Thanks for making these videos. I’m new to 3D printing. I bought the V3 KE a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I’m not having the problem you’re having, but your videos are helping me understand how the printer functions mechanically and how to troubleshoot if issues do arise. Thanks for your hard work!
I am along for the ride, just ordered one today, comes wed, so I will be looking forward to the follow up video in a couple of weeks. Thanks for all the hard work and thorough tests!
I should get the parts soon and I can finish up the video and see if we can make a big improvement. I assume that not every printer is going to have these problems, some people say they do, some people don't seem to. The only way to know is to print in the center and then in the front corner and if the results are the same, you're golden. It's funny that it wasn't my intent to do that, I was changing between printers and some have larger beds and it shifted the parts to the corner, well that ended up being the thing that helped me to find the problem. From now on, if I test a bed slinger, center and then front or back corners are the way to go.
My lower left corner is negative 1.24 compared to any other point on the bed surface. Sometimes it affects my prints as well. Before it was 1.38, how did I fix it? Loosen the screws but shouldn't all these numbers be about the same ?
I think it's time to admit this is a design flaw. Single bearing per rod saves space and/or increases Y range, but clearly makes things wobble. Seems like the actual solution would be to apply a hacksaw to this nice base, mount longer rods, and convert bed to 4 bearings with appropriate spacing between them.
@@myvideo7748Had similar problem when I switched to low tolerance rods and brass/graphite bearings (just my experiments - don't ask). Resolved it by slowly tightening bolts holding bearing cases while checking the movement of the carriage.
Thank you very much! Sometimes I can get a little carried away with the ideas and solutions, but it's all in good fun. I have lots more videos coming up, some printer related, some related to structural testing and some just what I think are neat ideas. Thanks again for taking the time to write a note I really appreciate it, and greetings from Canada!
i like your meticulous approach in this problem solving, really nice. I'm glad I am no longer using bedslingers as problem solving them is, in the end, a nightmare. I have a bambulab, which will have their own set of issues when they break, but luckily I have not encountered a single issue with it.
Thanks! Yeah, the Bambu printer are a cut above the rest it seems.. at least for now. But the competition is good, it should require the other companies to improve their products to be able to stay competitive. Just offering a better price isn't good enough if your reputation goes bye-bye. If I want really good quality I go with the X1C, although it doesn't like PETG-CF, what a mess. Which Bambu do you have?
@@NeedItMakeIt I am using a P1S and actually have not printed PETG yet - i understand there are issues with bambu+PETG, which is strange because I used to have a Artillery Genius and printed PETG regularly and treated it the same as PLA, then againthe bambu is miles ahead in terms of speed with PETG is not in favor of.
@@atom6_ P1S is a nice printer, good choice. I'd like one, most of the features are the same as the X1C and if not, it's upgradable, mostly upgradable. When I print PETG it sticks to the nozzle badly, even though it's nickel plated. The other day I had a Poop wedged above the back nut for the Z screw, it was crushing it when it tried to home the Z axis and it continued through the bed leveling until I removed it, but it was crunchy and not pleasant to listen to at all! That was Prusament PETG as well. I still love the printer, great results 98% of the time, just a few tweaks and it could be perfection.
Would love to see the 3rd part to your KE series. New to 3D Printers and design and while its nice to problem solve there are times when you just want a part printed. What is your recommendation for an out of the box setup with minimal issues? Or a link to anything you recommend. You're doing an awesome job with your video's and channel BTW. Thanks for the great content.
For sure! I'm working on something that I hope will be easy for anyone to print and install themselves, unfortunately it does require the purchase of linear rails and some screws, from Aliexpress it's about $40-50 and a bit of a wait. It should get us to a really good point with the printer though and allow us to reach the highest speeds with good results. The extruder is still a bit of a concern, I still believe that this extruder should be the same as the K1 printers. I'll be about a month or so until the next KE video, I need to wait for the parts to arrive and then I can finalize the video, showing the install and testing etc. I'll try to keep it short and sweet. Thanks for the support I really appreciate the kind words! Lots more content to come!
@@NeedItMakeIt Hey these KE videos were really needed. So many people reviewing and not saying a single word about how much the bed shakes and raddles. I also had a problem with my CR touch hitting my prints. I plan on doing exactly what you do with the linear rails to my KE. Could you possibly link the parts list so I can get them ordered now ahead of your video? It would save me and maybe others waiting time. Would be greatly appreciated
@@ty8324 I like Creality, I've always liked them, and I'm not really a brand person, but offering printers like this which are 'faster' makes no sense if you're not doing a few key things right, and the fit... as well as the overall design of the way the bed rides on the rods is a pretty big one. Checklist: Up/Down - Check Left/Right - Check Forward/Backward - Oops missed that one Well that's okay, it's best 2/3 right? I want to make these videos for the people who have the same problem as I do, and also to make sure that Creality is aware of the problems and hopefully it applies some pressure as well. I'm actually working on the solution at this very moment, but I haven't tested it so it's in proto-type stage and I won't have the rails and blocks for about a month sadly. Can you let me finish up the design over the next few days, and make sure it's the right call and then I'll send you a note so you can place the order? I wouldn't want to have people spending money and then find out that something didn't work the way I expected it to. The goal here is an inexpensive upgrade, but one that looks good as well. And to do thing, I am taking a slightly different approach than anyone else doing this has, well anything I've seen online anyway.
@@NeedItMakeIt I totally agree. That they released such a subpar bearing/rod design astounds me. IRL, I know four people who currently have KEs, and they all have similar problems. A problem even arose for one of them where the rod itself was moving due to the bottom screw's insufficient length to make contact with the rod. That with the bed wiggle was not a pleasant sound printing at high speeds lol. You make a valid point, now that you say that I'd prefer to wait and see your idea through to the end. Don't rush. My ADHD caused me to make my first comment, hehe. Even so, it would be interesting to see how your design differs from DerrickDarrell's "Ender 3 V3 SE / KE D3D Y Rails" design on Printables. For many, inexpensive will be essential. I'm excited to see the concepts you produce :) I will be following along
@@ty8324 I figure with how they produce so many printers, they'll be a lot of them with the same issues. It reminds me of when I worked for a Company making high-production furniture, when we found out we had a problem with a giant wardrobe cabinet, we had to go to the storage facility and open up every giant box and fix each one, that was a ton of work. I'm printing the first set of bearing block mounts right now. I think this will work well, BUT I found something I didn't expect. The steel plate below the bed is domed. I would assume they're all like this having being punched out. Maybe you can confirm that yours is also that way. What I've done is compensated for it by having the mounting piece slightly domed as well, but maybe I'll have both options just incase someone has a flat one for some reason. I had to 3D scan the base to make sure everything was going to fit and that it wouldn't conflict, I'll add that into the video incase anyone needs to do something like that themselves in future. I checked out the other design, and the one I am working on is quite a bit different, it will be more stable and will have less parts. Black rails would look amazing here, but I can't find them on Aliexpress, so I'm going with the standard and we can always blue it later on if it's needed. Stay tuned!
@@NeedItMakeItbeen struggling with our bed leveling and quality of print and thanks to this video and your next one we would be able to improve our first printer the ender 3 v3 ke 🥹
@@bastilorbes2220 That's great, and there are many more to come. I'm nearly finished the next in the series, which is a pretty cool one and it'll be something anyone can print themselves.
What a great overview of the solution. You also inadvertently take away some of the fear we'd all have with customizing / improving some of these machines. using the lathe for your own home made wheel mounts was great.
Thanks for that, it was sadly a bit gummy, but in the follow up video we came up with the final solution, it was a good progression to get to a good solution.
Woooah! Not what I expected. What a pain. We were all being led in the wrong direction not even thinking about the physical components of the printer since PLA printed so well. Totally makes sense that the position on the bed made such a big difference when the bearings were loose at the end of travel. Because of the nozzle and pressure for the extruding filament pushing down on the part or pulling it sideways, especially with PETG, it was also making the bed spring up and down as you pointed out. So overall the V3 KE needs better bearings for the bed and a stiffer mounting solution. I really like the rounded wheels you made and they seem like an almost better solution than V-groove wheels or possibly even cheap linear rods. A lot of people say that V-groove are better than cheap linear rods or linear rails and this is probably why. I was wondering if creating TPU mounts for the linear rods would help by holding them firmly in place, but allowing some flex when necessary, and damping vibrations. The POM wheels sorta solve some of the same issues. It's really crazy how much that bed is jumping around at the edge and totally unacceptable. I've gotta wonder if just a thicker aluminum support plate and solid bed mounts would solve most of the issue. The steel plate almost seems like it's acting like a spring. Otherwise a double carriage might help, but gotta keep full range, so linear rails would probably be a good call. Would definitely love to see you follow up with that fix!
I was able to get an indicator on it, I have a short video on my discord if you or anyone else is interested to see it. We're seeing 0.006" or 0.15mm play at the front corner. As I move to the exact center of the bed, we're seeing 0.01mm. I should have included this test with the video, I'll make sure to add it into the follow up. I was thinking that I should do something better with the linear rails, and that is to use smaller rails, and instead of having a single block on each rail, have 2 and space them out a little more. To do this, I'd have the rails mounted out further to each side, giving that more stability as well on the left/right of the bed, but the main goal is to get away from the teeter-totter and move towards something that's far more stiff. I also want to see about moving the PCB down and away and adjusting the standoffs to be shorter, and that should help get to where we need to go. If we can use 2 blocks per rail, the steel plate may be able to go away. I think I'd just need to see how long the rails need to be, they'll be sticking out of the front and back of the printer a little bit.
@@NeedItMakeIt Wow! Great data and thoughts. That's about what I would expect given how it looked, though I would have guessed more like 0.1mm so that's really bad. Mounting the rails as wide as possible and lowering the mounting height of everything as much as possible will definitely help. The higher the weight of the bed is away from the mounting point, the more leverage it has over the mount and the bearings on the rails whenever it tries to accelerate. Momentum wants to tip that thing over, and the taller it is the harder it's gonna exert its tipping force. It would actually be ideal to have a bed mounted in between rails at the same height, with bearings at each corner, now that I think about it. Obviously that has lots of packaging and alignment concerns though. Would be sweet to see a setup like that with linear rails for some serious precision and stability on a bed slinger. They would have to be quite long rails too though!
@@802Garage I like your thinking. Side mounted rails sounds awesome and that'd give more printable height... not that I'd ever use it. To keep it simple for anyone wanting to do the upgrade, I think I'll end up with something like 400mm rails, they'll extend beyond the front and back a wee bit, that will allow the use of the 2 blocks per rail and it should help a lot to avoid the tipping issue and add a tiny bit of rigidity as well. I have a set picked out on Ali, but it's going to be about 1 month to get them sadly. At least I can have all of the parts printed and try to test them in advance. I want something simple enough for anyone to be able to do, which isn't that easy, to get precise printed parts, we need precise printers, and the bed will be warped most likely it could mean that the rails will end up being out of alignment. Printing with PETG will minimize warpage so that may work for the base parts to mount the rails onto. I guess I just need to try it and see what happens.
@@NeedItMakeIt PETG likes to warp more than PLA, unless I missed something or you just mean vs ABS for example. But yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was figuring you would do with the rails before my mind went wild with the side mounts hahaha. Now I want to do it, but that's a massive project I don't have the time and space to tackle. Def look forward to your testing! I usually get stuff from AliExpress in around 10-15 days.
Derrick Darrell has a pretty good rail mod on pintables for converting the KE and SE to linear rails. That will be my next major mod on my KE. I saw a lot of improvement moving the spool to the side of the machine but I still have too much bed slop. Thanks for deep dive videos like this! The KE is a capable printer but definitely needs those tweaks and mods like this to get the most out of it.
Ah, that's good to hear you've been getting results out of moving the spool. It seems obvious and I have been considering it, but am a bit reluctant to change the design unless necessary.
Really looking forward to your next video. My KE also has some weird artefacts when printing PLA. Nothing major but there are some things that just go wrong for no apparent reason. Funnily enough, my issues are hella consistent. For example, if I print the same code twice, all slightly misplaced layers will be in the exact same place. If the cause for this is the bed vibration, I would expect it to be semi-random. To test thing, I've ordered a vibration compensation sensor from creality that should arrive some time next week. Maybe its also something you would want to use to see if there is a difference. Cheers
Do you mind telling me where you bought the bearings, or the exact product if that's possible? I've been looking for the best solution to provide to other people with the same issues. I was leaning toward linear rails, but I'm open to other ideas as well.
