3D Printing Experiences and Info

This is a list of tips and links about 3D printing in general. There will be some specific to the Creality Ender 3 and the Monoprice Mini Delta because I own both of those printers and have some bit of experience with them. I will talk about general 3D printing and related topics also.

NOTE: This is a work in progress. It may appear jumbled and there is no doubt duplication. Hang in there while I work through getting the stuff populated.


Section Links


Creality Ender 3 Experiences


Selecting the Ender 3

When I was searching out a first printer I had the Ender 3 on my short list. It lost out to the Monoprice Mini Delta mostly because I wanted something I could easily set up (just pull it out of the box and plug it in for the Mini Delta) and didn't have to make a bunch of modifications to.

I'm not against tinkering and a bit of assembly but at that time I wasn't sure how much interest I would actually have in 3D printing. I quickly discovered that the 3D printing world was just the kind of thing I could get into and the Mini Delta turned out to be too limiting with it's small build size and closed source firmware. Yes, someone has done a build for vanilla Marlin for the Mini Delta but there are all kinds of disclaimers as there is no way to know exactly what the setup really is.

Since I had already looked at the Ender 3 I already knew what I would get into. I also already had two competitors researched - the Anet A8 and the Tevo Tarantula.

The A8 was not going to make it with it's rail X-axis and weak structure. Not to mention it's reputation for catching on fire. Being a complete kit also didn't help. I like to put things together but putting ALL of the pieces together just didn't appeal to me.

The Tarantula looked pretty good and it was tempting. The big downside was a lack of ANY support from the manufacturer. It's also a complete kit and not including a way to even mount the display seemed like a pretty cheapskate type of shortcoming. It's easy enough to print something to do the job but this seems kind of basic.

The Ender 3 looked much more enticing. Creality is known to be pretty good on the support side and it's a semi-kit. There are things to put together but most of the fiddly stuff is already done. Being fully open source (firmware AND hardware) was a plus. I might not be digging into any of that myself but the support community surely would and I would benefit from that. Vanilla Marlin plus the true settings for the Ender 3 would yield an up-to-date firmware backed by community support. There are shortcomings but the community has pretty much addressed them either as printable 'fixes' or through replacement parts that are sometimes less than $1.

I did look around for other printers but didn't find anything for the amount of money I was interested in spending.

So the Ender 3 won the contest and I'm happily printing stuff with it.


Why Not Ender 3 Pro?

I did seriously look at the Pro but found it lacking in enhancements for the difference in price. Mostly I found one thing they changed that I DID NOT like - flipping the electronics case over. This requires that you turn the printer over on it's side to get into the box. Sure, it moved the fan to a down facing position (so stuff doesn't fall inside) but that little problem is solved with the easily printable fan shroud. The improved power supply is not as big of a deal as people seem to think. The original one is much more than adequate for the printer. Just because it doesn't have a well known name brand doesn't make it bad. The only plus for the Pro model that I see is the cMagnet build surface - which is available for much less than the $60 difference in price.


Ordering the Ender 3

Once I decided the Ender 3 was my choice for a second printer it was a matter of choosing where to order from. There were several to choose from but a vendor on AliExpress had the best price ($188 with the magnetic build surface). I'd never ordered anything through AliExpress before so this was a bit of a leap for me. I still did it and everything arrived as expected. I've tried to order other things on AliExpress but they don't seem to want to accept my 'single use' credit card for anything so I think I'll stick with eBay and Amazon in the future.

I put in the order on a Friday but it was kind of late in the day so nothing happened until Tuesday (Monday was a holiday). It showed up on Wednesday.


An Overview from Unboxing to Your First Print - Video

There is an excellent video on assembly and getting your first prints out: Complete beginner's guide to 3D printing - Assembly, tour, slicing, levelling and first prints. It's from the 'Teaching Tech' channel on YouTube and does a very good job of putting it all together from unboxing, assembly, leveling, slicing, and first prints. It also explains the whole process along the way. The printer featured is an Ender 3.

I highly recommend you watch this video. It's well worth your time.


Opening the Box and Assembly

The day it arrived I opened the box and checked all of the parts. Everything seemed to be there except the magnetic build surface. That wasn't going to stop me from putting it together though since it came with the standard build plate (the usual surface on a 2mm thick plastic plate). After some discussion with the seller I checked at the very bottom of the box and there it was. Everything was there that should be.

I had watched a few build videos and used the one I liked from ruiraptor for reference. This video showed the basic unboxing and assembly with a departure from the standard instructions that made the build easier and highlighted a couple of pitfalls.

