vincentkslim / ender-3

The Creality3D Ender-3, a fully Open Source 3D printer perfect for new users on a budget.

Ender i3 Pro

This reposity contains all of the modifications I have made to my Ender 3 Pro, which I now call the Ender i3 Pro due to the heavy design inspiration of the Prusa i3 series on my completely redesigned x-axis carraige. This was forked from the official Creality Ender-3 repository, which does not include files for the Ender 3 Pro. However, the only files that are officially open sourced are for the Ender 3. The differences between the Ender 3 and Ender 3 Pro aren't that great, and so most of the mechanical upgrades that I have made are compatible with both the Ender 3 and the Ender 3 Pro, with few exceptions.

Mechanical upgrades

The mechanical upgrades are in the Ender-3 Mechanical/Ender-3 Upgrades/ folder. Inside that folder are a series of other folders, each containing a different upgrade. I designed each of these upgrades using Solidworks 2019-2020.

Here is a description of each of the folders:

ABL

This was an experimental upgrade that tried to add auto bed leveling using the z-axis microswitch and an allen key that was attached to the x-axis carriage. In my testing, this did not work that well and was not accurate enough to produce usable measurements.

Direct Drive

This simply repositioned the stock extruder system to be attached to the x-axis carriage. This was a modification of (this adapter on thingiverse)[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3386628] that was modified to fit the Hero Me cooling system.

DO NOT USE THIS OR THE HERO ME COOLING SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A V6 STYLE HOTEND. If you look at the model, the heatsink fan duct does not direct air to the lowest fins on the hotend heatsink, which is where cooling is needed the most. In my testing, I ran into tons of heat creep issues when I used filament seceptible to heat creep such as Prusament PLA (Prusament PLA has been extensively documented as seceptible to heat creep).

E3D V6

This is simply a model of the E3D V6 hotend pulled from GrabCAD here. When you download it from GrabCAD, the mate (in Solidworks) between the heat break and the nozzle is incorrect, so the length of the entire hotend from the top of the heatsink to the tip of the nozzle is shorter than it should be. After fixing that mate, the length of the entire hotend is correct.

Radial Cooling Fan 50mm DC12V

This is just a model of a generic 5015 blower fan.

Rear Electronics Case

This is a rear electronics case meant to replace the sheet metal electronics enclosure of the stock Ender 3 and Ender 3 Pro. On the Ender 3 Pro, the electronics enclosure is opened from the bottom, making it absurdly annoying to change any of the wiring (for example, replacing the mainboard). This rear electronics case was heavily inspired by Teaching Tech's rear electronics case as well, but I designed one myself just for design practice and because I wanted to make a few modifications, including:

• Cable chain clips that work with this popular printable cable chain for the Ender 3
• Fan that points directly at the mainboard
• Cable tie mounting points
• Buck converter mounting points, which enables the Ender 3 power supply to power a Raspberry Pi.

One known issue is that the tolerances are much too tight, which makes it hard to slide in the case at the back. Will fix in a future revision.

Samla Box clips

These are box clips for the IKEA SAMLA series of storage boxes. I intended to use these to make a filament drybox, but I have not gotten around to completing that project.

X Carriage

This is my biggest and most important upgrade. This upgrade is complete and is currently in use on the current iteration of my Ender 3 Pro. This is a completely redesigned x-axis carriage that scraps all the stock hot-end parts except for the metal plate and the three rollers. Features include:

• Direct Drive
• E3D V6 support
• Can use 30mm hotend cooling fan and fan duct included with the V6
• Can use a 4010 (or 4020) hotend cooling fan with a fan duct adapter
• Custom extruder with Bondtech dual drive gear support
• 5015 part cooling fan and fan duct

My design takes heavy inspiration from the Prusa i3 x-axis carriage design.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

This is just a model of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B that I use to run Octoprint and Klipper.

Software upgrades

The software modifications I made are not included in this directory. The main change I made was installing Klipper instead of Marlin for the firmware and having it run via Octoprint. I use PrusaSlicer as my slicer, although I have had good experience with Ultimaker Cura and would recommend that as well (I used that originally).