Your Ender-3 might want to... kill you? Learn how to make these beautiful upgrades safer and more reliable.

The original Creality Ender-3 raised the bar for budget 3D printers, although it was cheaper than ten rolls of PLA filament. But in order to achieve this feat, the corners have obviously been cut.

Whether you have the original Ender-3, Ender-3 Pro, or the newer Ender-3 V2 model, these cheap 3D printers will compromise on basic issues such as design, engineering, and even safety.

Read on to learn what key upgrades you can make to avoid potential problems, from poor reliability and print quality to preventing house fires and avoiding deadly nerve agents.

Although you can start printing immediately with the Ender-3 series, this is not ideal considering the health and safety risks associated with Creality's aggressive cost-cutting measures. Equipment that can melt plastic has a potential fire hazard. This potential is even greater when its manufacturing cost is low.

The Ender-3 controller board handles the delicate task of redirecting power from a 350-watt power supply unit (PSU) to power-consuming components (such as heating beds and nozzles) through wires connected to the screw terminals of the motherboard.

Unlike the solid copper wires found in the walls of our homes, the 3D printer wiring consists of several small copper wires to increase flexibility. The risk of stray strands shorting adjacent terminals makes it difficult to safely insert the stranded wire into the screw terminal.

Crimping the end of the wire with a shoelace ferrule is an ideal way to solve this problem.

Instead, Creality tinned the ends of these wires with solder. Although this sounds like an inexpensive solution, the solder tends to gradually deform under the clamping pressure of the screw terminal. The wires then become loose, which increases the conductor resistance and eventually generates enough heat to ignite nearby combustible materials.

Cutting off the tinned wire ends and pressing the shoelace loops on them is absolutely vital to the long-term safe operation of Ender-3:

It is well known that Ender-3 and Pro models will spontaneously ignite due to the counterfeit XT60 connector, which acts as a quick disconnect between the PSU and the heating bed. The fire hazard is due to poor electrical contact and problematic fire resistance of the plastic connector housing.

Although the real XT60 connector is relatively cheap, the replacement process still requires basic soldering skills.

Related: 3D printing errors you should avoid for better printing results

The 3D printer lays down the plastic layer by pushing the filament through a heated nozzle. It is difficult to limit the heat only to the nozzle. Some of the heat will always be transferred to the thermal circuit breaker, which is a metal tube that passes the cold light ribbon into the heated nozzle.

In fact, premature melting of the filament during thermal fracture is one of the most common causes of blockage and blockage.

All hot-end designs include an actively cooled heat sink to alleviate this problem, but this is not enough to prevent the filament from clogging.

Creality's solution includes insulating the filament with a heat-resistant PTFE lining that passes through the heating block and fits against the nozzle. Unfortunately, this also exposes the PTFE tube to temperatures exceeding 500°F (required for printing materials such as ABS).

This is a bad idea because PTFE releases toxic chemicals that are deadly to pet birds at temperatures as low as 395°F. DuPont’s own research shows that the material releases toxic particles that are harmful to humans at 464°F. Heating it further, you will be exposed to low-dose chemical warfare agents, such as PFIB and the nerve gas phosgene during World War II.

For PTFE tubing manufactured to specifications, all this is true-cheaper PTFE tubing is also prone to degradation at lower temperatures.

Expensive 3D printers solve this problem with an "all-metal" hot-end assembly that physically separates the PTFE tube from the heater block and nozzle.

By making the insulation layer thinner, thermal creep can be further reduced, thereby reducing its thermal mass to prevent heat conduction. This also requires the use of expensive materials with low thermal conductivity, such as stainless steel and titanium.

If you can't afford all-metal hot-end upgrades, it is best to stick to printing PLA. However, you can still safely print PETG by replacing cheap PTFE tubes with Capricorn brand tubes.

This is a convenient plug-in replacement with additives that prevent premature thermal deterioration. Due to tighter tolerances and reduced friction, Capricorn PTFE tubing also improves the retraction quality.

Related: How to 3D print for beginners and beginners

Now that we are sure that your Ender-3 will not kill you while you sleep, let us continue to upgrade to improve print quality and overall reliability. Although the design and engineering failure of the Ender-3 series stems from Creality's aggressive cost-cutting measures, fortunately, most of these restorations are 3D printable or quite cheap.

A large number of Ender-3 printers have misaligned Z-axis stepper motor mounts. This can cause various problems, from the obvious Z-band artifacts in 3D printing to the catastrophic binding of the Z-axis stepper motor.