It took less than two hours to get the job done and would have been closer to one hour if I hadn't managed to get the x-axis cabling twisted up. I had to back track some to get that straightened out but once I did all was well.

By the time I was done it was getting late in the day and I decided that a real test could wait for the next day. In case you're wondering, of course I turned it on just to see if it would!

Update: I found an even better build video (that came out after I built mine) from: The Edge of Tech. This one goes into even more detail and refinement of the process. I saw a bunch of things that I have to go back and check on!


Printing the First Print

First things first - LEVEL THE BED. I spent a lot of time doing this but it was well worth it.

Of course the first print was the test-dog from the SD card - but not the one that was pre-sliced. That one was around 86 mm tall and would take more than 5 hours to print. I wanted something quicker. The .stl file is on the card so I sliced it and printed that out. I foolishly added a raft but since he is already standing on patio stones (that act as a raft) it was overkill. It was much quicker even with the raft - the height was 25 mm.

The next thing I printed was a calibration cube. It turned out pretty close at 20.03/19.96/19.83 - not bad at all!

The third was the fan shroud which was too large for the Mini Delta. I should mention that I had printed all of the 'must have' upgrades that I could on the Mini Delta before the printer even showed up. That way I had the things like the Z motor spacer ready to go before I started assembly and could incorporate them into the build process.

I printed a couple of other things and gave the printer a good workout on that first day.


The 'Right Now' Printable Upgrades

I printed several on the Mini Delta:

  • Z-Axis spacer - Properly position the z-axis motor. Done during assembly.
  • Cable clips for the display cable - keep the cable from flopping around.
  • Filament guide at the extruder - keep your filament away from the Z-axis screw.
  • SD Card Holder - A place to mount that micro SD to full SD adapter cable that I ordered. I hate handling micro SD cards and it's easy to insert a micro SD card into the guts of the case instead of the socket.
These I had to print on the Ender 3 itself:
  • Fan Shroud - keep the junk out of the electronics box.
  • Display back cover - what were they thinking leaving the back of the display board so exposed? Extra tip - a piece of tape over the beeper quiets it a lot!
  • Filament guide at the top rail - route the filament out away from the frame so it comes into the extruder below at a better angle.
All of the above are upgrades I considered high priority. Not all really are but most were easy to print and solved some problem or other.


The Less Urgent Upgrades (Not All Free)

Here's the list in no particular order:

  • Glass Bed - solve the warping bed issues. I have it (for a few days now) but haven't tried it yet. I seem to have the warp issues under control but if it gets worse I'll have to use it. It has a different type of surface (not glass directly) that may require some changes to my methodology.
  • Cooling Fan Shroud - The original shroud for the cooling fan looks like a very cheap engineering job. I found a good one on Thingiverse and printed it with PETG. It works great.
  • Cable Chain - This was a large project with 12+ hours of printing the parts. It is definitely worth it to keep the cables to the bed and the X-axis under control. I highly recommend it. I used Hatchbox Black PLA for this and it worked pretty good. As a side note I got to find out how the power interruption (5+ hours) recovery worked. Pretty good!
  • Uxcell Springs - The bed springs that come with the Ender 3 are really weak. These are the same springs that the CR-10 uses. The cost was less than $4 (shipped free) for 10 of them.
  • MacEwen3D Extruder - This looks to be one of the best out there and isn't all that expensive. I have it but have been waiting on other parts to change at the same time. I'm also changing out the Bowden tube (Capricorn) and the coupler at the top of the hot end. While I'm at it I'm going split the wiring off on it's own so the Bowden tube can follow it's own path. I've installed the extruder but not the rest yet.
  • OctoPrint - I thought I might do this later but since I had a spare Raspberry Pi Model 2B and a WiFi adapter hanging around doing nothing I figured I should give it a try. I'm REALLY glad I did. This is so much better than running SD cards back and forth to my desktop PC. My only cost was for a web cam ($15) and a power converter (<$1) that runs from my 12 volt accessory power supply (one I had on hand).
  • Bed Handle - Not something I really needed but it turns out to be a really good place to mount the webcam.
That's what I've done so far and the only upgrade I really want to do is a firmware upgrade so I can at least enable thermal runaway protection.

I don't really see any need for any others right away. I may do a BLTouch and an all metal hot end down the road.


OctoPrint (OctoPi) in Greater Detail

I always knew that I was going to set up OctoPrint with a Raspberry Pi at the printer. I didn't know how great it was going to be though.

