Top positive review
Level the bed!
By J. Gerred on Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2019
This is my first 3D printer although I have experimented with friend's printers in the past. The printer is easy to setup if you can look at pictures/videos and turn a hex wrench. The printer came with all of the necessary parts and tools to assemble. The assembly was very easy except for one part on putting the hot end on the x-axis was not clear from the pictures but a quick glance through a video showed the proper orientation. Overall it took around an hour to assemble and print the test print of the dog that came on the sd card. There was enough basic filament included to print the dog test print and the calibration cat (downloaded from thingiverse). I have gone through about one and a half spools of filament so far and have had very few issues with the printer. To get the best quality prints you have to make sure that the bed is level (follow the instructions) and that the temperatures are correct for the filament you are using. The printer is fairly quiet, it is not loud enough to disturb someone in the next room. The prints come out looking good on a normal mode print and are excellent in the highest resolution. Quality is a trade off for time (takes longer to print higher resolution), but this printer is decently fast for small detailed prints. The larger size heated bed is a plus and I find the included magnetic build surface plate to be easy to use in releasing the print jobs. In my opinion it is an excellent value for the price and am glad that I purchased it!
Top critical review
1 people found this helpful
Good product for the price, questionable seller
By CapnCoconuts on Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2020
This product is basically Creality's Ender 3 Pro with SainSMART's branding on it. Presumably, Sain SMART paid Creality for the privilege to do that because they can't design a consistently good FDM 3D printer themselves (see the reviews for their Coreception CoreXY printer). Although the product is largely the same as a Creality-branded printer, there are some concerns I have with the product and the company that sells it. * My Ender 3 Pro came with a coupon that expired on December 31, 2019. I ordered this printer in late April--nearly four months later. The coupon would have been nice, but the fact that it's long expired is unbecoming for SainSMART. * The Bowden tube in my printer was not cut at the proper angle, which caused melted PLA/PETG to leak through the hot end. Bowden tube ends should be cut at a right angle so that they sit right on top of the nozzle and prevent leaks from happening. I was hoping I'd do more than a few prints before having to service the hot end. * Despite the fact that the Ender 3 (Pro) produces great prints for the price, and contrary to SainSMART's caution not to modify the printer (being told not to modify open source design... LOL), you'll want to replace a few parts at some point. The plastic extruder feeder will eventually wear down and break. The stock Bowden tube might be poor quality, needing to be cut or replaced (see above point). Stronger springs will help keep your bed level. There are other small things you can do to enhance your Ender 3 experience. You'll have trouble getting dampers on any of the press-fit stepper motors, though. * The user manual is passable, but could be more helpful for people building their first 3D printer. It also features more than a few grammatical errors. Come on. You have a support office in Delaware. Why can't you write consistent fluent English? * Software provided in the Micro SD card is way out of date. The user manual walks you through installing Cura 15.04.6, which is the LEGACY version. The card also has the modern Ultimaker Cura, but only for Win64, and it's version 3.0.2. Cura 4.5 released in February 2020, two months before I bought this. * I was not able to find firmware downloads on the SainSmart website, binary or source code. That's interesting, because it's quite similar to Creality's firmware and vanilla Marlin, which are licensed under the GNU GPL. The point of the GPL is to force creators of derivative works to share their source code. Make of that what you will. I bought the Sain SMART edition Ender 3 Pro because (1) it was on sale, and (2) the original edition seemed to be sold out just about everywhere else. Unless it's at a discount, I wouldn't recommend it over the original Creality-branded Ender 3 Pro.
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