@@NeedItMakeIt I just got cheap ones from Temu as I wanted to see how they worked, they were a much tighter fit than the stock ones, now the wobble is almost 100 percent gone, but I do think that the rods are too close together which causes the corners to not be as supported, linear rails a bit more apart should be the ultimate fix
@@manuel509rios Really, okay that would be a good first step and I can show that in the follow up video as a comparison. I took my dial indicator and in the center I measured only 0.01mm of movement, but at the front, I was able to measure 0.15mm, and that was just a light pressure by one finger. With the movement of the bed and a bit of spring action, I think we'll see more when a program is running. Thanks for that info, I'll work on a final solution for anyone with this printer or other printers with the same setup. I notice that the new Ender 3 V3 Plus has the same rods and bearings, which is even more concerning since the printable area is 300 x 300, I sure hope they have high precision parts on those printers!
Tbh, i'm not quite sure why would they use the rail for the gantry and x-axis movement, but use rails for bed movement. It's not like they're saving anything, they just need to make parts that move rigit to prevent artifacts like that.
How-Do! Just got to the end of this video and was watching the issues you ran into whilst testing out the Y-Axis Motion on your Printer. I'm in the process of finishing my own Cartesian Bed Slinger and will be addressing the same issues too fairly soon. Firstly, I've already bought the hardware in advance Online and ended up going for 20mm! Linear Rods to beef them up and to take advantage of there stiffness due to there size, And Because the Steel Bar is 20mm in diameter, this will provide more Weight and Surface Area for this size Linear Bearings LM20LUU to coast along once lubricated. In some way, I think even though it maybe overkill, the rods are going to add weight to the machine and a lower point of weight/Gravity to make the machine even more solid than before... When I think about this point, the concept does remind me of the logic behind large parts being used on CNC Machines. It adds more stiffness to support the things were looking to avoid, especially when it comes to the final finishes of the print. So like I said, I've got that coming up soon, but I think it will have great significance. As for your issues, I'd say go back to Linear Rods and Re-Design the Rubber Wheel Setup! Make or redesign the Wheel bearing Mounts (The black 3d printed plates you made) and design them so they too can be adjusted like the wheels, Maybe just on 1 side or Rail. Last of all... Go for rubber wheels with a larger rubber Groove on them ( probably will also have a larger I.D for the bearing too to conder while redesigning it too. but to end my waffling, The larger rubber bearings should give you a larger radius of contact too when using the same Rods! Think about it! Good luck...!
Thank you for this, I am really rooting for your next video. I also have this problem i even tried to put the spool on the side to lessen the vibration still the same. Hopefully you can post more videos for KE.
I just received the parts yesterday so I just need to finish up a few more videos in the pipeline already and then I'll get back to this one. So far I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out, it's certainly more stable. It should be within the next 1 1/2 - 2 weeks to see that video come out. I want to release something that's tested and it has to look good too.
Yes, we need follow up, also if you could provide in the follow up video all the parts and stl's to improve our printers in homes that would be great. Great video.
My KE's bed seems much more stable than yours, maybe its just a quality control issue. Mine came with a dead strain gauge sensor right out of the box, other than that it's been working great for the past month. I am planning on trying PETG on this printer for the first time, I will definitely compare front and middle oriented prints. Is the thing you are printing a publicly available STL? I might just do the same print, so its easier to compare to yours. I am planning on doing the linear rails upgrade sooner or later, there is a mod on printables that looks great.
Yeah. Same here. No bed movement at all on mine either. everything was very well put together with the correct tolerances. Just got mine a few weeks ago. So maybe they adjusted their QC after learning there was possibly an issue.
Thank you for this video was thinking about buying this printer as a 2nd printer but think I might save a bit more for a k1c , due to people reporting poor prints, I am at the stage where i don't want to tinker to much but just print out the box , would still like to see the linear solution you got in mind 👍🏼
Hey Mike, I just did some measurements of my rods and I could not get a measurement below 8 mm. I didn't take them out of the machine like you did though, so it's possible they're the same. But still, I really couldn't discern any play in the bearings whatsoever. With enough force, I could get the bed to shift in any direction and visually I can see that I am actually bending the rod to do so. Maybe they achieved better tolerances in more recent units such as mine? I received mine on the 19th of December, though I preordered in September (yours I presume you received even more recently, but stock could vary). I have a couple artifacts I am fighting as well, not sure they are the same as yours. One is that it always seems to push too far in just one of the corners when making hard turns (I want to say front left, but haven't printed in a few days). Another is that I will get either an under extrusion or layer shifting, but it's not completely consistent on where it shows up. A third is that my bed must be out of level enough that the auto bed levelling can't compensate, because when I do the Prusa test at 0.1 mm height front corners tend to fail. The first layer in general tends to be a bit uneven. I got a smooth PEI bed from Creality and I plan to do the spacer and perhaps even tape modification. I've also got linear rails, I was planning to do the D3vil design mod on here, but to see you working on it, maybe I should wait. You thought your design is superior somehow? My rails are MGN12H from AliExpress. Hope that's the direction you went... but I think Derrick's design should work anyways, he did get a good vibration reduction in his accelerometer test. Derrick was also able to achieve 49 mm3/sec by changing out the hot end to the ChB-OT . So there is more potential in this machine yet!
I just put a linear rail on my Ender 3 S1 Pro x axis to help with quality issues. This is more proof I still can't trust Creality to get the details right.
If you want to print fast, the slightly rubbery wheels just don't work anymore. Makes sense that we don't see them on any of the faster printers these days. I think linear rails are a must. The rods are only 8mm as well, which gives them some flex too, they seem to be quality rods, which are ground... just a bit too small. Can I assume that they ran tests only in the center of their printer bed and they never saw this problem? If there is some interest, I'd be happy to make a follow up to the follow up video and install linear rails. I'll design some type of a mount that is easy to install for everyone and looks like it belongs as well. I'm surprised that they didn't catch this problem, it's very important for their reputation and it's a pretty big expense when compared to the price of the printer to do the upgrade.
I'm really glad to saw the serial videos.It's really help me a lot. But i'm a little curious about the settings for printing speed and acceleration when you print PETG. Hope to get your advice.
I have the printed parts designed, I'm just waiting on the rails to arrive, and then I can finish up the video. It'll still be about 3+ weeks unfortunately, I wanted to order the cheap rails so that I can confirm that others can do the same. There is no sense buying really nice rails that cost as much as the printer. The solution should work really well, I went a bit of a different direction than most people adding rails. I've gone for as much stability as possible while trying to make the install as simple as possible as well. Hope it works out! Thanks for the support!
I can’t even remove one of the screws holding the rails. The two black screws on the front holding the y rails. I can unscrew one but not the other. It just moves and doesn’t come up at all.
hi, I'm about to order an Ender v3 KE. it will then be my first 3d printer. It has a good price for what you get? what should you really expect when it is not a very expensive machine. For a hobby, it is a hobby to come up with solutions and make things better. a thought for your precision hunting. do you still have the filament roll hanging at the top of the tower? in a video I saw, he made a table stand for the reel, as well as an ornament with his logo for the hole for the reel on the tower. As there was a hole through for the filament to go to the extruder. very good and informative video. greetings from Sweden
At least part of the problem here is the spacing of the linear bearings front to back on that table...or more correctly, the lack thereof. Only 2 linear bearings...side by side in the same location along the Y axis? OF COURSE the table is going to be prone to rock up and down at the front and rear edges with that setup. I mean we all know Creality can't have an original idea, but can they at least copy the ideas they "borrow" from other manufacturers correctly? Even the Sovol SV06 got it right. They use 3 linear bearings on the Y just like Prusa does. Great video though, and thank you for showing this! Before seeing this, I almost made the mistake of considering this printer.
Yup, it's basically a wide pivot point, not really ideal. I'll have a fairly inexpensive and easy solution video in less than a month (I need to wait for parts to arrive). The other day I measured rods in my K1 printers, and they are slightly oversized, if that were the case on the KE printer, it would probably be acceptable. It is always possible that it's a bad batch, it happens, I can't be sure. I hope they see the video and fix the problem and at least the printer works no matter where you print on the buildplate. I think the printer can still be good and fast, but not with this issue lingering. Thanks for the support. I have another one about the Max coming out in a day or two about how to get the best first layer, this is another common problem people seem to be having... and after a few days testing full-bed sized prints, I finally understand the cause. Have a great one!
I would like to see how linear rails might affect printing quality on the V3 KE... And if they are sn improvement, recommendations on a DIY solution that doesn't require a lathe!! 😅
Hey, ohhhh just for that, I'll make an only lathe solution, solid hard maple linear rods sounds like a nice option. I will work on something with linear rails though, I think the design is a bit flawed, and the new version of the Ender 3 (Plus) seems to have a similar setup, and may also suffer.
I just got this printer a couple weeks ago. I also had a Kobra 2 pro, and the Ender 3 V3 ke blows it out of the water on print quality, speed, ease of maintenance. Pretty much in every way it's better. I've not had any issues with print quality on the ender machine yet. Only had one print failure so far, and it was because the print broke free from the build plate. Was my fault, I didn't use any adhesion layers.
That's good to know. Have to tried printing in the front or far back corners yet? Printing in the middle seems to provide pretty good results. I'm designing a system to fix the movement and allow the printer to reach the highest speeds as well... hopefully at least. Maybe you received a printer from a good batch?
@@NeedItMakeIt yeah I just got one by myself. While the speed is pretty amazing, the quality of the prints is not. Got layer lines everywhere. Also it seems the extruder to have issues. The spring is already bent, wondering if the machine is brand new or someone tried some things on it…
@@deadSoldier9 There is hope! I would like to make a follow up video on this one with the most inexpensive solution to the problem that will be accessible to everyone. It's not a good look to send out a new printer with these kinds of problems. I'm not sure what happened exactly with their QC, did their test setup have good parts and these printers have slightly lesser quality? I will say that the rods are ground, and very consistent, just undersized. As far as the extruder, I think it was a mistake to put the Sprite extruder on this printer, and a plastic version of it as well. The extruder should be more like the K1 extruder, It's probably a few $$ more expensive to produce due to the nice big gears, but it's kind of like the heart of the printer. Are you able to send some photos through so I can see what your prints look like? Needitmakeit@gmail.com
Hello from Athens. Will you c 2:33 consider when you came up with a final solution with the bed instability to sell to me the parts to correct my KE. And if so what will be the cost. Thank you for you serious approach to this issue. Best wishes Dennis Anghelatos
I'm a couple of weeks out from finalizing the video, the plan is to make it available to everyone for free. A subscription to my channel would be nice, but no cost to anyone. I have come up with something that's easy to install, it's pretty inexpensive and it'll provide a lot more stability. If you need someone to make the parts for you, I'm sure either I can do it, or someone near to you can make them up for you if you need it. If you're getting a lot of movement in your printer bed like mine you can also consider contacting Creality and see if they'll send you a replacement set of rods and bearings at least there's a chance they'll fit better.
It's a little bit sad, that a brand new printer need this amount of repair. All the new user friendly simplifying stuff is just make more difficult to proper adjustment (lack of bed level screws, adjustable rollers) At this quality level i am not sure the higher speed feature is a good idea at all. I was thinking to replace my old ender 3 v2, but now i not so sure. Thank you Mike for your honest and high quality content again!
It is a bit unfortunate, and I can't say for sure that everyone would have this problem, my hope is that they'll see this video and make the necessary improvements. I'd tend to want to wait as well until it's fixed, it's a big problem and I still can't figure out how they didn't address it already. I can only assume that they never tested parts at the ends of the bed. It's probably a good idea for testing any bed slinger to do the corners. I'm glad you found the video helpful. I also have a review of the K1 Max coming soon, probably mid-week unless I run into something I don't expect... I'm glad you're enjoying the videos, I am trying to put a bit more of the story into them, infotainment to show a bit of the struggles, I hope it makes the videos a bit more interesting to watch.
