My brother and I both got the Ender 3 Pro from Micro Center with the deal that made it only $100. Going to have some sibling rivalry over who can get the cleanest prints. Is there a thread for sharing favorite or A&M-related STLs?

None I've seen. **** it, post them here.

Got the preloaded dog and a Benchy printed and out of the way, so now I'm printing this death whistle. Also on the to-print list:
Ikea dry box for filament
Hodor door stop

I'm going to work on getting OctoPrint set up too with a spare Pi I have sitting around.

Spoke with the wife about the coupon, but I guess they raised the price to $299? For some reason it was still $200 even with the coupon. Anyways, glad y'all got an awesome 3D printer for only $99! That's amazing

I chatted with Micro Center support last week about that sale and it only lasted through end of the day on 12/4, unfortunately.

Parts supposed to be here on Wednesday. Sooooooo long to wait.

Slagathor said:

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I chatted with Micro Center support last week about that sale and it only lasted through end of the day on 12/4, unfortunately.

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Appreciate the additional info, I was wondering what the heck I did wrong!

File5 said:

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Spoke with the wife about the coupon, but I guess they raised the price to $299? For some reason it was still $200 even with the coupon. Anyways, glad y'all got an awesome 3D printer for only $99! That's amazing

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Thanks for the info. I'm going to use that price increase to justify buying another Pi 4 to set up OctoPrint.

File5 said:

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Slagathor said:

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I chatted with Micro Center support last week about that sale and it only lasted through end of the day on 12/4, unfortunately.

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Appreciate the additional info, I was wondering what the heck I did wrong!

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I don't know what changed, but they are back to $199.99. That is the price online, and in the store. I didn't see what the end date was, but I just picked one up at that price. Thanks everyone for the head up on the price and coupon.

Looks like the coupon is still active if you're a new customer… so potentially as low as $99 still.

ChrisV96 said:

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File5 said:

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Slagathor said:

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I chatted with Micro Center support last week about that sale and it only lasted through end of the day on 12/4, unfortunately.

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Appreciate the additional info, I was wondering what the heck I did wrong!

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I don't know what changed, but they are back to $199.99. That is the price online, and in the store. I didn't see what the end date was, but I just picked one up at that price. Thanks everyone for the head up on the price and coupon.

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Oh man, this is frustrating, I do appreciate the discount but now I've got to go through a rigmarole to get the rest of it. We ended up giving them a call and they are willing to price match, but only if we bring the receipt back into the store. Oh well, it'll still be a good deal!

Pulled the trigger on an Ender 3 V2 last night from Amazon (they had it $50 off, plus a $20 coupon), not as good a deal as what you guys got from Micro Center, but I had some gift cards that made it a no-brainer to me. So I will (finally) be giving this a shot.

I don't know much about 3d printers but this thread intrigues me. Seems like the ender 3v2 or pro (don't know difference is the way to go for beginners. How is it for making child toys or replacement parts for child toys (1yr olds, 4 yr old, 6 yr olds. Do I need a laptop with discrete graphics card to model it out.

zwhag2010 said:

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Do I need a laptop with discrete graphics card to model it out.

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There are numerous options for that now, just depends on how far you want to take it. Tinkercad is a great start and is all online, so you don't have to do any of the heavy lifting. You can even run it on a tablet.

Have several spools, strange not many maroon options. Would like some PETG.

And for printing new toys, also lots of pre made models. Yeggi and stlfinder have the best cross-site search I've found.

I use Freecad. It has a nice feature set but a bit unfocused trying to be all things to all people.

I'm a 3d printing enthusiast. My printer list is as follows:

Creality - ender 3, ender 5+, CR10-s5
Elegoo - Mars 2 (x3)
Anycubic - Photon
Halot resin (don't remember the version- a mars 2 type clone)

Also am waiting on my Kickstarter Elegoo Jupiter.

I still learn something with almost every print I make. I use them for everything from small miniature type stuff to ornaments, to gifts, etc. Have done very little of my own creating, because so much is out there.

Will be following this thread, could be fun.

By joining EAA you can get a year of Solidworks for $49.50. It's my favorite modeling software by far, but also not the cheapest.

https://www.eaa.org/eaa/eaa-membership/eaa-member-benefits/solidworks-resource-center

The eaa SOLIDWORKS deal is great but is the student edition and it watermarks your drawing and is not for commercial use. Fusion 360 still has a maker and startup license but added some restrictions. I have a paid seat after using education version for many years with robot club. Freecad has issues and not sure i would get involved with it until they resolve the dimension issues. Thinker cad seems to be the no money choice for most.

