(This is an ongoing post, pictures and content may be added later)
Congratulations, you’re about to learn everything there is to know about how 3D printers work from a hardware perspective, just not from me. They can produce some amazing prints but will also teach you the ins and outs of printing. They will both frustrate and amaze you, but above all else they will fuel your desire to print better, to precisely tune your machine and create anything you want.
Assembly Tips
Follow the instructions carefully, using a guide on YouTube is an excellent option. This guide uploaded by Ricky Impey is one of the best I’ve found so far.
You may want to note two things:
– The carriage that holds the hot end has three wheels on it. One of these has an eccentric nut on it that is adjustable; the wheel is mounted on the nut slightly offset, so that when the nut spins the wheel will move up or down allowing you to tighten or loosen the wheel on the gantry. This carriage is meant to ride the rail left and right, it needs to be just tight enough to smoothly glide but not too tight.
– The Z-stop switch (the one located to the left of the build surface/bed) can be moved up or down on the rail. Sometimes the hotend isn’t moving down enough, or sometimes moves down too much. The Z-stop switch tells the printer where the hotend should be with the tip of the nozzle just barely above the surface of the bed. You can always adjust this later.
First Steps
Materials
You’re going to need some material to print things. Sometimes Creality includes a small length of white “PLA”. I put that in quotations because this stuff seems different from any other brand of PLA you might find, including Creality themselves. But starting with PLA is a great idea for your first print. You can find all manner of filament from Amazon. I would recommend brands like Sunlu, NAGA, Polymaker, Overture, and Geeetech among others. I would recommend avoiding Creality branded filament as it doesn’t seem to be a consistent quality, and is prone to stringing, a phenomena where thin wisp-like strands of filament appear between parts of a print.
Pre-print checks
Before we get to printing, make sure everything is working correctly and that the nozzle is securely screwed in to the hot end. The nozzle should only every be tightened or loosened at printing temperature (220C). Ensure that the bowden tube (the white tube that carries filament to the hotend) is inserted into the hotend as far as possible, some force may be required. This should also be done at printing temperature. Using the screen and control knob, navigate your way to the temperature settings (Creality sometimes refers to this as “tune”). On this screen you can manually set the temperatures for both the bed and hotend.
Level the bed
Make sure your print bed is leveled (more correctly called “trammed”). The bed has four wheels on the underside, one at each corner. Tightening or loosening them will raise or lower that respective corner. The surface of the bed needs to be parallel to the gantry which your hotend travels on. This allows the nozzle to be always at the same height regardless of where the bed is in relation to it.
tr3nD maker has a good guide on YouTube for leveling the bed using a piece of paper.
First print
If your printer included a microSD card, it likely contains one or more printable files. These are .gcode files. Gcode files are not models, but a set of instructions for your printer to make the model. I’ll go over that in the next main section. For now, you likely have either the Cat, or the Boat model to print.
Slicing Your First Model
Find a slicer
Downloading a model alone won’t let you print it. Your printer needs gcode instructions to tell it where to move in the XYZ space in order to create a model. I’d recommend Orca Slicer, or Prusa Slicer.
Download a model
The 3D printing community is strongly based around open-source, as such a vast majority of models are free to download and print. There are many model repositories available, some of the top choices would be:
Printables – A well-established library of models.
Thingiverse – One of the longest running model libraries, filled with gems and junk alike. Search function is questionable.
Thangs – A combination library and search engine, it searches across multiple model libraries including Printables and Thingiverse.
Import your model to your slicer
Your slicer probably included a preset for the Ender 3 V2 during setup. This is generally good enough to get started, but you may need to make adjustments here and there when it comes to temperatures and speeds.
With your model imported and settings set, you can slice your model. This should create a gcode file that can be exported to the microSD card, and printed.
To be continued…