I had a Model 2 sitting idle and I had already bought a WiFi adapter for it so there was zero investment to get it up and running.

The only thing I needed was power for it. I did not want to use the AC power adapter that came with it because I wanted to minimize the things plugged in. I perused the eBay possibilities and found a buck converter that took 6-24 volts in to provide power out a standard USB socket. I figured I could just tie it on the Ender 3's power supply and I'd be good to go. Well, that didn't work out. I suspect there were some sort of feedback conflicts so I resorted to my other plan of providing a separate DC power source (which I had around anyway) and that worked fine. In fact, it worked better because it allows me to keep the Pi on all the time which has turned out to be a good thing.

Once I downloaded OctoPi I installed it to the 8 GB SD card I already had in the Pi and ... it wouldn't boot. I tried that SD card in another Pi and it didn't boot there either. I tried a known good and configured SD card in the Pi 2 and that worked fine. That means a bad SD card or just a bad install. So I tried the easy thing and redid the install. It worked! I don't know what happened the first time but it's working now.

A bit of configuration and fiddling to get the WiFi to work and configure a static IP address and all was ready. This is cool! I can upload the sliced gcode files from Cura to OctoPrint and start the printer from anywhere - my phone, my tablet, or my desktop. I DO NOT want to use Cura on the Pi simply because there just isn't that much horsepower there to slice complex things in a reasonable time. Slicing and uploading from my desktop will work just fine.

I realized that I was missing something important - I can't see what is going on. I needed a camera. I looked at doing the camera that plugs directly into the Pi but I didn't like the ribbon cable idea. Routing would be a mess. I opted to look for a web cam instead. I researched a few and even looked in the local stores and decided to wait for something at a better price. I don't really need high resolution so I might even manage something used. I was going to the Toledo Hamfest shortly so I decided to wait until then to look for something. It was a good idea - I found a new Logitech C310 for $15.

I plugged it in and to my amazement it just worked - sort of. It was in 640x480 mode which is not that great for a 720p camera. A little digging and I found where the parameters for the camera were and got them updated. Now it's in full 1280x720 mode. Some fiddling with timelapse settings and I'm making little movies of the prints.

I have found that I like the 'Z-change' style for timelapse best. It's the most consistent although it does produce the shortest movie. A print with only 16 layers goes by VERY quickly.

I finally found the right camera mount - it mounts on the 'handle' making it move along with the bed. This means the print doesn't 'move' around on the bed while the video is recorded. This makes for a much more watchable video. See the photos below to see how it works.


MacEwen Extruder

This is my most expensive (so far) upgrade for the Ender 3. It does seem to be worth it though. TPU prints easily and I suspect even Ninja Flex would work just fine too. I'd like to try some Ninja Flex some time but at $40-50 per HALF kilogram that's not likely anytime soon.

The install went pretty well with only some help from the instructions that come with it. These instructions are a bit lacking of detail. I have seen a couple of install videos though and they filled in the gaps. Between the two sources I got it done. One of my own variations helped too - don't tighten down anything until you have to! Everything you could need, plus a few extra parts, was included.

Once I had it installed I discovered that I needed something better for filament guidance into the extruder. I had seen one that I thought would work the best (a pulley on a skate bearing) and printed it off. It is working perfectly with the guide at the top of the printer and I can foresee no issues with filament feeding.

I've thought about a filament-out sensor and I think that mounting it under the upper guide will work the best. This would give me the most warning of a problem and give me plenty of filament sticking out of the extruder to handle any issue.

The one thing this installation does is make the Bowden tube about 3 cm too long. It's not really an issue but it would probably be better if it was that 3 cm shorter. I have planned, and have the parts for, replacing the Bowden tube with Capricorn XS tubing. I have a replacement tubing connector for the hot end and the one that comes with the MacEwen extruder is also of good quality. My only reason for procrastinating is that I will loose the ability to see where the end of filament is when I'm feeding it in. Some day I'll do it.

I found that it is harder to push (and pull) filament through this extruder. I'm not complaining though. I printed a knob and that works just fine. The knob doubles as an indicator for when filament is moving.

I really like this extruder and recommend it to anybody who wants to print flexible filaments or just wants an upgrade for the stock extruder.

Update: I've worn out the knob. I've reprinted it in PETG (on the Mini Delta) and it seems this will hold up much better.