Saw this deal earlier. 10 rolls of Sunlu PETG for $100

https://slickdeals.net/f/15501859-10-rolls-of-sunlu-3d-printer-petg-filament-1-75mm-10x1kg-22lbs-in-total-99

Seems like a great deal, but there's no way I can use 10kg of PETG

I'm starting to understand everyone's love hate relationship with 3D printers. The Ender 3 pro I picked up was working great then last night I left it running and come back to a half finished print job.

Didn't run out of filament so I upped the tension on the extruder's follower wheel. Still had issues so I removed the Bowden tube and shortened it 20mm where there was some solidified filament in the tube. Cleaned the hot end and nozzle, then replaced the nozzle, all with no luck.

I'm about ready to just go get a dual extruder and new hot end.

Are you using the stocke extruder, and if so is it still the crappy plastic one they used to use? Make sure the extruder arm isn't cracked - common problem with the older ones, and can cause what you described.

Also make sure your hot end fans are running, can cause serious clogging too.

Maybe one of those suggestions will help, I hope so.

It's the stock crappy plastic extruder but it's an improved design and hasn't cracked yet.

I took the extruder apart and reassembled. Made no perceived changes but it looks like it may be working now.

A friend of mine has Elegoo resin printers. He's been pretty happy with them. I'm thinking of getting one next year. Looks messy but the results look smooth. Wanted to get one this year but I needed a new computer and a NAS since aggienetwork drive is going away.

I love my elegoo Mars 2 printers - I have 3. I also ordered the Jupiter large format on Kickstarter that I get ~ April based on how much I liked my Mars 2s.

If you are looking at one, I doubt you will be disappointed.

My $99 Black Friday Ender 3 Pro is now a $300 Ender 3 pro.

My nozzle kept getting clogged in the middle of large prints when the extruder would have to travel long distances with the filament retracted. I could have tried to optimize the retraction for that scenario but decided to upgrade to a microswiss direct drive extruder with an all metal hot end instead.

That solved the clogging problem but I also picked up a BLTouch which has been frustratingly tedious. The BL touch would crap out once out of every 20 touches which would melt a hole in the magnetic build surface. I'm hoping that my tie wrap on the connector resolved that issue but I'm not confident yet.

Right now I'm getting beautiful prints but I had to replace the springs and level it manually within about .025mm before I could get uniform bed adhesion. Unfortunately that bed aggression is either smushed against the bed to the point the extruder has trouble putting down the first layer or if I adjust the Z offset up 0.1mm it won't adhere at all. I'm sure there is something I can change in the firmware to take smaller steps or a different firmware I could install but so far I haven't found it.

But overall, it's doing well enough on the first layer to yield some nice 8-13 hour prints.

Next up is setting up Octoprint. Still in the fun stage for now.

Have you tried washing your print bed with soap and water, followed by an wipedown with isopropyl alcohol? Maybe it's dirty.

I've got my 3V2 going ok, still trying to optimize, but so far so good. One of the kiddo's presents was missing a few parts, so I got to reverse engineer and print, and they actually turned out ok. I leveled mine using a .004" metal shim (.1 mm), as this was what my manual said the gap was supposed to be. I haven't really had any adhesion issues except for one occasion with a temp tower test, but I am getting a bit of "elephant's foot" with my first layer, so I may add another .001 or so to see if that helps it.

I've always good results using a plain sheet of copy paper, which would be really close to a .004 shim. Lower the nozzle until you can just feel a little bit of drag on the paper, but it can still move freely.

Yeah, that's what most people do and it works, but I'm an OCD engineer, and as I had a nice shim set in the toolbox next to the printer...

boy09 said:

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coleasterling said:

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I've got the Voron itch because it's the first kit I've seen with what seems to be a really nice mechanical motion system.

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You may already be aware, but i'll mention just in case, there are no "official" Voron kits. There are several different kits out there from places like Aliexpress, and while people have had good experiences with some of these kits, none of them are officially backed by Voron. The Voron community will pretty much always suggest sourcing parts yourself.

If you do want to buy a complete kit, i would wait until LDO Motors announces their 2.4 kit, which should be coming in the next couple of months. Their v0.1 kit is great.

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For anyone interested in Voron, pre-orders just started for the LDO Motors Voron 2.4 kits.

https://www.fabreeko.com/collections/v2-4/products/ldo-voron-v2-4-kit

https://kb-3d.com/store/ldo/451-5801-pre-order-ldo-motors-voron-v24-printer-build-kit.html#/86-v2triharnesssizes-300mm/126-v0framecolor-black

I have absolutely no need for this, but it's going to be really tough to not order one...

If you have kids, check out the Toy Box 3d printer.

My FIL got my 9 year old one for Xmas and we've been having a blast printing out toys.

Super easy to use and the market place has tons of free things to print along with others you can purchase (many are trade marked content, like Avengers characters).

You can also print your own 3D printer files.