I have had 3d printers since 2011 and the first one was a PrintRbot that was made with laser cut balsa wood. I have modified printers and owned 4. When I got my Ender 3 V2 in 2022, I got all of the mods and thought I had arrived, that filament printing was maxed out. NOT SO! This Ender -3 V3 Plus is fantastic. It includes all of the mods that I made to my Ender 3 V2, has a huge build plate, I am no longer buying painter’s tape/disappearing school glue for build plate adhesion, and it was cheaper than my Ender 3 V2 purchase after buying the modifications. IT RUNS 10 times the speed and the quality is AMAZING. I had been comfortable with doing all of the thinking for the printer by designing for what the printer can do. My only hope is that this will hold together because it is REALLY fast. Talk about rapid prototyping… I can be done finish designing one version of a part and within minutes the part is done. The camera is very cool, I can be working on a design and look into the monitor and see the printer hard at work.
There are a couple design flaws, but easy to fix.
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First, come on; instructions and tech support. This is a world class printer and it has the tech support of a start up lemonade stand run by 6 year olds. It would be so simple to hire a few technical writers to write a set of instructions. Tech guys are great at solving technical challenges but you need the liberal arts folks to write the instructions. There is a company Rhino Rack, that writes the best instructions; they are clear, easy to read and have a little humor.
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The original spool holder must be a joke, I will modify it eventually to feed the extruder from the top to eliminate strain.
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The antitangle thingamabob is another joke, it caused more problems than fixed. After it killed one of my prints, it went into the trash.
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I need to figure some way to dampen the vibration from the acceleration of the printer. I have it on a dedicated solid mount but the impact of the momentum of its moves are shaking the platform. I have a CNC machine and bolted it down to an extremely heavy desk and the increased mass fixed the problem.
But the reality is that I have been this printer constantly since unboxing a week ago. My Ender 3 V2, still a very viable machine is collecting dust but when you can run 10 times faster….
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I agree - I have 4 of them and love them. I moved the filament runout to the side of the vertical support that doesn’t move so no anti tangle thing needed. I also use the side mounted spool holder that comes on the usb drive instead of the default one (actually I modified it to be a little more compact for my print farm setup - 3D Printer Files | 3MF File | Side Mounted Spool Holder for E3V3Plus Tighter Fitting Mod ) - I don’t like top mounted spoolholders myself.
4 of these! And I thought I was hard core. I make all my project parts on this and a CNC that is heavily modified to work with aluminum. I have all sorts of cool ideas for easy mods to the printer, but I have a real backlog of projects. So, I moved the filament sensor and used the eyelet where the support leg on the right side attaches to the gantry. I had to drill out the one hole in that sensor to accept a longer M4 screw and attached it with the cable clamp. There is just enough cable to make a nice clean wiring installation. Then I used a stand alone reel mount that came with another product.
The only problem I have ever had with tangling has been when I tried a different vendor for filament. I get the best prices on PetG is with Creality filament from Amazon and it works great. The camera was a little overindulgence on my part but it is pretty cool to see it from a different angle. Other than speed, the biggest change has been this magnetic build plate. I used the glass build plates with blue tape and Elmer’s blue school glue for many years to get unwarped prints, now this thing just works, no more blue tape, no more Elmer’s. Prying things off the build plate was an issue previously. But now I can print almost at the speed I draw another prototype. It is really amazing. But I don’t know why Creality does not make the mods to the filament reel before they send them out. Seems so intuitive. But I am not complaining. This thing has accelerated my prototype cycle so fast that I don’t even need to crank up my workhorse ender 3 v2. The crazy part is that all the mods I made to my previous ender are on this unit and it was less than $50 different in price with double the build plate size. I don’t know why they don’t shelve everything else and just promote this printer. However, I suppose if this were your first printer, you may not understand the value.
Just saw your concern about top mounted filament spools. I agree, we do not need to make the printer top heavy. I built a reel holder off a shelf above my ender 3 v2 printer with bearings and the whole bit. My first mod to my old printer was for a direct drive extruder and steppers on both sides of the gantry in the Y direction. I am running a Sprite extruder on it and have had some incidents where the extruder was not strong enough to pull the filament off the reel. To be honest, I thought all PET-G was made to the same formula and now know of at least 6 brands that will never enter my shop again. So, I made it a direct shot to the extruder instead of pulling from the side. I standardized on the Creality filament and the ender 3 V3 plus it seems to be doing just fine pulling of the reel from the side.
Happy printing.
You did it fancier then me - I just used double sided tape to hold the filament sensor 
I don’t have a drill that does metal though. The v3 series has been discontinued - I suspect a v4 of the plus will come out eventually.
I’ve never used tape or glue on my glass build plates - they always just worked for me too. I bought 1 e3v3plus last january when I decided to open my 3d printing etsy shop. Quickly bought a second and then 2 more in December to keep up with orders. I also have a K2 Pro, Hi, Sparkx i7, 2 E5Max, and a Centauri Carbon in my little print farm, but the pluses are the workhorses for my best selling products.
Impressive. I am a retired engineer/teacher so I have the time to do the challenging things that interest me. I design machinery that goes from car to surf and over/under the water. The latest project is focused on mirrors and cell phone holders for rowing shells. I can go from a thought to a CAD drawing to a prototype in a single day now. I can make parts for rowing shells that are no longer made. It really opens up possibilities. This is printing so fast that my prototype completed printing before I had a chance to figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, my upgraded/hardened CNC mill is not of the same quality when I work with aluminum. I am considering maximizing my 3d printing uses by printing slots within my 3d printed parts for stainless steel reinforcement of parts.
Anyway, this printer has everything I need right now. Glad your printer farm is working well.
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