RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Whilst browsing ebay (as one does) I spotted the new Creality Ender 3 Max from Technology Outlet for only £186 - Wow

So with no further ado I ordered it and 3 days later here it is

Unboxing

Assembling

And turn it on

and away we go


First impressions are fantastic, it has almost the same print volume as the CR10 300x300x340, it is very quiet, build quality is great, I had to tighten a few bits and pieces like x and y drive belts, the roller bearing nuts, and the spring tensioner bolt on the extruder that for some reason came undone, but I'm delighted to get a latest spec printer at a very cheap price.

I was disappointed that it didn't have the all metal extruder but at that price I can do an upgrade later, so now for some fun printing add on bits.

Alwyn

Congratualtions!

yes, very nice printer

Are you sure you don't have the metalextruder, I thought it is standard on the Max?
As far as I could see, mine is metal.

I am still earning and figuring out how everything works, and slowly it gets better, but for me it is my first printer anyway.

Have fun with it!

Hi Jee, no it's £21 cheaper than the one with the metal extruder - I double checked after I got it. It's still a brilliant printer and I will upgrade the second I get any extruder issues.

Alwyn

Ah ok, well you can print already a replacement part in case it cracks

But I think an all metal extruder is not 21 pound is it?

Yes £15 for the dual gear redrex one. Perhaps a later buy.

Alwyn

AlwynTurner wrote:Yes £15 for the dual gear redrex one. Perhaps a later buy.

Alwyn

Some advice, dual gear version is totally rubbish. It sits in a box in a drawer now. I would not recommend. It eats itself. They need redesigned to make them run well.

I have been battling to tune the print quality on this printer since it arrived, and have done everything to sort out an issue with the z-axis without success. Today I resolved to THOROUGHLY check the z-axis mechanism and I found this

The bolts holding the z-axis carraige to the screw bracket were not ightened so consequently the z-axis was moving up and down at random. This mainly but not exclusively affected the first few layers, but still resulted in general quality issues.
After tightening the bolts, adjusting the roller tensions on the z-axis rollers, and re-levelling the bed I run the xyz test file with a dramatic improvement in results.

There is still some fine tuning to do but I think I'm nearly there.

Alwyn

I was still not happy that all had been resolved so after trawling the net I found that the Ender 3 has a problem with z axis screw alignment, so I stripped the mechanism and behold


The screw is misaligned at the home position, but only by about 1mm. The prescribed answer is to add a shim between the motor and the frame, which I did and then everything lined up.



I can't understand how a 1mm misalignment can cause the binding issue, but that is what the various 3d printer expert threads say is the problem.

I'm now waiting for a new dual gear extruder to arrive from Amazon as I have been having issues with extrusion, and I found with my CR-10 that the dual gear extruder fixed the problem and vastly improved print quality.

We shall see

Alwyn

That misalignment on the Z axis raises an interesting thought for me Alwyn - I have a CR10 that I was trying to upgrade to 10S spec with a new circuit board and an add-on Z axis screw kit, but like yours it binds horribly for reasons that I couldn't fathom. I'll see if shimming it make a difference

Its interesting that Creality added the second Z axis to the 10S because people were raising concerns that the single Z screw of the CR10 would cause the X axis to droop as the rubber guide rollers wore down, but they seem to have gone back to this design with the Ender 3 Max?
Is this just a case of them thinking that because its so cheap people don't care, or at least will live with it? (Or was the whole X axis droop issue over-blown, and could be corrected with a bed leveling sensor if you really too lazy to keep the bed properly gapped by manual means ?)

The new 2 geared extruder arrived which is the same as the one on my CR-10



For some reason I also received a miniature rubber duck

One factor to be very aware of when fitting these dual gear extruders is that the diameter of the extruder gear is much smaller than the standard extruder gear supplied with the printer


This means that the material flow needs to be increased in CURA to compensate and I have found 150% worked just fine

Installed with Capricorn bowden tubing


I also pondered about the PLA material I was using and realised this has been open and closed numerous times in transit during our removal, and was probably contaminated by humidity, so on went a new roll of PLA+ - here's the result of my tinkering and adjusting parameters in CURA



There is still a slight elephants foot, and the Z height of the cube is 0.8mm shorter than it should be. I still haven't ruled out issues with the roller tension and the Z mechanism so more tuning is required, but it is looking much better.

Alwyn