I can confirm the entire extruder carriage has a lot of slop on the linier rail when i played around with both the SE and KE at a local Micro Center. There was about 1mm wobble back and forth on the nozzle tip. You can clearly see it move. As for the bed, you can try to move the rods away from each other under the bed to tension against each other and remove slop. Another way is to turn the rod bearings so they ride on 12/3/6/9 o'clock on the rod. That helped a lot years ago on a i3 style machine. *it would be nice if someone made a slide block that could be adjusted with a screw or something, otherwise taking it off and bending it with a vise a little to have a little tension on the bearings might work Few more flaws like the belts not being straight on the carriage and bed, which will distort the travel ratio when the bed/extruder move near to fixed gear on the stepper. A^2+B^2=C^2 will tell you that's a problem. Exact reason why i returned a K1 i bought on Black Friday. Another one was PID tuning was bad for the hotend, it would jump 3+/- degrees when printing anything faster than 200mm/s 3K. Tired PID tuning about 5 times, even tried to manually slowly and consistency feed filament which barely helped. My guess is the thermal mass and/or heat conduction is not being taken into account, idk.. i returned it Unfortunately Creality's machines have always been "built by committee" that clearly don't talk to each other WITH ALL THAT SAID, i bought there first effort into premium 3D printers the Sermoon D1years ago with TONS of major design flaws for $260 open box a few years ago. Amazing frame, thing weighs like 50 lbs lol. Can barely hear it in a closet printing at 325mm/s 4K (400mm/s 5k travel)
I also have a ke, I was thinking if you had used the original ke motor with the k1 extruder or if you had used a different one, because my ke motor has a bearing that I doubt will allow you to fit the k1 extruder
I have it on my plate to get this extruder swapped out with a new more easily adaptable mount too. I think we should get it done, there are a lot of people with this printer and it has some potential for sure! I think the K1 extruder also could have been a bit better, it has the big gears, which are nice but because they only have support on one side, they can flex, which I believe holds them back from performing as well as the P1/X1 or Q1 printers.
@@NeedItMakeIt My biggest problem with the original extruder is that the TPU is impossible for me to print even at the lowest speeds. I was hoping that by replacing it with the K1 extruder I would improve the situation but I can't reuse the original K1 motor with the new extruder due to the bearing present on the motor, but I saw that in the video you say that you reused the original K1 stepper motor ke, how did you do it?
That's right, it does use input shaping, however this machine does not have an accelerometer. I can see that the values within the config file are static and must be pre-loaded. That's one thing I didn't mention, when I made my attempt, I would have needed to redo input shaping because it is a fairly dramatic change. If you want a print that looks like it's melting... use my solution. 🤦🏽
@@NeedItMakeIt i have a value from creality, [input_shaper] shaper_type_y = mzv shaper_freq_y = 32.0 shaper_type_x = mzv shaper_freq_x = 38.5 i hope this help. btw thanks for your video thas help me to choose ke or se.
@@yuliusliem3043 If you can wait until Feb 20th, they're releasing a new Ender 3 V3, I just heard today. It's a Core XZ, it looks pretty nice, though I only have one picture to reference. imgur.com/a/NgCAGJX
Great point. I tried this in the previous video, but there was too much friction, they were not oilite bronze, they were brass with oil I added, so there is room for an improvement. I think the design of the base of the printer should have a centra rail that extends out to allow the bearings to be spread out further, that would go a long way to preventing this issue. I guess the only problem is that they'd need a larger box and I'd imagine they don't want to do that...
@@NeedItMakeIt Using the correct bronze you could machine it to the ID you want as well as amount actually in bearing. Would be easy to bore to good ID, the bore out , leaving contact patch at .250" on each end. I have this printer on the way so I'm learning and brainstorming with you, ready to put my mill and lathe to work
@@justaguy4788 I think it's possible. My attempt in the previous video wasn't the best, they really needed to be a single piece, mine were 2 pieces per side. The Olilite would probably be better, but even Delrin or Teflon would be good too, I'm not sure about machining them though. That's a good idea about having minimal contact area. I think as it wears it will begin to have these issues again, you'd know more about longevity of something like this than I would. The rods themselves also flex a bit more than I would like to see, linear rails are probably the better way to go, or some other design with a central rail like Bambu is doing with the A1
Okay, perfect thanks for confirming that. I have two options. I can contact Creality and have them send me a replacement set of Rods and Bearings, which they may not want to do, since that would be opening them up to having to do this for everyone. I could also but the parts myself, but I need to go and measure them myself... so maybe McMaster Carr is a good option. I can also do the linear rails, which I think is a better option.
@@802Garage I think so too. I've also heard the PC wheels would work well, but I think they need to be spaced apart more to have more success... unless you like the 'melted' look of your prints. The linear rails are I think the best solution here, its going to give the smooth motion with low friction and the bed can remain pretty low, or maybe even lower. I think I can do the change for about 50$ from aliexpress and I can design a proper setup to make it easy for anyone to do.
@@NeedItMakeIt TBH I kind of suspect the issue goes a bit deeper and is with the bed carriage and mount design itself. Seems like the actual steel plate is flopping somehow. I could be totally wrong though. That's why you gotta do it for science! Hahaha.
@@NeedItMakeIt I don't have the funds to buy parts and experiment right now, so I'll wait and see what you come up with. Thanks again for your efforts.
Input shaping compensates for resonance which should be fairly constant and predictable based on a set of input parameters. It also mostly compensates in X and Y and it can in Z, but based on the up and down movement of the printhead, not the bed itself bouncing. This is a much more random issue which is caused by the bed bouncing a different amount depending where on the bed you are printing, how fast it was just moved back and forth, and how much weight is on it. Input shaping might be able to compensate for it if you calibrated at that specific point on the bed in Y and Z directions, but then it would print like crap everywhere else. You kind of need the entire bed surface to behave in a consistent and predictable fashion, if that makes sense. I'm sure there is a more concise way to explain this, but hopefully that helps.
I think I may have another solution other than linear rails. Theoretically, if you lowered the centre of gravity of the bed to be inline with the belt forces, you could reduce or even eliminate the vertical bed tilt-wobble caused by acceleration and deceleration. Just a thought - Whether or not it works in practice, I have no idea
Is there a linear upgrade kit with all tthe needed parts from the manufacturer or 3rd party for the KE version. I found a kit for the V2. does that fit on the v3?
Is the problem the same in another corner? Home much flex is in the load cell? Since you have full access to the firmware, could you machine a solid arm to replace the load cell and rely on the BLTouch for z height? Just for a test. Regardless, that amount of play on the bed should never have left the factory. That's one of the reasons my free DaVinci 1.0 printed like total crap, which is why it was free.
I've done more testing and I have another follow up video in the works for a final solution. I have tested the movement at the front on both sides with a 0.0001 dial indicator, and what I have measured is that we have 0.01mm when I measure movement in the center of the bed, that's a great number. When I move to the front and back corners, we have 0.15mm of movement, which is far too much. I've heard that lots of people have this problem, but some people don't report it at all and say that theirs prints fine. In any case, the central bearing position and a fairly short bearing compared to the bed size isn't ideal. I'm providing a solution for everyone which is fairly inexpensive 30-40$ total and it should work far better even under the worst printing conditions. I'll be another 3 weeks probably, I'm still waiting for parts... The BL probe idea is a good one, I think the CR and BL are basically the same, so it should be possible. I'll have to see if I can also get similar results with that, clever idea! I think they should re-deign to incorporate linear rails, or have a system where the rods are larger diameter and extend beyond the front of the printer base. That would allow a longer bearing to be added. All of this costs money, but it also makes sure that people are happy with their purchase.
Continueing from your previous video I've thermal scanned my bed and it's consistant to about 1deC all over (even though the bed temp is already 5degC too low).
I bet if they had tighter tolerances on the rods and bearings, and also had two of them on one of the rods or two on both, the bed would be far more stable. Since the whole bed rides on just two bearings, any slop in the bearings will allow the bed to wobble quite a bit. A third bearing on either side would give the bed a much wider stance. But they would have to make the Y axis a bit longer to not lose print area.
I thought linear rails right from the start. Not sure why they wouldn’t have done that in the first place. Looking at buying this model but now I’m not sure. Great video nonetheless! Keep up the great work!
Thanks! I'm just about finished the lin-rail option and we're going to have some other really cool upgrades coming for this printer and possible all bed slingers as well. I see that they have the Ender 3 V3 Metal frame available, it seems like it's a better bang for the buck, Nathan Builds Robots has a video review of it already. Of course it is more expensive. Have you looked at the Bambu A1, they had a recall for one of the wires coming to the bed, but otherwise it's a good printer.
Thank you for digging into the issues of this printer, looking forward to next video with linear rail! I love than printer and would like to make it even better, I have some large prints that I want to do and stability will be important.
It seems like there is a lot of interest in the linear rail option, I'll start on a design that makes it easy to mount them, and looks good. With this change, it should make quite a bit of difference.
I've not been all that impressed with my new KE. The firmware UI is pretty bad but the prints haven't been great ether. Looking forward to doing some of these tests on mine as well. My y axis rocks back and forth slightly in the bearings. The rods seem too small and flex slightly. And the rods don't touch their retaining screws to hold them down either, one more than the other. This is my first Ender series printer and so far it's not stellar.
I didn't show that part did I? I was very careful to make sure it was tight, when I received the printer, it was tightened quite a bit, I matched the gap as close as I could to how I received it. it seemed to be about what you'd expect so there is no slippage possibility. I went a bit further today and I measured the movement at the front of the bed compared to the center, and we have 0.15mm at the front, that's the play with just a 'finger-force' applied, in the center we have 0.01mm, it's giving the teeter-totter effect it seems. The center mounted blocks along with the poor fit are the main cause, there will be movement of all of the parts. It needs linear rails along with wider spaced blocks. I will work on a better option for those of us who need a solution.
@@mygamertag2010X I'll make a video including some of that info, it was good you pointed that out, I've made some notes so I don't forget... too many videos on the go and my mind prefers to work in tunnel vision.
@@mygamertag2010X Thanks, that means a lot! I enjoy taking things apart and fixing them, it's a win-win as long as people are finding the videos helpful and TH-cam can promote it enough to allow me to continue doing it. My video making/editing skills are a work in progress, so hopefully as time goes on, it'll become more natural and faster as well. I think I have a pretty 'solid' direction to go now with the KE, taking all of the comments as well from everyone helps a lot to try and combine the ideas from everyone and come up with something that's far better than I'd get on my own.
It's just really weird that everybody has different issues with their KE. I only had adhesion issues but was solved by raising the bed temp and that the gantry was crooked. But no play in any of the parts
It is very strange. Is it that the specs for allowable tolerance for the parts are too great? I just took a quick video using a dial indicator, and I was able to measure that the original bearings on the rods allow a total movement of 0.15mm at the front. It's good that you don't have this problem though, it's not a good one to have, solving it can be a little more expensive than some people would like to spend.
I didn't find that there was any movement on mine, but it's not a bad idea to put longer screws in, just make sure they're not too long because the bed passes with little clearance in that area. I put a dial indicator on mine, and the movement from the undersized rods is being multiplied out near the front of the printer bed. Towards the center it's pretty accurate, measuring at 0.01mm at the center, whereas we have 0.15mm at the front corners. I'll have a final solution out pretty soon which is going to be pretty easy to install and not too expensive either. it should allow higher speeds and will also be very precise too!
I had problems like this with an older ender 3. took me a year to figure out it was the motherboard. once I replaced it with a big tree tech mother board. problem was solved. prints looked normal again. watch out for that creality quality. lol
your solution was so promising shame it didn't work out lol there is a stl on printables to fit MGN9H or MGN12H rails, do you think this may resolve the issue? Also, could this be a necessary mod out of the box? I am getting a KE delivered in a couple of days could order parts now
Yeah, unfortunately there were too many limitations with the wheel spacing likely being the main one. I have another video coming out with the linear rail solution. What I've done is taken it to the limit and I have made it far more stable than anything else out there. I am waiting for the parts to arrive before I can release the final video, I need to make sure it all works properly of course. Your printer may be usable, it seems that they don't all suffer from the same problem, as the bearings wear, you'll likely start to see the same issues over time. The linear rail solution on Printables should work okay, but it still has the issue of the centrally mounted carriages and I think that it's not ideal. I'd say to wait and see what yours is like, maybe it's okay out of the box. I hope they've fixed this problem, it'd be a shame to be sending everyone printers with these same issues.
@@NeedItMakeIt yeah fingers crossed. I'm coming from an Ender 3 v1 pro so I'm sure whatever the case it will be much better lol but I look forward to seeing what you have in store I'm sure it will be entertaining, thanks for your reply
@@xXIamJAEXx I think mine was worst case, I've measured some of the other Rods from Creality and they're 8mm right on, bad batch maybe, I'm not sure. The plan with the rails that I'm working on is that the Y axis will be the most stable and it will allow the speeds of the printer to be ramped up high and still have good results. That's the plan, now to see if I can execute it properly!
