to disable all the fancy color switching stuff to feed it in directly.
Click to expand...
May I ask what the work is, what field? I'm curious.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong or bad with Bambu. And I don't think the Ender printers are the best; they're not at all. But for a lot of uses, and for my uses, they're more than good enough. The most important detail is that every part on an Ender 3 is generic, cheap, and easy to replace. For my uses, that's most important.
 
The only thing that makes me hesitate to buy a Bambu is the lack of open source and honestly I'll probably still buy one, I have several very capable printers but they are only that way since I've messed with them so much. At this point anybody that wants to make things and doesn't want playing with printers as their hobby I see no reason not to buy a Bambu (ok a few very niche reasons).

That being said for printing mechanical parts that don't need perfect surface finish a few upgrades will go a lot further per dollar than a Bambu. Namely a heated chamber which is easy and I wouldn't even consider owning a printer without one. Really good filament drying. A high temperature hotend and maybe a way to change bed materials. With those and the right settings and materials you can make some very strong parts, ABS printed with the right settings in a heated chamber is not even remotely the same material as printed in the open, makes PLA, modified PLAs and PETGs look like garbarge. ABS is amazingly strong and versatile and sort of the best balance material in most cases. With Nylons and polycarbonates being better or worse in some areas. All but 2 parts on my bike are printed in ABS incudling many that are under a lot fo stress, like the freehub to chainring adapter I'm putting 5Kw through. One part is lower fill carbon fiber nylon 6 because it's a complaint spring that needs to not fatigue and one is a pair of knuckle guards that is printed in Lexan because it needed to be stiff enough to not fold and have crazy impact strength The lexan filament has silly impact toughness but layer bonding can be tricky while I've found cheap polycarbonates are pretty shit impact wise. Which is kinda the magic of ABS, it has really impressive impact strength and good layer bonding when printed right to the point where only a few materials will beat it for vertical impact strength. Namely TPU (which cheats because it flexes out of the way) and PCTPE which is just hard enough to not flex out of the way and otherwise doens't give a shit about your izod impact hammer no matter what you do.

As for TPU while I've tried almost every material under 300C only recently I've started playing around with TPU mostly because I never had a need for it until now and even now it's more because I'm curious and the part would be just fine in a high performance nylon. What also makes things easier is just using a harder grade of TPU which most of the time is just as good or better, still has the "it just flexes out of the way" impact perforamance and the amazing layer bonding but is easier to print and it less wobbly when you try to actually use it for something that sees some force. I would rather make a part softer with less infill and part design than try to make it harder by adding more material because the TPU is too soft.

As for upgrading the ender I know some of them you have to jump through hoops to reflash the mainboard if you need to change the esteps for a different extruder. Not hard per se but something to consider. Any decent quality direct drive extruder will be much better in many ways and the downside of "well it's heavier" I think is kind of silly, you turn down the acceleration and it prints perfectly, I'm guessing you aren't in a super rush for every print. Idk I would probably get a triganle lab or BIQU, so something not "high end" but still of reasonable quality.

But again back to the best bang for your buck, it's really good filament drying and ways to keep it dry, which will apply to any printer this one or the next. And a heated chamber is pretty cheap and easy and just makes printing anything mechanically useful vastly easier, and also can sometimes be applied to the next printer too. I realize most of this is not directly useful to printing TPU but maybe some of this will be useful to you.
 
As I suggested in the other thread, what I would do is to buy the followings:
1-A stepper motor. The cheapest and shortest you can find, it doesn't need to be powerful at all because there is a gearing system in the dual extruder system.
2-A BMG/bondtech dual gear extruder clone, like this:
1722569838314.png
The cheapest one you can find will do the trick, I think I've got 8 of those running on my various printers right now so I can definitely tell you they work very well.
Make sure you purchase one that has the appropriate threads on the output side so you can screw a pneumatic fitting
3-A pneumatic fitting of the approprate size, like this
1722570008406.png
4-A few centimeters of bowden tube to join this extruder to your nozzle.
5-Some cable wire extension for your motor.

That should be all that's needed.

Then you assemble the extruder and attach it directly onto your carriage by any mean of your choice.
I've got a few printers I designed that are using this exact configuration, so I can tell you it works for sure.

You could probably 3D print a bracket if you want, but at first I suggest to keep it simple and just use some cardboard or wooden blocks to support the motor and painter's tape to secure it to the carriage.

Then you just use this configuration for TPU printing and you can take it back off for when you print other materials.
This solution has the advantages of being super cheap (it's doable under 20 dollars I think), it's 100% reversible, it's technically not difficulat at all and you have very little downtime because the printer doesn't need to be disassembled at all.
It's just not the most visually pleasant, but who cares as long as it does the job.
 
