So, a year or so ago I ventured back into 3D printing after ‘breaking’ my Ender 3 v2 the previous November and loosing faith in it. Multiple jams, impatience and generally in a bad place mentally I shelved it and figured *BLEEP* it.. so, roll on July 2023, coming back from a randomly obscure drive and seeing a stupendously priced Ender 3 Pro, with a few mods – I enquired and drove to Bishop Auckland to pick it up and brought it home, excellent.. or so I thought.
After getting it home, and rattling through the half reel of marble effect filament, I soon started to notice it’s quirks, nothing was level or tracking correctly due to things being out of level, undoing some of the repairs found shortcut bodges.. still, even as a parts machine I had more than my moneys worth. However, it didn’t take long after a couple of conversations with a friend who excels in Ender3 setup to get things lined up, and running fairly true, un-bodging all of the wiring, swapping out the hot-end, heater cartridge and replacing the thermistor that was hanging on for dear life and replacing the cracked extruder bracket.
So, what have I ended up with after all of that…
Ender 3 Pro:
- BigTreeTech e3 1.3 Mini v2 board
- Aluminium Extruder (dual gears) (added after purchase)
- BigTreeTech TFT35 (added after purchase)
- Replacement Creality hot-end (standard affair, did toy with a Microswiss, but finances etc)
Little upgrades:
- Filament feeder (using a 608 bearing) just to line up the filament path into the extruder – does more than you’d think
- Filament spool holder (3d printed, using 2 608 bearings) for smoother action on that spooling.