I suppose we could add some type of spring, but I don't know about weight, with these slingers they rely on having as light a Y axis as possible. I was thinking about having a spring on each corner which has a wheel below and ridges along the base as it moves, but it's a little gimmicky I think. Thoughts?
@@NeedItMakeIt i was thinking more along the lines of 4 magnets in the corners. Once the printing is about to start. Heavy enough to reduce some vibes but not to much weight... ecen could mount them underneath the plate.. I am only new to this ...only got the printer yesterday. So far so good but i may try it out and i will get back to you. 👍
So basically your saying "What causes the bad print quality on the Ender 3 v3 ke?" is actually the Ender 3 V3 ke itself. Your doing all these mods which is not why the average person (me) purchased this printer. This is marketed as a capable, low maintenance, high quality printer which require minimal maintenance for quality prints. Having one for 6 months I can say unequivocally it is not. I spent 1 full month trying to level the bed to get an acceptable Z offset. It turned out the printer was defective so I sent it back for a new one. Subsequently, I've had some very nice prints and and mainly print Lithophanes of which I've printed over 50. After finally tweaking all the settings and getting virtually perfect prints it has now, suddenly and with no warning, started malfunction. Without any setting changed, same filament, same profile, printer not moved at all, Z rods fine & greased, belts and bolts tight, I have horizontal separation every 6.35mm up the Z. What I'm saying is that with enough mods you can get great prints from almost any printer but you shouldn't have. I don't feel I should have to add $$ to the price just to get it print like Creality says it will out of the box. If you're very lucky and get a trouble free printer good for you however from all the interactions in the forums this is just not the case. There seems to be ZERO quality control and the customer service has (very) much to be desired. My advice to first time buyers is look elsewhere. Maybe Bambu (don't have one) or Prusa (don't have one either but would love one) as everything I see online about them is very positive including their customer service. Sorry but I don't want to see anyone spend $ and go through the headaches I and other experience.
You are doing something wrong then, I bought 6 of these at different times, and all have over 500 hours on them over 8 months, and not a single issue except for ones I caused in the slicer.
@@PrintEverything20005 Most likely not. The Creality forum (and others) is flooded with KE issues from bed level, bed heating to Z offset. It's not to say one can't achieve great prints (I am getting very nice results now) however that's not the issue. The problem lies withing the way Creality marketed the KE. It is does not come near any expectations set by the manufacturer (at least the two I have used out of the box). The Auto Calibration and auto Z does not work for me to date no matter what measures are taken (and none should because "automatic" is AUTOMATIC). If a product is marketed as "perfect first layers" out of the box with no user adjustments then it should produce perfect or at the very least a good first layer. That's only one of the issues. If you have 6 printers that didn't need any manual adjustments then consider yourself a lottery winner 6 times over. One should not have to purchase anything additional items to get good prints. No rails, no rods, no mods.
@@Lensman64 I have done absolutely nothing to any of mine, I have 6 with over 500 hours and never had an issue with first layers, you also have to consider that the majority of people complaining online have either done things to their printers, or they just have absolutely no idea what they have done, and trust me on that as I have helped quite a few people and that's usually the 2 main issues, every so often it's an actual issue, but not very often
I built a Hypercube a few years back under the guidance of Tech2c's TH-cam channel. At that time he was having issues with 8mm linear rod. A lot of suppliers were supplying 5/16" linear rod and calling it 8mm. (5/16" converted to metric comes out to 7.94mm and I think you measured yours at 7.95) Maybe Creality has a problem with their suppliers?
That's a great point. I think you could be absolutely right! The math works out to be nearly exact to what I'm seeing, so if I order linear bearings to suit 5/16", this may be a great option to test out. The rods are hardened, they look like a stainless of some kind, but they're tapped in each end and that's not something I want to get into. They're also extremely straight, so the quality seems good aside from the size. Thanks for sharing this, it may just be the best option for anyone running into this issue.
I bought a V3 KE, only problems. Clearance in linear rail and bed bearings, nozzles touching printing random auto leveling error. It's really not a quality printer. 2 months it's in the trash. disappointed, I regret my ender 3 v1
If there was some way of getting a perfect fit. I'm not sure it's ideal here, drylin relies on a tight fit inside the block and that reduces the ID just enough. I don't now how well it'd work when we have a plastic block, it may end up expanding instead, or both take up the difference.
Sure, they are 342mm, they are tapped in both ends, and they look to be stainless steel, they are ground and are not plated. I can see some minor scoring already from the bearings, they seem to be fairly hard as I try to use my file on them though, that's at least a good sign.
I have tests from the previous video which show when the speed of the print is slowed, the quality rises, however those speeds are in the 10-20mm/s range, that's not an acceptable range to print in for a 'fast' printer. I can see the linear rods working fine as long as they're sized correctly. Unfortunately the movement of the bed is so minimal that it's hard to capture on video well, but I'd like to create a test using a dial indicator to compare as the bed moves back and fourth, thoughts on that?
@@NeedItMakeIt in the previous video you measured the rods and it gave you a measurement of around 7.95, and all other linear bearings were quite loose on it, is there a possibility to swap both rod and bushing that wont have any play on it will minimize the issues.
@@kayquexavier He mentions that towards the end of this video and tried some workarounds to simulate this in previous videos. Proper fit linear rails and bearings with stiff precise mounting would help the issue, but not of the bed and mounting itself are still flexing and bouncing.
@@kayquexavier Yes, I think that would be ideal, in taking some more precise measurements today, and looking closely at the setup, no matter how little play there is, the front and back will perform worse than the center. The bearing blocks are quite short, and mounted central. To get this right, they need to be exactly 8mm, and the bearings need to be set for 7.98mm, with that little bit of pre-load, it should be quite a bit better. Unfortunately, if I order parts at that kind of precision, they are terribly expensive, and I'd need to drill and tap holes in the ends of hardened rods. I think we need a solution that's better, so I am working on coming up with something that's going to work well.
Too true. I still like my printers, but I do wonder if their strategy will hold up over time with more competition coming in with more finished printers. Cheap and upgradable vs Usable right out of the box but slightly more expensive. My guess is that they know their market pretty well and they know the risks and rewards involved... or I could be wrong.
I print petg exclusively and was considering replacing my sv01s with these printers. Why didn't you just try print at a much slower speed to remove the vibrations ? I print at 40mm /s max.
Or, you could turn down the speed and acceleration settings to something that the printer can actually cope with. I'd be amazed if it actually CAN accelerate at 8M per second..
Sure you could, and it will certainly help. The problem still exists that there is too much movement at the front, with time and wear the quality will suffer; it needs to be addressed. I don't think people that buy a fast printer will want to settle, nor should they for having to slow their printer down to the point of not bothering to move to a 'faster' printer.
@@NeedItMakeIt But they are often not "faster" than last years models. They are often, in the case of Creality at least, cheapened versions of previous models with the *ability* to print at stupid speed, but they are just aren't built to cope with such speeds. Anyone can set their accelerations to 8000 and claim their printers can do 500mm/s, the fact that the printer will produce utter shit prints and shake itself apart after a few month at that speed isn't mentioned. You are right that people won't settle for having to slow their printer, but why buy a printer then have to spend twice the amount on "upgrades" to get the advertised speeds with acceptable quality?
@@frankhovis Yeah, all good points, I think we can agree. The point of my videos is to make people aware of the problems and hopefully I can also provide a solution which can allow them to get to the faster speeds they were promised without having to spend too much. The main issues that need to be addressed on the printer are the rods and the extruder, especially when printing in an enclosure, that light-duty extruder isn't something made for high speed printing and lots of people are having problems with it already. It needs to have been the metal version of the Sprite at least. Creality needs to up their game to stay competitive, there are a lot of solid competitors coming in, and in the case of Bambu, has quickly made a name for themselves (with the little hiccup with the A1 being the only major issue) which is bound to happen with such a quick release of new printers. For fast prints, I still believe CoreXY is the best option, it also happens to have an easily enclosable frame if it's not already closed up. As we learn more about particulates in the air which are hurting us, it'll become even more important to seal up our printers.
@@frankhovisI think a lot of this depends on the prints themselves. There are a good number of prints where quality doesn't have to be 100% and the KE is good at delivering speed that can complete a print, visual artifacts and a bit of post processing included.
@@NeedItMakeItI've seen a video where the air quality was tested with PLA on a moderate sized print farm in a medium sized room, the particulates produced weren't even measurable, so unless printing ABS, I wouldn't worry too much. That said, I do run a small DIY fume extractor nearby (mainly out of respect for my family) and I can't vouch for every additive that may be included in PLA.
Sounds good, if there is some more interest I will go ahead and order the parts and start on a design that looks good and makes it easy for anyone to do the mod themselves.
Thank you very much. I have the parts on order to make the change to linear rails, I'm just waiting for them to arrive and we should see something within the next few weeks. Hopefully the linear rail solution will provide the stiffness that we need to reach the highest speeds that this printer can run at!
@@visoutech They also have a new printer called the Ender 3 V3 and they'll have a Plus version of it as well sometimes soon I believe. I think it's a bit more expensive than the K1, but it has some nice features that the KE does not. I'll try to get my hands on one to test out in the coming months. There is a video out by Nathan Builds Robots showing that new Creality Printer if you wanted to see what I mean.
Thanks for that, actually do you have a reference for what you need to do, I think this could be helpful for people to know more. Can you enter the IP alone into Orca along with the root password?
The problem is that until you return this printer and get a replacement you can't know if this problem is on this unit or all the units of this model. Chinese companies are notoriously bad with testing stuff before releasing (see the Bambu heat bed cable debacle for instance) and even worse with QC.
Linear rails aren't necessarily always better than linear rods. You'd probably get the best experience from watching MattThePrintingNerd's video on linear rods where he made his printer go 2000mm/s. He compares the best steppers and rails, and bearings to find the absolute best combo. That might mean a more accessible upgrade than linear rails too!
I don't disagree, the rods would need to be larger, they have a bit too much flex, but the main problem to avoid is the teeter totter setup, having the centralized bearing is not a good idea to make it work well at high speeds. Everything needs to be stiff and with plastic parts and small standoffs on top of that we're not going to see the best results. I went looking for quality hardened rods locally and we're about $60 per rod over here and the length is non standard along with the tapped holes in each end. Mag-lev would be awesome to try out!
@@NeedItMakeIt Those are expensive rods!! And I agree, an LM8LUU seems too small to support the entire bed, especially with cheap bearings. Will you have space for 2 linear rail bearings on each side? I bet you're right about the plastic parts contributing to flexibility, too. I wonder if they could be beefed up. I have a friend who will probably get one of these, so maybe I'll get the chance to experiment myself! My OG Ender 3 Pro runs at 200mm/s and 15k accel, travel 500mm/s, and quality is great! Doesn't even have the silent board 😂
I had one heck of a time finding it, and that's because the extruder control is on the board itself like the Enders used to be the rest of the steppers are controlled through changes in the .cfg. I'll give it a go thanks for that!
@@NeedItMakeIt this is the only thing you did not check. And from my experience with bowden it does depend from filament to filament how would the extruder act (may be because of cheap extuders? :D) But the friction inside would depend on where the print head is because it changes the angle that filament goes into extruder. Anyhow I watched some stuff about the voltages last few days and just a tip: The current you are setting depends on the driver and software you are using. Example: For old drivers on ender it should something lime 0.8 but if you go to SKF board and TMC 2209 you should set it to almost a half (0.5 or smth). Just google "ender tmc driver current" and see the first redit post for some good info and explanation.
I don't understand why when looking at movement artifacts you jumped to extrusion issues as your first port of call. For an easy test of bearing issues on the carriage I'd have printed some igus bearing knock-offs and subbed them straight in.
I think I mentioned that I've never seen issues like this before, and having taken the extruder apart, it seemed that the extruder was the likely cause. At the time it didn't occur to me that the bed was moving slightly up and down, since with the linear rods and bearings it was very hard to detect by eye. I had to experience the problem, and go through the process. Googling didn't help me on this one unfortunately. I don't claim to know everything, but I'd like to go through the process of figuring it out and gaining a better understanding. In the previous video I attempted this, however the tolerances required for this printer to be successful are too tight. I didn't have the IGUS, and it is far to expensive to warrant it. I think it's a good idea if you have the tools to be able to re-machine the outer/inner diameters of the bushing after you've printed them.
