So, I bought a Creality Ender 3 Max 3D printer. The thought of being able to print your own and others custom designs seemed awesome. And with a little perseverance it is!
A friend of mine bought a 3D printer with dual z-axis motors and autoleveling for three times the price of mine (he obviously doesn't have a wife and kids). Both of which I sorely miss. The dual motors and autoleveling that is. Not the wife and kids..
Assembly
I assembled the printer according to the instructions. I'm awesome! Seriously, very easy assembly and understandable instructions. You might want to go over nuts and bolts to make sure they are tight. Just beware of tightening wheels and belts for now (we'll get to that).
Bed leveling
What is it
The way you do manual bed leveling (as opposed to automatic bed leveling on more expensive printers like my friends.. Screw you..) is that you position the nozzle in each corner of the bed, then you adjust the bed height with the screws until there is a 0.06-0.2mm distance between the nozzle and the bed. You then move the nozzle to the next corner and repeat until all four corners have been adjusted. Since the entire bed will move when a screw is adjusted you should go over every corner again after each adjustment. It is a good idea to heat the nozzle and bed prior to this as metal and glass expand when heated. I didn't think about this when first leveling which probably affected my prints.
Semi-automatic bed leveling
Instead of leveling the bed manually by moving the printer head by hand, I used some gcode files provided in this chepclub article. You simply put the gcode files on the SD card and start a print ("Print from TF") selecting the extracted gcode file. The nozzle will move to each corner of the bed allowing you to adjust the bed.
Screw me
What I noticed when leveling the Ender 3 Max is that the rear left wheel did not raise the bed far enough. With the wheel completely unwound there was almost a one centimeter gap between the nozzle and the bed. The solution for me was to jiggle the plastic coupling between the wheel and the spring, as well as poking the spring with my fingers. It seems the springs that come with the printer are a bit weak and can get stuck. Another friend who experienced this issue had luck going over the entire frame tightening all bolts and nuts. Just don't tighten the ones connected to the small wheels allowing for movement of the axes, like I did.. I will get back to why that can be a bad idea.
Warped bed
Guess what, turns out nothing is perfect. Glass beds are known for being flat, but they too are not immune to warping. What this basically means is that the bed is not uniformly flat. Given that the nozzle shouldn't be farther apart than 0.2mm, an uneven bed can cause issues.
In my case, once all four corners had been calibrated, the nozzle was too far away from the bed when centered. Not sure if there is a lot to be done about this, but I have seen some videos where people put a layer or two of aluminium foil in the middle under the glass plate. I haven't tried this yet. Despite this being the case I moved on.
How to do it
Once the nozzle and bed have been pre-heated, start a print selecting the CHEP gcode file from the SD card. The printer will position the nozzle in the front left corner and stop. Now you take a strip of ordinary office paper (which is ~0.1mm thick) and slide it between the bed and the nozzle. Wiggling the paper back and forth, raise the bed slowly until the nozzle touches the paper. You will feel some resistance in the paper. Just how much resistance you should feel is something you will learn after leveling and printing a couple of times. For now, as long as you feel resistance while still being able to wiggle the paper, you're good. I had to re-level a couple of times until the Benchy model came out OK. Which leads us to the next part, the first print.
Printing
Slicers and stl models
A slicer is a piece of software that can produce instructions for the 3D printer on how to print a given model. It takes a 3D model (usually in the *.stl format) and slices it into a *.gcode file which contains step-by-step instructions for the 3D printer. There are a bunch of settings like printing speed, infill, layer-height etc. I will not go into these in this post.
I am using the Prusa slicer which conveniently provides an Ender 3 Max profile.
Benchmarking with Benchy
Benchy is a model of a small boat specially designed to challenge and calibrate the printer. Analyzing the printed model you can get a feel of how well your printer performs and adjust it accordingly. The model can be found over at 3dbenchy.com along with guides on how to analyze the printed model. There are several models used for testing and calibrating, but this is the one I started out with.
It came out ok, considering I had not made any adjustments other than bed leveling. The text on the bottom wasn't that readable, though.
Printing something useful
Since Benchy turned out ok, I figured it was time to live out my dream and start printing something useful. So like any sane person I found a smartphone holder on thingiverse. Equipped with the Prusa slicer and this beauty I was ready to print.
It didn't exactly end up as expected. Perhaps I chose the *.std file instead of the *.stl file..
