scottyau

 So after getting the filament sorted - the next thing to look at was bed levelling.  I was trying to get a consistent first layer - and unsurprisingly Teaching Tech had a video and a whole website devoted to bed levelling !  He goes through it in the video but his site generates a gcode file that will print 5 squares by default to help you see if your first layers will go down consistently in each part of the bed.   This alone helped me quite a lot - prior to this I was just doing the manual bed level and kicking off a print.  What I was finding though was that I couldn't quite get it perfect - and it was changing a little each day.  I'd get it pretty good, do a bunch of prints that were ok and then come back a day or two later and need to re-level again.   So I've done my first two upgrades!  The first was a spring and levelling nut upgrade kit .  This was super easy to put in - and very much holds the level that is set longer th...

So one of the first things friends who already had printers told me was don't skimp on the filament - which is exactly what I did.  When I ordered the printer online I also ordered the cheapest white filament I could find online.   I did my first 3 or 4 prints with the sample filament that came with the printer and it worked pretty well with the default bed and nozzle temps.  When it ran out I swapped it out with the filament I had bought and low and behold - it was pretty crappy.  Lots of stringing and the first layers weren't great.  I changed the temps around a bit and it got a little better - but still wasn't great.  So after chatting to the same friends and telling them they were right they recommended 3dFillies .   They shipped really quickly and came in individual resealable bags with moisture absorbing sachets.  I've done all my printing with their filament since (I got a roll of white and and a roll of black PLA+) and it's aweso...

It's a bit of a running joke that I have been waiting for my 3d printer since 2017 - this one .  It's very obviously never going to show up - and even if it did it would be so out of date now 4 years after design.  So I finally got through the five stages of grief this Christmas and got an Ender 3 V2 ! This is the latest revision of the popular Creality Ender 3 series - with a new 32 bit board with a bunch more storage and quiet motor drivers stock.  It also has an updated colour LCD, power supply moved down the bottom instead of on the side and a few other little bits.  I ordered the printer from an Australian reseller and it showed up in a few days. The packaging is awesome - all very neat and tight: The printer comes partially assembled - following the included instructions I had the printer together and powered up in about an hour - in between making my kids breakfast: At this point I had a crack at bed levelling manually with a bit of paper.  Simple as doin...