Watch the previous video and listen to his explanation in this video and you'll understand why. It's very easy for any of us to be led astray by bad data or confirmation bias. He had PLA prints that looked perfect as well as PETG prints that looked great, so why were there issues with this specific PETG or this specific test? There were multiple factors to eliminate, but because the printer was clearly capable of good prints, it pointed more towards how the extruder was interacting with filament or printing certain models. What we missed was the position of the prints used for testing. It's just a simple mistake. :)
My 2 cents worth.......have you considered that the design of this printer in he Y axis does not follow the design principle of a lathe bed in that you are attempting to guide the bed with 2 sliding surfaces and you are not sure if the mounting of the rails is truly level.......My contention is that the rails should only be guiding in 4 planes.... up and down and side by side on one side only and in 2 planes up and down only on the other rail......if you understand lathe bed design this will make sense. BTW, having 2 linear rails doing the guiding over their length will not make it better as any slight t misalignment of the rails to one another will cause the bed to wobble ...........you cannot have two linear rails in an exact flat plane when the mountings of the rails is on plastic.
thank god i had a "let me watch another YT video" moment before ordering it xD guess I'll wait your final parts to arrive and see whether it suits me or no thank you for the awesome videos
LOL, when I was younger, breaking things always came naturally to me, putting them back together, well that was a different story. I think with most reviews we see, they're biased and you don't see the truth. I think we have a printer that has good potential but it needs two adjustments, those rods and linear bearings and it needs a better extruder or at least the all-metal version of it. They have a new printer out or it will be shortly, the Ender 3 Plus, but I think that it has a similar setup, so we'll see whether it has the same issues. When printing in the outer corners and adding weight as well, it'll be more likely to have problems the bigger the prints get as well, I don't see anyone testing them in this way. I'm glad it helped you out. The final fix video should be out within a few weeks, it'll be even better than the best bed slinger... at least in the Y axis. Thanks for taking the time to write a comment!
Yeah, they need to at least cover the basics. It seems that other people have the issues I've been having, but some people also tell me that their printers work great. I'd have to ask them to print on the front and back corners to be sure, most people probably center the print and may not realize.
Thanks for making these videos. I’m new to 3D printing. I bought the V3 KE a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I’m not having the problem you’re having, but your videos are helping me understand how the printer functions mechanically and how to troubleshoot if issues do arise. Thanks for your hard work!
I am along for the ride, just ordered one today, comes wed, so I will be looking forward to the follow up video in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for all the hard work and thorough tests!
I should get the parts soon and I can finish up the video and see if we can make a big improvement. I assume that not every printer is going to have these problems, some people say they do, some people don't seem to. The only way to know is to print in the center and then in the front corner and if the results are the same, you're golden. It's funny that it wasn't my intent to do that, I was changing between printers and some have larger beds and it shifted the parts to the corner, well that ended up being the thing that helped me to find the problem. From now on, if I test a bed slinger, center and then front or back corners are the way to go.
My lower left corner is negative 1.24 compared to any other point on the bed surface. Sometimes it affects my prints as well. Before it was 1.38, how did I fix it? Loosen the screws but shouldn't all these numbers be about the same ?
I think it's time to admit this is a design flaw. Single bearing per rod saves space and/or increases Y range, but clearly makes things wobble. Seems like the actual solution would be to apply a hacksaw to this nice base, mount longer rods, and convert bed to 4 bearings with appropriate spacing between them.
This will cause high precision bearing to lock up. Too many constraints.
@@myvideo7748Had similar problem when I switched to low tolerance rods and brass/graphite bearings (just my experiments - don't ask). Resolved it by slowly tightening bolts holding bearing cases while checking the movement of the carriage.
I have watched a couple of your videos now and I must say that your approach is highly professional! Greetings from the Netherlands 👍👍
Thank you very much! Sometimes I can get a little carried away with the ideas and solutions, but it's all in good fun. I have lots more videos coming up, some printer related, some related to structural testing and some just what I think are neat ideas.
Thanks again for taking the time to write a note I really appreciate it, and greetings from Canada!
i like your meticulous approach in this problem solving, really nice. I'm glad I am no longer using bedslingers as problem solving them is, in the end, a nightmare. I have a bambulab, which will have their own set of issues when they break, but luckily I have not encountered a single issue with it.
Thanks! Yeah, the Bambu printer are a cut above the rest it seems.. at least for now. But the competition is good, it should require the other companies to improve their products to be able to stay competitive. Just offering a better price isn't good enough if your reputation goes bye-bye.
If I want really good quality I go with the X1C, although it doesn't like PETG-CF, what a mess.
Which Bambu do you have?
@@NeedItMakeIt I am using a P1S and actually have not printed PETG yet - i understand there are issues with bambu+PETG, which is strange because I used to have a Artillery Genius and printed PETG regularly and treated it the same as PLA, then againthe bambu is miles ahead in terms of speed with PETG is not in favor of.
@@atom6_ P1S is a nice printer, good choice. I'd like one, most of the features are the same as the X1C and if not, it's upgradable, mostly upgradable.
When I print PETG it sticks to the nozzle badly, even though it's nickel plated. The other day I had a Poop wedged above the back nut for the Z screw, it was crushing it when it tried to home the Z axis and it continued through the bed leveling until I removed it, but it was crunchy and not pleasant to listen to at all! That was Prusament PETG as well. I still love the printer, great results 98% of the time, just a few tweaks and it could be perfection.
Would love to see the 3rd part to your KE series. New to 3D Printers and design and while its nice to problem solve there are times when you just want a part printed. What is your recommendation for an out of the box setup with minimal issues? Or a link to anything you recommend.
You're doing an awesome job with your video's and channel BTW. Thanks for the great content.
For sure! I'm working on something that I hope will be easy for anyone to print and install themselves, unfortunately it does require the purchase of linear rails and some screws, from Aliexpress it's about $40-50 and a bit of a wait. It should get us to a really good point with the printer though and allow us to reach the highest speeds with good results. The extruder is still a bit of a concern, I still believe that this extruder should be the same as the K1 printers.
I'll be about a month or so until the next KE video, I need to wait for the parts to arrive and then I can finalize the video, showing the install and testing etc. I'll try to keep it short and sweet.
Thanks for the support I really appreciate the kind words! Lots more content to come!
@@NeedItMakeIt Hey these KE videos were really needed. So many people reviewing and not saying a single word about how much the bed shakes and raddles. I also had a problem with my CR touch hitting my prints. I plan on doing exactly what you do with the linear rails to my KE. Could you possibly link the parts list so I can get them ordered now ahead of your video? It would save me and maybe others waiting time. Would be greatly appreciated
@@ty8324 I like Creality, I've always liked them, and I'm not really a brand person, but offering printers like this which are 'faster' makes no sense if you're not doing a few key things right, and the fit... as well as the overall design of the way the bed rides on the rods is a pretty big one.
Checklist:
Up/Down - Check
Left/Right - Check
Forward/Backward - Oops missed that one
Well that's okay, it's best 2/3 right?
I want to make these videos for the people who have the same problem as I do, and also to make sure that Creality is aware of the problems and hopefully it applies some pressure as well.
I'm actually working on the solution at this very moment, but I haven't tested it so it's in proto-type stage and I won't have the rails and blocks for about a month sadly. Can you let me finish up the design over the next few days, and make sure it's the right call and then I'll send you a note so you can place the order? I wouldn't want to have people spending money and then find out that something didn't work the way I expected it to.
The goal here is an inexpensive upgrade, but one that looks good as well. And to do thing, I am taking a slightly different approach than anyone else doing this has, well anything I've seen online anyway.
@@NeedItMakeIt I totally agree. That they released such a subpar bearing/rod design astounds me.
IRL, I know four people who currently have KEs, and they all have similar problems. A problem even arose for one of them where the rod itself was moving due to the bottom screw's insufficient length to make contact with the rod. That with the bed wiggle was not a pleasant sound printing at high speeds lol.
You make a valid point, now that you say that I'd prefer to wait and see your idea through to the end. Don't rush. My ADHD caused me to make my first comment, hehe. Even so, it would be interesting to see how your design differs from DerrickDarrell's "Ender 3 V3 SE / KE D3D Y Rails" design on Printables.
For many, inexpensive will be essential. I'm excited to see the concepts you produce :) I will be following along
@@ty8324 I figure with how they produce so many printers, they'll be a lot of them with the same issues. It reminds me of when I worked for a Company making high-production furniture, when we found out we had a problem with a giant wardrobe cabinet, we had to go to the storage facility and open up every giant box and fix each one, that was a ton of work.
I'm printing the first set of bearing block mounts right now. I think this will work well, BUT I found something I didn't expect. The steel plate below the bed is domed. I would assume they're all like this having being punched out. Maybe you can confirm that yours is also that way. What I've done is compensated for it by having the mounting piece slightly domed as well, but maybe I'll have both options just incase someone has a flat one for some reason.
I had to 3D scan the base to make sure everything was going to fit and that it wouldn't conflict, I'll add that into the video incase anyone needs to do something like that themselves in future.
I checked out the other design, and the one I am working on is quite a bit different, it will be more stable and will have less parts. Black rails would look amazing here, but I can't find them on Aliexpress, so I'm going with the standard and we can always blue it later on if it's needed.
Stay tuned!
I'm glad I found this channel. The few videos I've watched so far have been super high value
I'm waiting my Ender 3 V3 KE in few days. Very interesting video 🔥 and very excited to see the next part.
It sounds like there is enough interest to move ahead with it, I'll order the parts soon and hopefully shipping won't take too long.
@@NeedItMakeIt awesome 🔥
yeah I will be following along as well. Just ordered mine with the ability to return if I am not excited with the outcome.
@@NeedItMakeItbeen struggling with our bed leveling and quality of print and thanks to this video and your next one we would be able to improve our first printer the ender 3 v3 ke 🥹
@@bastilorbes2220 That's great, and there are many more to come. I'm nearly finished the next in the series, which is a pretty cool one and it'll be something anyone can print themselves.
What a great overview of the solution. You also inadvertently take away some of the fear we'd all have with customizing / improving some of these machines. using the lathe for your own home made wheel mounts was great.
Thanks for that, it was sadly a bit gummy, but in the follow up video we came up with the final solution, it was a good progression to get to a good solution.
Woooah! Not what I expected. What a pain. We were all being led in the wrong direction not even thinking about the physical components of the printer since PLA printed so well. Totally makes sense that the position on the bed made such a big difference when the bearings were loose at the end of travel. Because of the nozzle and pressure for the extruding filament pushing down on the part or pulling it sideways, especially with PETG, it was also making the bed spring up and down as you pointed out. So overall the V3 KE needs better bearings for the bed and a stiffer mounting solution. I really like the rounded wheels you made and they seem like an almost better solution than V-groove wheels or possibly even cheap linear rods. A lot of people say that V-groove are better than cheap linear rods or linear rails and this is probably why. I was wondering if creating TPU mounts for the linear rods would help by holding them firmly in place, but allowing some flex when necessary, and damping vibrations. The POM wheels sorta solve some of the same issues. It's really crazy how much that bed is jumping around at the edge and totally unacceptable. I've gotta wonder if just a thicker aluminum support plate and solid bed mounts would solve most of the issue. The steel plate almost seems like it's acting like a spring. Otherwise a double carriage might help, but gotta keep full range, so linear rails would probably be a good call. Would definitely love to see you follow up with that fix!
I was able to get an indicator on it, I have a short video on my discord if you or anyone else is interested to see it. We're seeing 0.006" or 0.15mm play at the front corner. As I move to the exact center of the bed, we're seeing 0.01mm. I should have included this test with the video, I'll make sure to add it into the follow up. I was thinking that I should do something better with the linear rails, and that is to use smaller rails, and instead of having a single block on each rail, have 2 and space them out a little more. To do this, I'd have the rails mounted out further to each side, giving that more stability as well on the left/right of the bed, but the main goal is to get away from the teeter-totter and move towards something that's far more stiff. I also want to see about moving the PCB down and away and adjusting the standoffs to be shorter, and that should help get to where we need to go. If we can use 2 blocks per rail, the steel plate may be able to go away. I think I'd just need to see how long the rails need to be, they'll be sticking out of the front and back of the printer a little bit.
