January 29, 2021

3D Printing - Setting up my Creality Ender 3D Pro

The printer arrives as a box of parts that includes a kit of the necessary tools. I spent maybe 3 hours one afternoon, taking my time putting it together. I had no problems. The provide a sheet with diagrams that should work in any language. I found it entirely adequate, but I am experienced in this sort of thing.

Control Board mistake

After getting it together, I fired it up and tried some things. In particular I used the prepare menu, which offers to move individual axes. I moved X, Y, and Z and was satisfied. I tried to move "E" (the extruder motor) and got no results. I had no filament in place, and thought the board was dead. This led to several weeks of wasted time due to my misunderstanding. The issue is that the extruder will not move unless the extruder is hot! This makes good sense since you don't want to ram filament into a cold extruder nozzle, but as a beginner I didn't understand this and thought the board was defective. Creality was superb though and send a replacment board after some troubleshooting.

Belt tightening

The belts need to be pretty darn tight. I am sure anything can be too tight, but I suggest using a screwdriver or some kind of lever to pull them tight, then tightening the screws on the pulley mount which are provided for this purpose.

Bed leveling

This is the final and all-important phase of the process. There are many videos and guides as to doing this. I used this test pattern to check my bed (and as the first thing I tried to print with my new printer!) After three tries I got it right. This file is nice because it is a gcode file ready to copy onto a micro-SD card and fed to the printer.

I offer two tips:

Every adjustment affects every other, so especially if you adjust any screw signficantly, go back and check all the others.

I made the mistake of resting my forearm on the X axis beam while checking the two rear screws. Because of this, as soon as I lifted my arm, the beam sprung up enough to make the rear spacing too big! So be sure you aren't leaning on anything when you check spacing.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / [email protected]