Alright :)
As for a heated chamber, what I have is a locker with insulated roof and rear wall basically:
IO9UcMn.jpg

I get about 45 degrees C after printing for a while. It seems to work well on my abs prints so far.
Dui ni shuo de dui said:
As I suggested in the other thread, what I would do is to buy the followings:
1-A stepper motor. The cheapest and shortest you can find, it doesn't need to be powerful at all because there is a gearing system in the dual extruder system.
2-A BMG/bondtech dual gear extruder clone, like this:
Click to expand...
This seems to be the model you are referring to, right?:

x0JMYhkm.jpg
nXaeatdm.jpg


So the advantage over the metal one in an earlier post is the gearing makes it possible to have a weaker (and lighter) stepper motor?
Probably also better adjustability of the pressure on the filament?

Problem is I already ordered the metal one, but no big deal. If this is better I can keep the other one as a spare.
 
j bjork said:
So the advantage over the metal one in an earlier post is the gearing makes it possible to have a weaker (and lighter) stepper motor?
Probably also better adjustability of the pressure on the filament?
Click to expand...
Both will work. The geared one allows finer extrusion increments. Using a smaller/weaker stepper motor will work on either setup, because the geared extruder forces the stepper to spin faster to extrude the same amount of filament. Wattage is wattage, so the amount of force necessary to extrude the same amount of filament will be the same, regardless if the setup is geared or not. Arguably it's "better" for the stepper motor to spin faster and allow the gearing to provide the torque, but at some point it's apples and oranges. Especially with how cheap and durable most stepper motors are.

I like your enclosure setup! I was wondering about that, when you said you successfully have printed ABS on an Ender 3. It's certainly possible to do it without an enclosure, but the layer adhesion and warping improves drastically if an enclosure is used.
 
kind of hard to see the extruder in the pictures but it's a biqu h2 v2s direct drive. bigtreetech or biqu has flash sales on them alot and i think i paid around $40 for mine. build quality and weight is amazing, all metal gears have ridiculous torque.. you cant hold the filament back by hand and get it to skip, no matter how tight you grip it just pulls it right out of your hand. 👋👌😆 prints whatever filament you run through it at any speed.IMG_20231224_093131151.jpgIMG_20231224_093401507.jpg
 
j bjork said:
So the advantage over the metal one in an earlier post is the gearing makes it possible to have a weaker (and lighter) stepper motor?
Probably also better adjustability of the pressure on the filament?

Problem is I already ordered the metal one, but no big deal. If this is better I can keep the other one as a spare.
Click to expand...
Yes, that and the ability to finely adjust the the pressure on the filament are the main advantages. I think the one you bought is pretty much the same as the one you have now, so you're likely to have the same issue, for the same reasons. Dual gear helps a little, but the filament bends because it can only be pushed so much. It will find its way between the gears and the hole right after the gears.
Even with the bondtech, if I forget to release the gears pressure when printing TPU it will clog for sure.

It doesn't matter how powerful your motor is or how much the extruder can pull the filament, this is not relevant for TPU printing.

I tried a lot of different extruding systems over the years, the bondtech is by far the best ratio quality price.
 
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Thanks for the suggestions, I think I will go with the dd extruder on the oem heatbrake for now.
It seems like least hassle to get working..
Dui ni shuo de dui said:
It doesn't matter how powerful your motor is or how much the extruder can pull the filament, this is not relevant for TPU printing.

I tried a lot of different extruding systems over the years, the bondtech is by far the best ratio quality price.
Click to expand...
Alright, I will go for one of those. And a lighter stepper motor, but I want it to work for all filaments then. I dont think I will move the extruder when I print other materials.
The motors I find is mostly these 17HS4023:

MZnjRS2l.jpg
tmhlbtpl.jpg



Here is another one with the same numbers, but not the same specifications:

BdqNKP5l.jpg


Here is another model, 17HS08-1004S that seems to be slightly smaller:

E0JoLzpl.jpg


What do you think, would these work or should I find something else?
 
j bjork said:
Thanks for the suggestions, I think I will go with the dd extruder on the oem heatbrake for now.
It seems like least hassle to get working..