@@NeedItMakeIt Wow! Great data and thoughts. That's about what I would expect given how it looked, though I would have guessed more like 0.1mm so that's really bad. Mounting the rails as wide as possible and lowering the mounting height of everything as much as possible will definitely help. The higher the weight of the bed is away from the mounting point, the more leverage it has over the mount and the bearings on the rails whenever it tries to accelerate. Momentum wants to tip that thing over, and the taller it is the harder it's gonna exert its tipping force. It would actually be ideal to have a bed mounted in between rails at the same height, with bearings at each corner, now that I think about it. Obviously that has lots of packaging and alignment concerns though. Would be sweet to see a setup like that with linear rails for some serious precision and stability on a bed slinger. They would have to be quite long rails too though!
@@802Garage I like your thinking. Side mounted rails sounds awesome and that'd give more printable height... not that I'd ever use it. To keep it simple for anyone wanting to do the upgrade, I think I'll end up with something like 400mm rails, they'll extend beyond the front and back a wee bit, that will allow the use of the 2 blocks per rail and it should help a lot to avoid the tipping issue and add a tiny bit of rigidity as well. I have a set picked out on Ali, but it's going to be about 1 month to get them sadly. At least I can have all of the parts printed and try to test them in advance. I want something simple enough for anyone to be able to do, which isn't that easy, to get precise printed parts, we need precise printers, and the bed will be warped most likely it could mean that the rails will end up being out of alignment. Printing with PETG will minimize warpage so that may work for the base parts to mount the rails onto. I guess I just need to try it and see what happens.
@@NeedItMakeIt PETG likes to warp more than PLA, unless I missed something or you just mean vs ABS for example. But yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was figuring you would do with the rails before my mind went wild with the side mounts hahaha. Now I want to do it, but that's a massive project I don't have the time and space to tackle. Def look forward to your testing! I usually get stuff from AliExpress in around 10-15 days.
Derrick Darrell has a pretty good rail mod on pintables for converting the KE and SE to linear rails. That will be my next major mod on my KE. I saw a lot of improvement moving the spool to the side of the machine but I still have too much bed slop.
Thanks for deep dive videos like this! The KE is a capable printer but definitely needs those tweaks and mods like this to get the most out of it.
Took me a minute to find him (for those searching, don’t put a space in the name), but I downloaded the files
I already printed the bracketry and ordered the rails. Just waiting for them to arrive.👍🏻
@@bluewolf4915 my rails should be getting delivered today. I printed the brackets out of PACF (I print a lot of that material)
Ah, that's good to hear you've been getting results out of moving the spool. It seems obvious and I have been considering it, but am a bit reluctant to change the design unless necessary.
@@ForOdin Found the guy but not the files for the ke.😢
Really looking forward to your next video. My KE also has some weird artefacts when printing PLA. Nothing major but there are some things that just go wrong for no apparent reason. Funnily enough, my issues are hella consistent. For example, if I print the same code twice, all slightly misplaced layers will be in the exact same place. If the cause for this is the bed vibration, I would expect it to be semi-random.
To test thing, I've ordered a vibration compensation sensor from creality that should arrive some time next week. Maybe its also something you would want to use to see if there is a difference. Cheers
I had the same issue on my SE, changed the bearings and now it prints wonderfully
Do you mind telling me where you bought the bearings, or the exact product if that's possible? I've been looking for the best solution to provide to other people with the same issues. I was leaning toward linear rails, but I'm open to other ideas as well.
@@NeedItMakeIt I just got cheap ones from Temu as I wanted to see how they worked, they were a much tighter fit than the stock ones, now the wobble is almost 100 percent gone, but I do think that the rods are too close together which causes the corners to not be as supported, linear rails a bit more apart should be the ultimate fix
@@manuel509rios Really, okay that would be a good first step and I can show that in the follow up video as a comparison. I took my dial indicator and in the center I measured only 0.01mm of movement, but at the front, I was able to measure 0.15mm, and that was just a light pressure by one finger. With the movement of the bed and a bit of spring action, I think we'll see more when a program is running. Thanks for that info, I'll work on a final solution for anyone with this printer or other printers with the same setup.
I notice that the new Ender 3 V3 Plus has the same rods and bearings, which is even more concerning since the printable area is 300 x 300, I sure hope they have high precision parts on those printers!
Tbh, i'm not quite sure why would they use the rail for the gantry and x-axis movement, but use rails for bed movement. It's not like they're saving anything, they just need to make parts that move rigit to prevent artifacts like that.
How-Do! Just got to the end of this video and was watching the issues you ran into whilst testing out the Y-Axis Motion on your Printer.
I'm in the process of finishing my own Cartesian Bed Slinger and will be addressing the same issues too fairly soon. Firstly, I've already bought the hardware in advance Online and ended up going for 20mm! Linear Rods to beef them up and to take advantage of there stiffness due to there size, And Because the Steel Bar is 20mm in diameter, this will provide more Weight and Surface Area for this size Linear Bearings LM20LUU to coast along once lubricated. In some way, I think even though it maybe overkill, the rods are going to add weight to the machine and a lower point of weight/Gravity to make the machine even more solid than before...
When I think about this point, the concept does remind me of the logic behind large parts being used on CNC Machines. It adds more stiffness to support the things were looking to avoid, especially when it comes to the final finishes of the print. So like I said, I've got that coming up soon, but I think it will have great significance.
As for your issues, I'd say go back to Linear Rods and Re-Design the Rubber Wheel Setup! Make or redesign the Wheel bearing Mounts (The black 3d printed plates you made) and design them so they too can be adjusted like the wheels, Maybe just on 1 side or Rail. Last of all... Go for rubber wheels with a larger rubber Groove on them ( probably will also have a larger I.D for the bearing too to conder while redesigning it too. but to end my waffling, The larger rubber bearings should give you a larger radius of contact too when using the same Rods!
Think about it!
Good luck...!
Thank you for this, I am really rooting for your next video. I also have this problem i even tried to put the spool on the side to lessen the vibration still the same. Hopefully you can post more videos for KE.
I just received the parts yesterday so I just need to finish up a few more videos in the pipeline already and then I'll get back to this one. So far I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out, it's certainly more stable. It should be within the next 1 1/2 - 2 weeks to see that video come out. I want to release something that's tested and it has to look good too.
New 2 3d printing bought a KE tested a lot to learn the perfect settings and i made sure everything was stable and my prints are really good
Looking forward to the potential of a linear rail upgrade - good luck with getting the proper quality out of the machine
Yes, we need follow up, also if you could provide in the follow up video all the parts and stl's to improve our printers in homes that would be great. Great video.
My KE's bed seems much more stable than yours, maybe its just a quality control issue. Mine came with a dead strain gauge sensor right out of the box, other than that it's been working great for the past month. I am planning on trying PETG on this printer for the first time, I will definitely compare front and middle oriented prints. Is the thing you are printing a publicly available STL? I might just do the same print, so its easier to compare to yours.
I am planning on doing the linear rails upgrade sooner or later, there is a mod on printables that looks great.
Yeah. Same here. No bed movement at all on mine either. everything was very well put together with the correct tolerances. Just got mine a few weeks ago. So maybe they adjusted their QC after learning there was possibly an issue.
Thanks for trying all these fixes so we didn't have to broseph. Much appreciated.
Thank you for this video was thinking about buying this printer as a 2nd printer but think I might save a bit more for a k1c , due to people reporting poor prints, I am at the stage where i don't want to tinker to much but just print out the box , would still like to see the linear solution you got in mind 👍🏼
Hey Mike, I just did some measurements of my rods and I could not get a measurement below 8 mm. I didn't take them out of the machine like you did though, so it's possible they're the same. But still, I really couldn't discern any play in the bearings whatsoever. With enough force, I could get the bed to shift in any direction and visually I can see that I am actually bending the rod to do so. Maybe they achieved better tolerances in more recent units such as mine? I received mine on the 19th of December, though I preordered in September (yours I presume you received even more recently, but stock could vary).
I have a couple artifacts I am fighting as well, not sure they are the same as yours. One is that it always seems to push too far in just one of the corners when making hard turns (I want to say front left, but haven't printed in a few days). Another is that I will get either an under extrusion or layer shifting, but it's not completely consistent on where it shows up. A third is that my bed must be out of level enough that the auto bed levelling can't compensate, because when I do the Prusa test at 0.1 mm height front corners tend to fail. The first layer in general tends to be a bit uneven. I got a smooth PEI bed from Creality and I plan to do the spacer and perhaps even tape modification.
I've also got linear rails, I was planning to do the D3vil design mod on here, but to see you working on it, maybe I should wait. You thought your design is superior somehow? My rails are MGN12H from AliExpress. Hope that's the direction you went... but I think Derrick's design should work anyways, he did get a good vibration reduction in his accelerometer test.
Derrick was also able to achieve 49 mm3/sec by changing out the hot end to the ChB-OT . So there is more potential in this machine yet!
agreed. ordered one and this would be a great followup. def want to see the rails added
I'll have it out in a couple of weeks, long delivery for the parts is holding me back unfortunately. It should be great though.
I just put a linear rail on my Ender 3 S1 Pro x axis to help with quality issues. This is more proof I still can't trust Creality to get the details right.
If you want to print fast, the slightly rubbery wheels just don't work anymore. Makes sense that we don't see them on any of the faster printers these days. I think linear rails are a must. The rods are only 8mm as well, which gives them some flex too, they seem to be quality rods, which are ground... just a bit too small. Can I assume that they ran tests only in the center of their printer bed and they never saw this problem? If there is some interest, I'd be happy to make a follow up to the follow up video and install linear rails. I'll design some type of a mount that is easy to install for everyone and looks like it belongs as well. I'm surprised that they didn't catch this problem, it's very important for their reputation and it's a pretty big expense when compared to the price of the printer to do the upgrade.
I'm really glad to saw the serial videos.It's really help me a lot. But i'm a little curious about the settings for printing speed and acceleration when you print PETG. Hope to get your advice.
YES! I would like to add linear rails on my Ender 3 V3 KE. Thank you for all the good content
I have the printed parts designed, I'm just waiting on the rails to arrive, and then I can finish up the video. It'll still be about 3+ weeks unfortunately, I wanted to order the cheap rails so that I can confirm that others can do the same. There is no sense buying really nice rails that cost as much as the printer. The solution should work really well, I went a bit of a different direction than most people adding rails. I've gone for as much stability as possible while trying to make the install as simple as possible as well. Hope it works out!
Thanks for the support!
I can’t even remove one of the screws holding the rails. The two black screws on the front holding the y rails. I can unscrew one but not the other. It just moves and doesn’t come up at all.
I loved the dedication in your work, greetings from Chile
hi, I'm about to order an Ender v3 KE. it will then be my first 3d printer. It has a good price for what you get? what should you really expect when it is not a very expensive machine. For a hobby, it is a hobby to come up with solutions and make things better. a thought for your precision hunting. do you still have the filament roll hanging at the top of the tower? in a video I saw, he made a table stand for the reel, as well as an ornament with his logo for the hole for the reel on the tower. As there was a hole through for the filament to go to the extruder. very good and informative video. greetings from Sweden
At least part of the problem here is the spacing of the linear bearings front to back on that table...or more correctly, the lack thereof. Only 2 linear bearings...side by side in the same location along the Y axis? OF COURSE the table is going to be prone to rock up and down at the front and rear edges with that setup.
I mean we all know Creality can't have an original idea, but can they at least copy the ideas they "borrow" from other manufacturers correctly? Even the Sovol SV06 got it right. They use 3 linear bearings on the Y just like Prusa does.
Great video though, and thank you for showing this! Before seeing this, I almost made the mistake of considering this printer.
Yup, it's basically a wide pivot point, not really ideal.
I'll have a fairly inexpensive and easy solution video in less than a month (I need to wait for parts to arrive). The other day I measured rods in my K1 printers, and they are slightly oversized, if that were the case on the KE printer, it would probably be acceptable. It is always possible that it's a bad batch, it happens, I can't be sure.
I hope they see the video and fix the problem and at least the printer works no matter where you print on the buildplate. I think the printer can still be good and fast, but not with this issue lingering.
Thanks for the support. I have another one about the Max coming out in a day or two about how to get the best first layer, this is another common problem people seem to be having... and after a few days testing full-bed sized prints, I finally understand the cause.
Have a great one!
I would like to see how linear rails might affect printing quality on the V3 KE... And if they are sn improvement, recommendations on a DIY solution that doesn't require a lathe!! 😅
Hey, ohhhh just for that, I'll make an only lathe solution, solid hard maple linear rods sounds like a nice option. I will work on something with linear rails though, I think the design is a bit flawed, and the new version of the Ender 3 (Plus) seems to have a similar setup, and may also suffer.
