Over the years many different brands of 3D printers have come and gone. Few have stuck around long enough to create the kind of following the Creality brand has earned. They have done this by targeting customers who would like a product priced to get them in the 3D printing space while still offering product options previously only available in more premium solutions. In this post I will be sharing my experience as a first time user of a Creality product.
I will note for transparency that my previous experience has been limited to Lulzbot and Prusa brand printers. I have been using them for over 5 years and have a good underlying knowledge base of 3D printing technologies, techniques, and troubleshooting.
I found the Creality Ender3 V2 to be sufficiently packaged and better than what I was expecting. I am not sure there is much more I can say that cannot be seen in the photos of the unboxing below.
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This process was actually a lot easier than I expected it would be. All of the power, brains, and Y axis are all put together before you start.
I did experience small amounts of frustration, but I attribute them to a poorly written Instruction Manual. Most of these complaints were fairly easy hurdles to get over and furthermore, I decided not to include most of them here because I see they have already addressed them in the updated version.
I will also mention that my eyes are not what they once were, so I found it very difficult to work out of the very small manual that was provided.
My first recommendation is that you go and download the manual. It will have important updated instructions and the ability to zoom in is almost necessary.
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In the last two pictures above, you will see the spool rack is being used to level the X axis. This step is not suggested by the supplier. It just made me feel better to do it.
Now that I have been using the Creality Ender 3 V2 for a couple of months I can truth fully say that I am thoroughly impressed by the quality of prints that can come from this machine. For the price point it absolutely hits the mark. With that said, I do have a couple of pros and cons I would like to mention.
Firstly, I am not a huge fan of bowden tubes and prefer a direct drive.
Above you can see a photo of a first layer of a Benchy starting to form.