3d Printers: Then vs Now

Throwing it back to the OG 3D printing game with the Ender 3 and comparing it to the latest Creality Hi Combo! 🚀 From the nightmare of bed leveling to the bliss of Wi-Fi-enabled prints, this video takes a deep dive into how far 3D printing has come in just seven years. I’ll walk you through print times, slicer experiences, and a whole bunch of cool tech like automatic bed leveling, remote printing, and even multi-color prints. Spoiler alert: The newer Creality printer might just make you appreciate how easy we've got it now. But hey, even the old Ender 3 can still pull off some pretty sweet prints if you’re up for a little tinkering!

The Creality Hi printer was sent to me by Creality.
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Chapter Markers:

00:00 - Intro
00:54 - Slicing
02:03 - Preparing the printer
04:00 - Troubleshooting
04:41 - Smart features
06:08 - Getting into 3d Printing
07:25 - Built quality & reliability
09:46 - Print Times
11:21 - Your thoughts

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Tags:
#3dprinter

[rikufanboy]

$199 and $329 without CFS are NOT "pretty much the same price point"

[melgross]

I think the hobby is moving from being more of a printer hobby to a printing hobby. One is the hobby of the machine and the other is the prints that come out of the machine. 3D printing is transitioning from a hobby and enthusiast market to more of a consumer market.

[karrotop]

I had to laugh at 10:46, that's literally me sometimes just sitting and watching my printer work 😂

[xScarwolf]

Originally started out with an Ender 5 Pro. Install BLTouch, tinkered here and there and never managed to print a couple successfull prints in a row. Sold it a year later because I never used it anymore.
One month ago, I got the Bambu Lab P1S and I fell in love with 3D Printing again. Not a single Print failed, even though I already used up 3 Kilos of Filament. It's astonishing how convenient all of this is today.

[RidingTheAlps]

I started with an Ender 3 V2 in 2019. I wanted to create my own cases for my electronic projects. Over the time I added a BLTouch, a 2nd Z-rail and an all metal hot-end. Tinkering was kind of a usual thing. But I printed PLA, PETG, TPU, Nylon-CF. Parts for cable management in IT-rooms, add-ons for my motorbike and utility parts had be printed well. It is a "fiddling" thing to get the prints done, but it still is working. Now I bought an Prusa Core One (coming in end of April) and I'm thrilled to see what's different in the printing experience.

I think it's like having an old motorbike where you had to tinker all the time to get it running and keep it running vs. a modern motorbike where you expect to be reliable and do the job. But I won't miss having both worlds ;)

[sdrowlette]

I liked the video! This brought back a lot of memories of time spent tinkering with my Ender 3 Pro! My X1C made me forget about a lot of that stuff, but I did learn a lot in those early days!

[derHeiko]

Der Ender3 ist mit Silentboard und leisen Lüftern völlig Geräuchlos gelaufen. Ein Traum, auch Heute noch.
Drucker heute sind einfach nur noch schnelle Krachmaschinen

[THErealJJGrayg]

While I'm waiting on my H2D to arrive early May (no laser, seemed like more of a hassle than a feature for almost $100 more) I'm still running the Ender 3 that I bought in 2021. I've upgraded the bed to a 3-point leveling system, added a magnetic PEI print surface, installed a CR touch and a sprite pro tool head, purchased a soft enclosure, and connected it to a Raspberry Pi running Klipper to give me all the incredible features that come with that. Within the past month I've printed some high quality nylon parts for everyday use, as well as some TPU, ABS, and PLA prints regularly.

It's one hell of a machine, but it definitely takes a lot of work and tinkering to get there, I'm really excited to see how different the experience will be in the Bambu Labs ecosystem.

[ninjmnky]

Every drawback that you mentioned for the Ender still exists on the Ender 3 V3 SE which is just over a year old model, after using mine for 9 months i finally got tired of wasting time and money on countless tweaks and replacements and whatnot, sold it on marketplace and got myself a bambu a1 which has none of that bs. it just works. finally my printer is working for me instead of the other way around.