I just got this printer a couple weeks ago. I also had a Kobra 2 pro, and the Ender 3 V3 ke blows it out of the water on print quality, speed, ease of maintenance. Pretty much in every way it's better.
I've not had any issues with print quality on the ender machine yet. Only had one print failure so far, and it was because the print broke free from the build plate. Was my fault, I didn't use any adhesion layers.
That's good to know. Have to tried printing in the front or far back corners yet? Printing in the middle seems to provide pretty good results. I'm designing a system to fix the movement and allow the printer to reach the highest speeds as well... hopefully at least.
Maybe you received a printer from a good batch?
Haven’t found a good slicer for the Ender 3 V3 KE which do you use or any recommendations?
Orca, by far the best. If you root it and install Moonraker etc then you can print directly to the printer from Orca
I am looking forward to the oncoming video.
You'd like to see the follow up to install linear rails then as well?
@@NeedItMakeIt yeah I just got one by myself. While the speed is pretty amazing, the quality of the prints is not. Got layer lines everywhere. Also it seems the extruder to have issues. The spring is already bent, wondering if the machine is brand new or someone tried some things on it…
@@deadSoldier9 There is hope! I would like to make a follow up video on this one with the most inexpensive solution to the problem that will be accessible to everyone. It's not a good look to send out a new printer with these kinds of problems. I'm not sure what happened exactly with their QC, did their test setup have good parts and these printers have slightly lesser quality? I will say that the rods are ground, and very consistent, just undersized.
As far as the extruder, I think it was a mistake to put the Sprite extruder on this printer, and a plastic version of it as well. The extruder should be more like the K1 extruder, It's probably a few $$ more expensive to produce due to the nice big gears, but it's kind of like the heart of the printer. Are you able to send some photos through so I can see what your prints look like? Needitmakeit@gmail.com
Hello from Athens. Will you c 2:33 consider when you came up with a final solution with the bed instability to sell to me the parts to correct my KE. And if so what will be the cost.
Thank you for you serious approach to this issue. Best wishes
Dennis Anghelatos
I'm a couple of weeks out from finalizing the video, the plan is to make it available to everyone for free. A subscription to my channel would be nice, but no cost to anyone. I have come up with something that's easy to install, it's pretty inexpensive and it'll provide a lot more stability. If you need someone to make the parts for you, I'm sure either I can do it, or someone near to you can make them up for you if you need it. If you're getting a lot of movement in your printer bed like mine you can also consider contacting Creality and see if they'll send you a replacement set of rods and bearings at least there's a chance they'll fit better.
It's a little bit sad, that a brand new printer need this amount of repair. All the new user friendly simplifying stuff is just make more difficult to proper adjustment (lack of bed level screws, adjustable rollers) At this quality level i am not sure the higher speed feature is a good idea at all. I was thinking to replace my old ender 3 v2, but now i not so sure.
Thank you Mike for your honest and high quality content again!
It is a bit unfortunate, and I can't say for sure that everyone would have this problem, my hope is that they'll see this video and make the necessary improvements. I'd tend to want to wait as well until it's fixed, it's a big problem and I still can't figure out how they didn't address it already. I can only assume that they never tested parts at the ends of the bed. It's probably a good idea for testing any bed slinger to do the corners. I'm glad you found the video helpful. I also have a review of the K1 Max coming soon, probably mid-week unless I run into something I don't expect... I'm glad you're enjoying the videos, I am trying to put a bit more of the story into them, infotainment to show a bit of the struggles, I hope it makes the videos a bit more interesting to watch.
I'd like to see a follow up on this
You'll have one this Saturday morning!
Hey, what is the Y axis Timing Belt Pulley Teeth number? please on the creality Ender 3 v3 ke
I can confirm the entire extruder carriage has a lot of slop on the linier rail when i played around with both the SE and KE at a local Micro Center. There was about 1mm wobble back and forth on the nozzle tip. You can clearly see it move. As for the bed, you can try to move the rods away from each other under the bed to tension against each other and remove slop. Another way is to turn the rod bearings so they ride on 12/3/6/9 o'clock on the rod. That helped a lot years ago on a i3 style machine.
*it would be nice if someone made a slide block that could be adjusted with a screw or something, otherwise taking it off and bending it with a vise a little to have a little tension on the bearings might work
Few more flaws like the belts not being straight on the carriage and bed, which will distort the travel ratio when the bed/extruder move near to fixed gear on the stepper. A^2+B^2=C^2 will tell you that's a problem. Exact reason why i returned a K1 i bought on Black Friday. Another one was PID tuning was bad for the hotend, it would jump 3+/- degrees when printing anything faster than 200mm/s 3K. Tired PID tuning about 5 times, even tried to manually slowly and consistency feed filament which barely helped. My guess is the thermal mass and/or heat conduction is not being taken into account, idk.. i returned it
Unfortunately Creality's machines have always been "built by committee" that clearly don't talk to each other
WITH ALL THAT SAID, i bought there first effort into premium 3D printers the Sermoon D1years ago with TONS of major design flaws for $260 open box a few years ago. Amazing frame, thing weighs like 50 lbs lol. Can barely hear it in a closet printing at 325mm/s 4K (400mm/s 5k travel)
Hello, what are your settings for PETG? Speed, fan, temperature?
I also have a ke, I was thinking if you had used the original ke motor with the k1 extruder or if you had used a different one, because my ke motor has a bearing that I doubt will allow you to fit the k1 extruder
I have it on my plate to get this extruder swapped out with a new more easily adaptable mount too. I think we should get it done, there are a lot of people with this printer and it has some potential for sure! I think the K1 extruder also could have been a bit better, it has the big gears, which are nice but because they only have support on one side, they can flex, which I believe holds them back from performing as well as the P1/X1 or Q1 printers.
@@NeedItMakeIt My biggest problem with the original extruder is that the TPU is impossible for me to print even at the lowest speeds.
I was hoping that by replacing it with the K1 extruder I would improve the situation but I can't reuse the original K1 motor with the new extruder due to the bearing present on the motor, but I saw that in the video you say that you reused the original K1 stepper motor ke, how did you do it?
I'm having very similar problems with my SE with petg. It also makes a bad noise when the Y-axis is moving at higher speeds.
hai, do a ender 3 v3 ke have input shaping? i thing you need to do input shaping it because of steel bed.
That's right, it does use input shaping, however this machine does not have an accelerometer. I can see that the values within the config file are static and must be pre-loaded. That's one thing I didn't mention, when I made my attempt, I would have needed to redo input shaping because it is a fairly dramatic change. If you want a print that looks like it's melting... use my solution. 🤦🏽
@@NeedItMakeIt i have a value from creality, [input_shaper]
shaper_type_y = mzv
shaper_freq_y = 32.0
shaper_type_x = mzv
shaper_freq_x = 38.5
i hope this help.
btw thanks for your video thas help me to choose ke or se.
@@yuliusliem3043 If you can wait until Feb 20th, they're releasing a new Ender 3 V3, I just heard today. It's a Core XZ, it looks pretty nice, though I only have one picture to reference. imgur.com/a/NgCAGJX
ok im curious what is that part you printed so many times used for? :)
Seeing as you have the tools and knowledge to make them, why not oiled bronze bushings that fit?
Great point. I tried this in the previous video, but there was too much friction, they were not oilite bronze, they were brass with oil I added, so there is room for an improvement. I think the design of the base of the printer should have a centra rail that extends out to allow the bearings to be spread out further, that would go a long way to preventing this issue. I guess the only problem is that they'd need a larger box and I'd imagine they don't want to do that...
@@NeedItMakeIt Using the correct bronze you could machine it to the ID you want as well as amount actually in bearing. Would be easy to bore to good ID, the bore out , leaving contact patch at .250" on each end. I have this printer on the way so I'm learning and brainstorming with you, ready to put my mill and lathe to work
@@justaguy4788 I think it's possible. My attempt in the previous video wasn't the best, they really needed to be a single piece, mine were 2 pieces per side. The Olilite would probably be better, but even Delrin or Teflon would be good too, I'm not sure about machining them though.
That's a good idea about having minimal contact area. I think as it wears it will begin to have these issues again, you'd know more about longevity of something like this than I would. The rods themselves also flex a bit more than I would like to see, linear rails are probably the better way to go, or some other design with a central rail like Bambu is doing with the A1
Thanks for doing this. Having the same issues. Please do make the linear bearing video .
Okay, perfect thanks for confirming that. I have two options. I can contact Creality and have them send me a replacement set of Rods and Bearings, which they may not want to do, since that would be opening them up to having to do this for everyone. I could also but the parts myself, but I need to go and measure them myself... so maybe McMaster Carr is a good option. I can also do the linear rails, which I think is a better option.
@@NeedItMakeIt I'd say go straight for the linear rails at this point to see if it makes a difference.
@@802Garage I think so too. I've also heard the PC wheels would work well, but I think they need to be spaced apart more to have more success... unless you like the 'melted' look of your prints. The linear rails are I think the best solution here, its going to give the smooth motion with low friction and the bed can remain pretty low, or maybe even lower. I think I can do the change for about 50$ from aliexpress and I can design a proper setup to make it easy for anyone to do.
@@NeedItMakeIt TBH I kind of suspect the issue goes a bit deeper and is with the bed carriage and mount design itself. Seems like the actual steel plate is flopping somehow. I could be totally wrong though. That's why you gotta do it for science! Hahaha.
@@NeedItMakeIt I don't have the funds to buy parts and experiment right now, so I'll wait and see what you come up with. Thanks again for your efforts.
Wait, but doesn’t Input Shaper compensate for this?
Input shaping compensates for resonance which should be fairly constant and predictable based on a set of input parameters. It also mostly compensates in X and Y and it can in Z, but based on the up and down movement of the printhead, not the bed itself bouncing. This is a much more random issue which is caused by the bed bouncing a different amount depending where on the bed you are printing, how fast it was just moved back and forth, and how much weight is on it. Input shaping might be able to compensate for it if you calibrated at that specific point on the bed in Y and Z directions, but then it would print like crap everywhere else. You kind of need the entire bed surface to behave in a consistent and predictable fashion, if that makes sense. I'm sure there is a more concise way to explain this, but hopefully that helps.
Wait, so what if we test across the whole bed or where it is most vulnerable?
@@802Garage
Input shaping you mean the sensor thing???
I will watch, it's interesting. Thanks for your work.
I would be very interested if the linear rails is the final solution. Great video.
I think I may have another solution other than linear rails.
Theoretically, if you lowered the centre of gravity of the bed to be inline with the belt forces, you could reduce or even eliminate the vertical bed tilt-wobble caused by acceleration and deceleration.
Just a thought - Whether or not it works in practice, I have no idea
Is there a linear upgrade kit with all tthe needed parts from the manufacturer or 3rd party for the KE version. I found a kit for the V2. does that fit on the v3?
Is the problem the same in another corner? Home much flex is in the load cell? Since you have full access to the firmware, could you machine a solid arm to replace the load cell and rely on the BLTouch for z height? Just for a test.
Regardless, that amount of play on the bed should never have left the factory. That's one of the reasons my free DaVinci 1.0 printed like total crap, which is why it was free.
I've done more testing and I have another follow up video in the works for a final solution. I have tested the movement at the front on both sides with a 0.0001 dial indicator, and what I have measured is that we have 0.01mm when I measure movement in the center of the bed, that's a great number. When I move to the front and back corners, we have 0.15mm of movement, which is far too much. I've heard that lots of people have this problem, but some people don't report it at all and say that theirs prints fine. In any case, the central bearing position and a fairly short bearing compared to the bed size isn't ideal. I'm providing a solution for everyone which is fairly inexpensive 30-40$ total and it should work far better even under the worst printing conditions. I'll be another 3 weeks probably, I'm still waiting for parts...
The BL probe idea is a good one, I think the CR and BL are basically the same, so it should be possible. I'll have to see if I can also get similar results with that, clever idea!
I think they should re-deign to incorporate linear rails, or have a system where the rods are larger diameter and extend beyond the front of the printer base. That would allow a longer bearing to be added. All of this costs money, but it also makes sure that people are happy with their purchase.
hopeing mine isnt bad. just got it and still in the box. but intersted what the linear rails do
Continueing from your previous video I've thermal scanned my bed and it's consistant to about 1deC all over (even though the bed temp is already 5degC too low).