Alright, I will go for one of those. And a lighter stepper motor, but I want it to work for all filaments then. I dont think I will move the extruder when I print other materials.
The motors I find is mostly these 17HS4023:

MZnjRS2l.jpg
tmhlbtpl.jpg



Here is another one with the same numbers, but not the same specifications:

BdqNKP5l.jpg


Here is another model, 17HS08-1004S that seems to be slightly smaller:

E0JoLzpl.jpg


What do you think, would these work or should I find something else?
Click to expand...
I don't know enough about specific stepper motor specs to know for sure, but I'd imagine any of those would work. You won't need to swap it between materials. It will get hotter as it extrudes, but steppers tend to run just fine at higher temps.
 
j bjork said:
Thanks for the suggestions, I think I will go with the dd extruder on the oem heatbrake for now.
It seems like least hassle to get working..

Alright, I will go for one of those. And a lighter stepper motor, but I want it to work for all filaments then. I dont think I will move the extruder when I print other materials.
The motors I find is mostly these 17HS4023:

MZnjRS2l.jpg
tmhlbtpl.jpg



Here is another one with the same numbers, but not the same specifications:

BdqNKP5l.jpg


Here is another model, 17HS08-1004S that seems to be slightly smaller:

E0JoLzpl.jpg


What do you think, would these work or should I find something else?
Click to expand...

I can't tell you if everything will be compatible for sure because I can't access these pages since I don't have an aliexpress account.

But what should matter in your case is the number of degree per step (here it is 1.8 degree) and the diameter of the shaft.
1.8degree per step is the most common, so I suppose this is what your printer is already equipped with.
The shaft diameter must be the same as the extruder you chose, typically it is 5mm but I know sometimes they can use imperial dimensions so something like 6.35mm. You need to check that both will fit.

Other than that it should be fine. I found that even with these small motors it is enough to push any kind of filament even at very high rates.
One thing to take into account right now is the connection from the new extruder to your current setup. I know different versions of the BMG extruder exist with various output connection systems, so make sure you buy one that will be easy to interface with what you already have now.
 
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j bjork said:
I get about 45 degrees C after printing for a while. It seems to work well on my abs prints so far.
Click to expand...
On my printers so far I've just separated the printer from the electronics and build a box from polyisocyanurate foam and install a incandescent light bulb on a ceramic base connected to a PID controller and SSR or use the enclosure PID on the control board. Also good to add a circulation fan inside. And for ABS and Nylon I run them at 70C, 50C for PETG but almost never print it because it's terrible impact performance. Hotter would be better but I haven't finished my high temp printer yet that will have all internals safe for higher temps. I've never had an issue with steppers, delrin wheels, wires, etc at 70C but you do have to make sure any printed parts under stress are printed from nylon or PC, ABS is ok for low stress parts.
 
The stuff arrived today, except the metal extruder that arrived earlier:

TIfz1id.jpg


A new, smaller stepper motor. An extension cord so I dont have to cut the printers wiring. Some fittings and tube.
And the extruder. I like the design, but all the parts were missing except the bracket and the extruder. No mounting screws, no preload spring. And most important, no drive gear for the stepper motor ☹️

ZD21Pg5.jpg


They included a list with what should have been included..

lRykuzR.jpg


The out connection is not threaded 🤔
 
My old faithful E3 has just been given this hotend CHC-V6 Hotend 24V 50W Ceramic Heating Core Print Head for Voron 2.4 Prusa4214 | eBay (compatible with my own design E3D V6 hotend bracket see thingiverse Alternative Ender 3 Hotend by crunchysteve) and a linear rail conversion kit. It's early days yet, but the print quality on both PLA and PETG/carbonfibre has been phenomenal! I've also upgraded the control board to an MKS mini E3 V2.0. Total works budget about the cost of another Ender 3 V2 for performance approaching a Sovol SV08, which is a fair comparison, because I now need to replace my fans, because they're now the loudest part of the machine!:ROFLMAO:

Also, bike related, if anybody's running cable disks (I know they're popular with curmudgeonly old school cycle tourists like me, I run TRP HyRD hybrids, cables pull a master cylinder on the caliper), checkout my Dryline file, too.
 
Probably depends on what plastic, I've run V6s up to 300+ no problem in the original Titan bodies which I believe are made from delrin while the whole thing is in a chamber at 70C. The top of the heatsink stays not too far above ambient as long as the fan is running, fan dies and bad things happen but I've only had that happen once. Also with stainless all metal heatbreak, no fancy TI or bimetallic heatbreaks that would further reduce heat creep.
 
WQyY8wN.jpg


I printed the bracket, but when I was mounting it I noticed that it didnt line up.

wZJbFpQ.jpg


I cut off the top of the bracket and mounted the one I got with the other extruder.

2DneVcD.jpg


A new try printing TPU, I tried yesterday as well but it ended like this:

HldomvC.jpg


I shortened the spring now, so I hope it will skip instead.
 
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