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.