Calibrating
Smooth movement along X and Y-axis
When moving the bed and printer head by hand they should travel smoothly without any sudden resistance or stops. On my printer both of them "snapped" at certain points when I slid them across. According to guides online you adjust the eccentric nuts for each of them until they slide smoothly. This only partially worked for me. What did remove the problem almost fully was adjusting the tension on the belts, ever so slightly. Next step!
Screw you
So one of my 3D-printing friends, who at the time owned an Ender 3 Max, suggested I go over the entire frame tightening all screws, nuts and bolts. A loose frame could easily cause issues during printing, so I took his advice and tightened everything up. And I mean everything... When I was done it was so tight even the printer head wouldn't move. To my delight the printer now started printing mid-air. To celebrate my intellect I then went outside to wash my car with a rock.
Adjusting the X-gantry
The what? Exactly. So let's move on.
After loosening up all nuts and bolts in hope of reversing the damage, I still got botched prints like I deserved. One of the main issues seemed to be a sagging x-gantry. This is the "arm" the printer head is attached to, allowing it to move along the x-axis. If this is sagging more than 1-2mm on one side you've got a problem.
So, following this video I partially disassembled the printer, adjusted the x-gantry and assembled it again.
Remember, although the printer in the video is an Ender 3, it is NOT an Ender 3 Max. Ignoring this completely I removed the x-gantry not noticing a spring on the lead screw. This sucker shot in the air like a mentos-and-coke experiment. I almost fucked my ceiling (not literally ofcourse). By some miracle I managed to find the spring and assemble the printer again.
Printing - Round 2
The next step was to try printing the smartphone holder again. To my dismay it failed again, turning into spaghetti. But Benchy, that slick bastard, printed fine and actually came out better than the first one! Notice the text.
It seemed like the x-gantry was still slightly sagging and some of the wheels on the trolley was spinning freely, not touching the frame at all. So what do you do? You blow off quality time with your wife (bonus) and disassemble the piece of shit again.
After adjusting trolleys, tightening nuts, assembling the printer wrong, disassembling again, re-tightening, re-adjusting and re-re-assembling we are ready to print our smartphone holder!
Let's start with printing a two hour Benchy to make sure we are calibrated correctly, before starting a 13 hour print. Like usual Benchy turns out fine.
Great, we are ready to retry the smartphone holder!
Awesome, now we are getting somewhere!
In an attempt to try to pin-point where exactly the print is struggling I print this All In One 3D Printer test from thingiverse. The result is somewhat annoying.
At this point I am ready to give up and use it as a hot plate for frying eggs.
Benchy is coming out fine. The "All in one" model is coming out fine. Why oh why won't the smartphone holder cum out fine!?
I turn to my 3D printing buddies. Like the smartasses they are, they suggest rotating the two halves of the model 90 degrees. This way each part will lie down instead of standing up. But surely, the model from thingiverse is set up correctly and ready to print? Anyway, let's try flipping the models in the slicer.
Result
I then proceeded to remove my buddies from my Facebook friends list.
As you can see at the tip there was an issue with warping at the start of the print. After cleaning the plate and printing another one the result was perfect!
Cleaning & adhesives
Cleaning
When you notice that your prints are no longer sticking to the bed it might be time to clean it. Take some paper towels or a microfiber cloth and clean the bed with isopropyl alcohol (IPA) at 70% to 99.99% concentration. Should this not be enough you can try common household window cleaner first. Apply, lay some paper towels on top and let it soak for a couple of minutes. Wipe it off with more paper towels and then clean with isopropyl alcohol again.
Do not use toilet paper, which I did. It leaves a lot of residue which will make it worse. Remember, toilet paper is for ass, not for glass..
Adhesives
There are a bunch of tricks out there to improve adhesion; regular household glue stick, hairspray, tape etc..
The Ender 3 Max comes with a textured glass plate, and I have found that glue does not help. If anything it lessens adhesion. The best solution for me has been to clean the bed properly.
I have not tried hairspray, but I would not recommend it if you can avoid it. You will have to remove the bed each time to avoid spraying the entire printer. Should movable parts or electronics get sticky it's obviously a problem.
Conclusion
Awesome, my dreams have come true! Just be aware that buying a budget printer will probably lead to a good deal of troubleshooting and research. More expensive printers will run into the same issues at some point, but probably not as many or as often. My friend with the expensive printer has owned it longer than I have mine, and he hasn't had 1/10th of the issues I have. So if you want a plug-and-play printer you might want to avoid budget printers like the Ender 3 Max.
I will now move on to more serious prints. Stay tuned.