[btmedic]

I started with an ender 3v2 in 2020 and have always been able to get a good print out of it, but im also the kind of person that when i get involved with something, i dive all the way into it. I learned how to tweak, tune and upgrade that machine. added a microswiss all metal hotend, bl touch, capricorn ptfe tube, metal extruder cap before snagging a raspberry pi, a pi camera and setting up octoprint with it. the RPi with octoprint added many features todays printers already have out of the box, but all the way back in 2021 for me. Fast forward to earlier this month, I decided it was time for a core xy machine and multifilament capability. I ended up getting an anycubic kobra s1 and it has worked flawlessly out of the box. i still tweak and tune, but mostly with my slicer settings now.

[SnoringVids]

I have an ender 5 pro. Never thought I'd be excited to see what creality is putting out, but they've upped their clone game

[poepflater]

I have an old Finder, it is like 10 years old, and apart from a cold bed and slow as heck printing and 140mm bed, it has a touch screen, wifi and ethernet and cloud

[primemorial]

I was thinking about buying one but i am confused weather to buy a $300-$350 bamboo labs A1/ creality Hi or buy a $200 ender 3 v3 se and filament with the remaining money

[Frederik.Schwim]

I still have an Ender 3 v2 :( and still experiencing these pains.... I heard great things about the Bambu A1 as well with the AMS.

[RockeyDAproductions]

My Ender 3v2 had to have a lot of parts replaced before it became reliable.

basically every stressed plastic part light tensioners and fan shroud failed and had to be reprinted

I've had replace most of my bearings to reduce some banding in the printer and I entirely replaced the hot end and extruder with a direct drive setup from micro Swiss

[RockeyDAproductions]

I haven't done the paper leveling crap in years and I'm still using my Ender 3, alongside an X1 Carbon.

I had found it to be easier and more precise to make my own bad leveling STL where I visually put the nozzle where it looks like it should be in certain locations and I also have my beds high and low spots memorized so I have to try to compensate for that so it stays consistent

[neongrey]

God. I still have a Monoprice Mini sitting in my closet. My new P1S still feels magical.

[sknus]

Im from Argentina, i started 3d print with the ender 3, a few months ago, now i have 2, and waiting for the anycubic kobra s1, sometimes this printers, they give me a lot of headaches, they print slowly and you have to calibrate all the time, but I learned a lot from all this, I hope to be able to change them at some point.

[cueball]

I bought my first printer, an Ender 3 v2, in late 2020. Printed with it for a month, then got the itch to modify it. I ended up screwing something up and couldn't get the damn thing to drop a good first layer for the life of me. I finally gave up.

It sat on the shelf, collecting dust for nearly 4 years until just this past January. I finally got tired of looking at it as a paperweight and decided to either fix it or sell it.

Well, good news! After about a month of tweaking, more upgrades (and I mean a lot more), my "little machine that could" prints 2x faster than stock with near perfect results! I have to say what I've learned these past few months has me bitten by the 3D printing bug! So much so that I've ordered my first core xy machine, a Qidi Plus4, so I can print at higher temps using engineer grade materials!

It'll arrive sometime later today. Now I'll have 2 very capable units that I'll use to create gifts for family and friends, useful gadgets, and also my own creations now that I'm learning how to design (thank you, Tom, for teaching me!)

We are very much spoiled now with all the advances, but I'm so glad Itook the road less traveled by digging into an old icon and learning so much along the way!

Last thing, Klipper and Orca together are an amazing duo! I'm so glad I took the plunge and upgraded the Creality to take advantage of them! Auto bed-leveling, bed mesh probing, and input shaping are also amazing upgrades that really dial in the quality and speed!

Great video! I was relating with your struggles the entire time! I, too, am now ready for a vacation from tinkering and just relaxing!

[SnoringVids]

All the enders came with the nozzle loose which results in a gap which leads to filament oozing out and then filament drag. An all metal hot end is a must with the older printers. I opted for a micro swiss revo ng but in today's market might make more sense to just upgrade to a more modern printer