Creawsome mod for CURA 4.0

NOTE: This mod is now obsolete with Cura 4.2.1. Most of the good things this mod introduced are now incorporated into Cura 4.2.1.

This is a modification for Cura to introduce GOOD settings for Creality printers - including the Ender 3. It's still in it's infancy but it works great. A LOT gets changed and it mostly seems to be to the good.

I had been trying to print PolyPanels and wasn't having much luck. I couldn't get things right so they would snap together. I saw this and thought I'd just give it a try. It solved the problem with the PolyPanels! That makes it all worth the time.

To find out more watch the video: Creawsome mod for CURA 4.0 on The First Layer channel. They will describe the mod and talk about where to get it and how to install it.

I Highly Recommend this!

The only things I changed was in the start and ending gcode. I liked where the original code put the purge strip but I like the way the mod does it so I fiddled with the start gcode to look like this:

G28 ;Home
G1 Z0.4 ;Raise Z

G1 X0.1 Y20 F5000.0 ; Move to start position *new*
;old G1 X30 Y30 F9000 ;Go to purge start position
G1 Z0.2 ;Drop to bed
G92 E0 ;Reset E position
;old G1 X80 E25 F1200 ;Draw purge line
;old G1 X150 F7200 ;Wipe out
G1 Y80 E25 F1200 ;Draw purge line *new*
G1 Y150 F7200 ;Wipe out *new*
G92 E0 ;Reset E position
G1 Z0.4 ;Raise Z and start printing 
The lines I added have *new* at the end and the lines replaced use ;old at the beginning. I changed only 3 lines in the start gcode.

For the ending gcode I replaced theirs with my original ending gcode.


Creawsome mod for CURA 4.1 - the Pain of Conversion

NOTE: This mod is now obsolete with Cura 4.2.1. Most of the good things this mod introduced are now incorporated into Cura 4.2.1.

This was (and still is) a painful upgrade. I've had all kinds of difficulty. I found that I more or less had to start over rebuilding print profiles. I'm not happy about that but I do like some of the things that Creawsome mod does.

So, expect a painful experience if you have a bunch of print profiles stored because you CANNOT move them over to the new release. The only way I have helped the process is to put up 4.1 on one screen and 4.0 on another - yes, you can install and run both. This is one of those times where having a second monitor (it's also a TV) is quite valuable.


Meshmixer and Fusion 360

I've had some time to work more with Meshmixer and a little with Fusion 360. I'm still learning things about Meshmixer but I'm pretty confident about being able to do a variety of tweaks to existing models.

Meshmixer is a world of it's own. I've never worked with anything that operates the way it does. It does do some quite interesting things though. It's something you have to play with for a while and watch a bunch of videos about (Maker's Muse has some really good ones) to get you started. Be aware that it uses a lot of resources - it requires 4 GB of RAM in the machine and I'd recommend that you have more. My laptop has 4 GB but after the video slices off a small chunk there isn't enough left to run Meshmixer.

Fusion 360 is also a bit different from what I know. I do have some experience with Autocad so I have some experience with a lot of the basic ideas. It's still going to be a long road before I'm really confident with it. I need to put some more time in on videos. I did successfully make one part (a round sealing washer that would be printed in TPU) that I haven't tried yet. I had made something functional with Meshmixer and I don't really need any more right now. I do have one specific part I need to draw up and that will be my first real part.


A 'new' type of 'Build Plate Adhesion' for Cura

I heard from a friend that he had encountered ticks already (Late May) this season. This looks like they will probably be pretty prolific this year. I had also seen a product that someone suggested and figured - somebody has probably already done this for 3D printing and I was right.

There are a few variants but the one I decided to try out is at: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:909271 and is called Tick Twister. I printed one and thought I better use a raft since the area touching the bed is kind of small. The result wasn't quite what I expected and I'll have to do some sanding to clean off the bottom of the part. Not a terrible issue but I prefer to make cleanup easy.

I also didn't like the size tapering up as large as it did so I decided to do a little work with Meshmixer to replace the top part with just a straight cylinder.

Then I got to thinking about what to do about the raft. I could probably tweak some of the settings but it would still be a raft. A brim would probably do just fine but a brim wants to fill in the notch on the bottom and that needs to stay clear. A skirt would be just the right thing but it would be too far away from the part to really help out.

Enter the idea of the 'Tight Skirt' - make the skirt 10 lines wide and set the distance to 0.2 mm. This has most of the holding power of a brim but without intruding into the slot of the part. That seemed to work pretty well and I now have a profile named 'E3 Dynamic Quality - Tight Skirt'.