The solution is fairly simple and involves 3D printing a suitable adjustable stepper motor bracket for your Ender-3 version. The adjustable type is particularly convenient for solving the existing frame misalignment problem.

The PTFE tube not only feeds the light ribbon into the heated nozzle, but also ensures that it does not melt prematurely on the way there. This makes these joints important because they hold the PTFE tube firmly in place and prevent it from being pushed out during the retraction movement.

Stock Ender-3 fittings are not very good in this regard and tend to lose grip over time, which can cause the PTFE tube to be pushed out of the hot end. Without a heat-resistant PTFE lining, the filament melts before it reaches the nozzle-this is why you encounter annoying blockages and blockages.

A high-quality PTFE fitting only costs a few dollars, but can save the time, effort, and money associated with clogging the filament.

A 3D printer requires two main components: a heated nozzle for melting the filaments, and an extruder that precisely moves the molten filaments out (and sometimes back) the nozzles. The raw material extruder assembly moves the filaments by sandwiching the filaments between bearings and straight-cut pinions.

Unfortunately, the latter crushed the filament, and frequent retraction would exacerbate this damage. To make matters worse, this extruder design cannot provide enough extrusion grip, because only the pinion can actively push the filament. The ensuing extruder slippage caused poor print quality.

The dual-drive gear extruder is a relatively inexpensive solution that uses a pair of meshing gears to push the filament from both sides. These pinions are not straight cut like ordinary gears, but are hobbed to hold the filament firmly without crushing it.

Gear hobbing is a machining process in which teeth are cut into gears with a unique semicircular contour, which conforms to the natural cylindrical shape of the filament. This ensures precise filament extrusion, providing consistent and accurate 3D printing.

Moving (or leveling) the build surface is absolutely critical to the success of 3D printing. This is a labor-intensive process that can be easily cancelled by tapping on the 3D print stubbornly stuck to the build plate.

There are two main ways to solve this problem. The first involves upgrading stock springs with harder aftermarket springs to better maintain alignment through the abuse described above.

A more expensive solution involves upgrading the stock build surface to a flexible magnetic surface. The finished 3D printed part stuck on the detachable spring steel plate can be easily separated from the magnetic plate stuck to the bed.

Separating the print is a simple problem of bending the flexible board, which can then be photographed directly back to the bed without affecting the alignment.

The nozzle of Ender-3 moves along the Z-axis, thanks to the 8 mm screw that precisely controls the up and down movement of the X gantry that contains the nozzle. The lead screw is driven by a Z-axis stepping motor, and a rigid coupling connects the two mechanically.

Even with the slightest misalignment, the rigidity of the coupling can quickly become a burden.

It is almost impossible to find the perfect linear screw without swing-the imprecise Z-axis stepper motor installation further exacerbates this problem. This dislocation is manifested in the form of Z-belt artifacts, which plagues almost every Ender-3 in the wild.

Spider couplings can solve this problem well.

Different from the rigid coupling, the star coupling is composed of three parts: the upper half and the lower half of the hub, sandwiching the star coupling in the middle. The latter is made of semi-flexible elastomer, designed to absorb slight lead screw swings and prevent slight misalignment from affecting print quality.

However, the biggest advantage of the star coupling is that it tends to separate the lead screw from the stepper motor when the nozzle collides. Such accidents are not uncommon. The star coupling can be used as a fault protection device to protect the nozzle, bed and other hot-end components from damage.

These couplings can spring back immediately without losing any function after an accident.

All these upgrades should resolve the major safety, quality and reliability issues affecting the Ender-3 series. Avoid applying multiple upgrades at once, otherwise troubleshooting will be a nightmare when something goes wrong.

We deliberately omitted expensive and complicated modifications, such as BLTouch automatic bed leveling system and dual Z-axis upgrades. Using these quick fixes at the beginning is not conducive to mastering the basic skills of manual dialing in the printer.

As you delve into the 3D printed rabbit hole, you can even replace the inventory controller board with a feature-rich after-sales upgrade. However, it is easy to spend more on upgrades than you pay for the printer itself. By then—as this ancient thought experiment hypothesized—is it even Ender-3?

Tired of printing PLA with an entry-level 3D printer? Learn how to upgrade your 3D printing game by building your own 3D printing game from scratch.

In his 15-year career, Nachiket has covered various technological beats from video games and PC hardware to smart phones and DIY. Some people say that his DIY article is an excuse to pass his 3D printer, custom keyboard and RC addiction as "business expenses" to his wife.

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