Other Tweaks and Upgrades

There are a variety of things, mostly minor, that I've done:

  • More Filament - I now have: Red, Silver, Blue, Black, Gold, Forrest Green, White, Orange and Teal in PLA. I have Black and Orange in PETG. I have a bright green in TPU. The Red, Orange, and Teal PLA is PolyMaker's PolyLite. The red was actually my second spool of filament and I found that I really liked it. It seemed to be a better quality than either the Hatchbox or Matterhackers filament that make up the rest. I also bought a spool of cheap filament (~$14) in a lackluster orange - it was terrible stuff and clogged up my nozzle. I'm NOT going to use it again. I may try it with the 0.8 nozzle.
  • More Nozzles - When I printed the Pi Cup in vase mode I found that the walls were pretty thin. There has also been a time or two I wished for a finer nozzle to print something extra fine. So I ordered a set from eBay titled '19Pcs MK8 Extruder Nozzle 0.2~1.0mm For Makerbot CR-10 Ender 3D Printer M6 Set'. Well, they are NOT the proper nozzle for the Ender 3 (or the CR-10) so I ended up 'returning' them. The seller first tried to make me pay to ship them back (since the shipping was free the return must also be free) and then offered $1 if I would forget it. I said 'No, you misrepresented the product. I expect a refund.' I finally got the refund of $3.53.

    I ordered from a more reputable source that described things better and got 10 nozzles for a little over $9. They are the correct nozzles. I'll get around to trying them sometime.
  • Spool Holder Upgrade - I printed a spool holder that uses 608 bearings so that things roll smoothly. It uses 3 bearings but I only had 2 so I ordered more. It still works with 2. I used this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3502973
  • Remote Power Off - I'm working on a remote power off system that I can trigger from OctoPrint. I don't see any need for remote power ON. If I'm not here I do NOT want to turn on the printer. I've got all of the parts now. I just need to put it together.
  • Reprint the Extruder Knob - The PLA printed extruder knob just didn't hold up. The shaft flat (or key) just rounded itself out and the knob became useless. So, once I got the orange PETG I decided I needed to print another knob with that. It is holding up nicely and I actually use it to feed filament. No more holding the lever and pushing filament in. It also works great for extracting filament most of the way out.
That's all for now. Expect more as I explore new and interesting aspects of 3D printing.


PETG on the Ender 3

I did some more internet searching and found some more wisdom on printing PETG on the Ender 3. Nobody said anything about issues with the stock Ender 3 print bed so I decided to give it a try. I printed with the following:

  • The filament I used is MatterHackers Build Series PETG in Black.
  • Temperatures - nozzle at 240C, bed at 55C to start and then 20C thereafter. Mine only cooled down to 30C after 30+ minutes of printing.
  • Fan - off for first 2 layers then 100% thereafter.
  • Speed - normal print speed of 30 mm/sec. Yes, it's slow but it works. The recommendation I found said that 40 mm/sec would probably be OK though.
  • NO SPECIAL BED PREPARATION. As long as it's level it works.
I've only printed one part so far this way but I have to say that it worked great and I had no difficulties getting it off of the bed. I think it might have been easier than PLA because it just popped off. I'm a real believer now and will probably start using PETG more.

The only gotcha of course is switching between PLA and PETG. When switching to PETG you should make sure you force all of your old PLA out before you print. When going back you of course have to heat to the PETG temperature (240C) and get the PETG flushed out. Contrasting colors make this much easier to do (I went from orange to black on my first switch). If you try to do this with the same color you won't be able to tell when one is flushed out.

PETG is 'gooey' and will create long and very fine strings when you pull the filament out. When you are feeding it in it will tend to ooze out of the nozzle. To minimize this do a little manual 'retraction' by turning your extruder wheel back a couple of millimeters.

Last but not least remember that your PETG is HYGROSCOPIC and MUST be kept in a sealed container.


FYSETC Cheetah Board

WARNING WARNING! This board is a bust. It came in unusable (DOA in my view) with major configuration problems. I will NOT be using this board. I may look at another later.

Some good news at least - after several messages back and forth with the seller (from whom I got NO real help) I got some satisfaction from AliExpress. They actually have a program where if I'm not satisfied they will refund my money. They did but they will only do this ONCE as a good will gesture. I'm not complaining but I think I'll buy from a dealer/seller that I trust in the future.

This is a 32-bit processor board that is a drop-in replacement for the stock control board in the Ender 3. Prices seem to be varying a bit but you can expect to pay $25 to $30 for the board. This is a really inexpensive way to upgrade the electronics into the 21st century.

I've ordered and received this board but have not yet installed it. You can do some of your own investigation at: https://wiki.fysetc.com/Cheetah_Board/

There are some reviews out there but not enough to get a good feel for how good (or bad) this board really is. I'm going to wait just a bit to see what develops before I invest the time. I'll post an update when things change.


PEI Build Surface and Other Thoughts

I've ordered a PEI sheet from TH3D along with a couple of spare wheels. Everything I read about PEI is something like "EVERYONE SHOULD USE PEI" (yes they are shouting). I'm going to give it a try. I think I'm going to stick it to the back side of the stock Ender 3 build surface.

Update 2019-Oct-01: I've discovered that my bed is 'wobbly'. I'm sure this could be the source of much frustration. I've readjusted the rollers and all seems to be working properly. Haven't tried anything yet. A task for tomorrow.

I plan on doing an extensive surface leveling - that's adding shims under the middle part of the build surface to kind of even things out.

Update 2019-Oct-14: I'm going to just do a single shim in the middle to get things close and then do manual mesh leveling with the new firmware. My first print after the new firmware (still old style leveling) seems to have resolved some of the problems.

I'm going to soon try out the PEI surface. I'm planning on sticking it to the back of the stock build sheet so I can just flip it over and use the original surface (for PETG) without the need to do any re-leveling.

Update 2019-Dec-24: I FINALLY got around to trying the PEI surface. It seems to work quite well. I just flipped over the bed surface and did no re-leveling. It's just a small model I'm testing but it all looks good. I'll be testing this over the next few days and expect good things out of it.

One more update after some more testing.


Updating the Firmware

I've had enough of fiddling with bed leveling. It would be OK if the bed didn't sag in the middle. I have added some shims (just paper but they kind of work) but that isn't a good cure. I'm planning on using manual mesh leveling to do the job.

To that end, I found that I needed an Arduino UNO or nano which I don't have. I do have a couple of others but it doesn't look like they will do the job. The UNO isn't expensive but it's in China so I'll have to wait. In the mean time I know someone who has done this before and has a UNO that he is willing to lend me.

Update - 2019-Oct-14: I've got the firmware updated! Lots of research (I'm obsessive about this kind of thing) before I started paid off and it all went very smoothly. The only enhancement I added was manual mesh so I could overcome my warped bed - I've got about a 0.15 mm dip kind of in the middle. Yes, it isn't nicely symmetrical which should not come as a surprise. The manual mesh should be able to deal with this. I have not yet tried the manual mesh but I have done one print with the new firmware. One thing I noticed right away was something I noticed with the stock version - homing at the start of a print would move the X, Y, and Z directions one at a time in sequence. I figured that the X and Y could easily have been accomplished together. The new firmware actually does this. It's not a big thing but I'm glad somebody else thought this was a good idea and put it in the code. I also think that things are quieter although I don't have any to actually check this.

I tested the one thermal runaway check (no evidence of actually heating with power applied to the heating element) and it works perfectly. The test for this is to disconnect the heater at the board (you only need to remove one wire) and then trying to heat up the hot end.

There are various other interesting things in the firmware reflected on the display that I'm still exploring.

Update - 2019-Dec-24: I've been using manual mesh for a few weeks now and it has been solid. No more leveling issues! I've done the leveling procedure only twice (once after I added the PEI sheet) and have not needed to redo it since. It's great.


Hot End 'Fix'

This is an ingenious solution for the problem of the bowden tube not staying 'down' in the hot end perfectly. What it does is replaces the part in the hot end with a fixed length of tubing and a 'washer'. You can find the info and the files you need to print on Thingiverse at: Original Creality hot end ptfe fix/ Tevo Tornado

You print a cutting guide for whichever printer you need and a spacer (looks like a washer). See the instructions (well written) on what you need to do. This is kind of similar to the way the hot end on my Monoprice Mini Delta is set up. Once you see how it's done you'll likely agree that this should eliminate the need to ever take apart the hot end to get a stuck filament out of the hot end.


Photos

Yes, I finally have added some photos:


Fan Shroud




Cable Chain - bed and z-axis




Foot (in TPU)




Improved Part Cooling Fan Shroud (PETG)




Tool Holder




MacEwen Extruder




Extruder Knob




Lower Filament Guide




Raspberry Pi




Camera Mount