I bet if they had tighter tolerances on the rods and bearings, and also had two of them on one of the rods or two on both, the bed would be far more stable. Since the whole bed rides on just two bearings, any slop in the bearings will allow the bed to wobble quite a bit. A third bearing on either side would give the bed a much wider stance. But they would have to make the Y axis a bit longer to not lose print area.
Great video😊. Any solution on the print quality yet?
I thought linear rails right from the start. Not sure why they wouldn’t have done that in the first place.
Looking at buying this model but now I’m not sure.
Great video nonetheless!
Keep up the great work!
Thanks! I'm just about finished the lin-rail option and we're going to have some other really cool upgrades coming for this printer and possible all bed slingers as well. I see that they have the Ender 3 V3 Metal frame available, it seems like it's a better bang for the buck, Nathan Builds Robots has a video review of it already. Of course it is more expensive.
Have you looked at the Bambu A1, they had a recall for one of the wires coming to the bed, but otherwise it's a good printer.
Thank you for digging into the issues of this printer, looking forward to next video with linear rail! I love than printer and would like to make it even better, I have some large prints that I want to do and stability will be important.
It seems like there is a lot of interest in the linear rail option, I'll start on a design that makes it easy to mount them, and looks good. With this change, it should make quite a bit of difference.
Yes please make a follow up to this video
I've not been all that impressed with my new KE. The firmware UI is pretty bad but the prints haven't been great ether. Looking forward to doing some of these tests on mine as well.
My y axis rocks back and forth slightly in the bearings. The rods seem too small and flex slightly. And the rods don't touch their retaining screws to hold them down either, one more than the other. This is my first Ender series printer and so far it's not stellar.
I can't print TPU 95 with it.
Can you help me please?
Is it possible that your y belt was loose??
I didn't show that part did I? I was very careful to make sure it was tight, when I received the printer, it was tightened quite a bit, I matched the gap as close as I could to how I received it. it seemed to be about what you'd expect so there is no slippage possibility. I went a bit further today and I measured the movement at the front of the bed compared to the center, and we have 0.15mm at the front, that's the play with just a 'finger-force' applied, in the center we have 0.01mm, it's giving the teeter-totter effect it seems. The center mounted blocks along with the poor fit are the main cause, there will be movement of all of the parts. It needs linear rails along with wider spaced blocks. I will work on a better option for those of us who need a solution.
@@NeedItMakeIt awesome, thank you!
@@mygamertag2010X I'll make a video including some of that info, it was good you pointed that out, I've made some notes so I don't forget... too many videos on the go and my mind prefers to work in tunnel vision.
@@NeedItMakeIt I'm sure I can speak for us all, we really appreciate your thorough testing and inventive ideas to solving these problems!
@@mygamertag2010X Thanks, that means a lot! I enjoy taking things apart and fixing them, it's a win-win as long as people are finding the videos helpful and TH-cam can promote it enough to allow me to continue doing it. My video making/editing skills are a work in progress, so hopefully as time goes on, it'll become more natural and faster as well.
I think I have a pretty 'solid' direction to go now with the KE, taking all of the comments as well from everyone helps a lot to try and combine the ideas from everyone and come up with something that's far better than I'd get on my own.
It's just really weird that everybody has different issues with their KE. I only had adhesion issues but was solved by raising the bed temp and that the gantry was crooked. But no play in any of the parts
It is very strange. Is it that the specs for allowable tolerance for the parts are too great? I just took a quick video using a dial indicator, and I was able to measure that the original bearings on the rods allow a total movement of 0.15mm at the front. It's good that you don't have this problem though, it's not a good one to have, solving it can be a little more expensive than some people would like to spend.
@@NeedItMakeIt yeah for sure. I am still interested in the video of installing linear rails on it. Good luck!
I'll start working on it, thanks for that.
tbh i really hope the company see your results and get some insight of what's wrong with their engineers's design and fix it
I just saw a video saying the screws are too short for the rails have to tried putting larger screws in the front?
I didn't find that there was any movement on mine, but it's not a bad idea to put longer screws in, just make sure they're not too long because the bed passes with little clearance in that area.
I put a dial indicator on mine, and the movement from the undersized rods is being multiplied out near the front of the printer bed. Towards the center it's pretty accurate, measuring at 0.01mm at the center, whereas we have 0.15mm at the front corners.
I'll have a final solution out pretty soon which is going to be pretty easy to install and not too expensive either. it should allow higher speeds and will also be very precise too!
@@NeedItMakeIt im looking forward to it mate, so much fun tinkering with this printer 😀
I had problems like this with an older ender 3. took me a year to figure out it was the motherboard. once I replaced it with a big tree tech mother board. problem was solved. prints looked normal again. watch out for that creality quality. lol
When you add it all up, there are a lot of ways for things to go wrong. The motherboard, that's a tough one to know for sure.
your solution was so promising shame it didn't work out lol there is a stl on printables to fit MGN9H or MGN12H rails, do you think this may resolve the issue? Also, could this be a necessary mod out of the box? I am getting a KE delivered in a couple of days could order parts now
Yeah, unfortunately there were too many limitations with the wheel spacing likely being the main one. I have another video coming out with the linear rail solution. What I've done is taken it to the limit and I have made it far more stable than anything else out there. I am waiting for the parts to arrive before I can release the final video, I need to make sure it all works properly of course.
Your printer may be usable, it seems that they don't all suffer from the same problem, as the bearings wear, you'll likely start to see the same issues over time.
The linear rail solution on Printables should work okay, but it still has the issue of the centrally mounted carriages and I think that it's not ideal.
I'd say to wait and see what yours is like, maybe it's okay out of the box. I hope they've fixed this problem, it'd be a shame to be sending everyone printers with these same issues.
@@NeedItMakeIt yeah fingers crossed. I'm coming from an Ender 3 v1 pro so I'm sure whatever the case it will be much better lol but I look forward to seeing what you have in store I'm sure it will be entertaining, thanks for your reply
@@xXIamJAEXx I think mine was worst case, I've measured some of the other Rods from Creality and they're 8mm right on, bad batch maybe, I'm not sure.
The plan with the rails that I'm working on is that the Y axis will be the most stable and it will allow the speeds of the printer to be ramped up high and still have good results. That's the plan, now to see if I can execute it properly!
Just saw an interesting video by Teaching Tech on linear rails from a few years ago, the results are interesting.
What about adding weights to the corners of the bed top before printing?
I suppose we could add some type of spring, but I don't know about weight, with these slingers they rely on having as light a Y axis as possible. I was thinking about having a spring on each corner which has a wheel below and ridges along the base as it moves, but it's a little gimmicky I think. Thoughts?
@@NeedItMakeIt i was thinking more along the lines of 4 magnets in the corners.
Once the printing is about to start.
Heavy enough to reduce some vibes but not to much weight... ecen could mount them underneath the plate..
I am only new to this ...only got the printer yesterday.
So far so good but i may try it out and i will get back to you. 👍
Could even hot glue some lead fishing weights to disc type magnets...
@@McRcFly That's a really cool idea, have you seen the Magneto printer btw by Peopoly? Your concept reminds my of what they've done.
So basically your saying "What causes the bad print quality on the Ender 3 v3 ke?" is actually the Ender 3 V3 ke itself. Your doing all these mods which is not why the average person (me) purchased this printer. This is marketed as a capable, low maintenance, high quality printer which require minimal maintenance for quality prints. Having one for 6 months I can say unequivocally it is not. I spent 1 full month trying to level the bed to get an acceptable Z offset. It turned out the printer was defective so I sent it back for a new one. Subsequently, I've had some very nice prints and and mainly print Lithophanes of which I've printed over 50. After finally tweaking all the settings and getting virtually perfect prints it has now, suddenly and with no warning, started malfunction. Without any setting changed, same filament, same profile, printer not moved at all, Z rods fine & greased, belts and bolts tight, I have horizontal separation every 6.35mm up the Z. What I'm saying is that with enough mods you can get great prints from almost any printer but you shouldn't have. I don't feel I should have to add $$ to the price just to get it print like Creality says it will out of the box. If you're very lucky and get a trouble free printer good for you however from all the interactions in the forums this is just not the case. There seems to be ZERO quality control and the customer service has (very) much to be desired. My advice to first time buyers is look elsewhere. Maybe Bambu (don't have one) or Prusa (don't have one either but would love one) as everything I see online about them is very positive including their customer service. Sorry but I don't want to see anyone spend $ and go through the headaches I and other experience.
You are doing something wrong then, I bought 6 of these at different times, and all have over 500 hours on them over 8 months, and not a single issue except for ones I caused in the slicer.
User error.
@@PrintEverything20005 Most likely not. The Creality forum (and others) is flooded with KE issues from bed level, bed heating to Z offset. It's not to say one can't achieve great prints (I am getting very nice results now) however that's not the issue. The problem lies withing the way Creality marketed the KE. It is does not come near any expectations set by the manufacturer (at least the two I have used out of the box). The Auto Calibration and auto Z does not work for me to date no matter what measures are taken (and none should because "automatic" is AUTOMATIC). If a product is marketed as "perfect first layers" out of the box with no user adjustments then it should produce perfect or at the very least a good first layer. That's only one of the issues. If you have 6 printers that didn't need any manual adjustments then consider yourself a lottery winner 6 times over. One should not have to purchase anything additional items to get good prints. No rails, no rods, no mods.
@@BuzzingGoober Hmm, turns out Creality doesn't agree with that.
@@Lensman64 I have done absolutely nothing to any of mine, I have 6 with over 500 hours and never had an issue with first layers, you also have to consider that the majority of people complaining online have either done things to their printers, or they just have absolutely no idea what they have done, and trust me on that as I have helped quite a few people and that's usually the 2 main issues, every so often it's an actual issue, but not very often
What about some bronze bushings to ride on tbe rods ?
Please do a linear rails mod! I have A KE coming in so I willl use it!
nice investigation, let us see how it continues 😉
I'm just waiting on the parts to arrive and we're going to get this project taken care of finally!
Great....wish I'd seen this before buying one..... haven't put it together yet but I hope it is alright
and this is why im getting a bambu labs a1, i have had nothing but issues with both creality printers i have bought
I built a Hypercube a few years back under the guidance of Tech2c's TH-cam channel. At that time he was having issues with 8mm linear rod. A lot of suppliers were supplying 5/16" linear rod and calling it 8mm. (5/16" converted to metric comes out to 7.94mm and I think you measured yours at 7.95) Maybe Creality has a problem with their suppliers?
That's a great point. I think you could be absolutely right! The math works out to be nearly exact to what I'm seeing, so if I order linear bearings to suit 5/16", this may be a great option to test out. The rods are hardened, they look like a stainless of some kind, but they're tapped in each end and that's not something I want to get into. They're also extremely straight, so the quality seems good aside from the size.
Thanks for sharing this, it may just be the best option for anyone running into this issue.
Update... it doesn't look like 5/16" is a size for linear bearings, I'll have to see if Creality can send me new rods.
I bought a V3 KE, only problems. Clearance in linear rail and bed bearings, nozzles touching printing
random auto leveling error.
It's really not a quality printer. 2 months it's in the trash. disappointed, I regret my ender 3 v1
Would Drylin bearings make a difference??
If there was some way of getting a perfect fit. I'm not sure it's ideal here, drylin relies on a tight fit inside the block and that reduces the ID just enough. I don't now how well it'd work when we have a plastic block, it may end up expanding instead, or both take up the difference.
Do you have the length of the linear rods, please? Thank you.
Sure, they are 342mm, they are tapped in both ends, and they look to be stainless steel, they are ground and are not plated. I can see some minor scoring already from the bearings, they seem to be fairly hard as I try to use my file on them though, that's at least a good sign.
test with a far lower acceleration, since the bed itself is too flexible too comply with the sudden change of direction.
I have tests from the previous video which show when the speed of the print is slowed, the quality rises, however those speeds are in the 10-20mm/s range, that's not an acceptable range to print in for a 'fast' printer. I can see the linear rods working fine as long as they're sized correctly. Unfortunately the movement of the bed is so minimal that it's hard to capture on video well, but I'd like to create a test using a dial indicator to compare as the bed moves back and fourth, thoughts on that?
@@NeedItMakeIt in the previous video you measured the rods and it gave you a measurement of around 7.95, and all other linear bearings were quite loose on it, is there a possibility to swap both rod and bushing that wont have any play on it will minimize the issues.
@@kayquexavier He mentions that towards the end of this video and tried some workarounds to simulate this in previous videos. Proper fit linear rails and bearings with stiff precise mounting would help the issue, but not of the bed and mounting itself are still flexing and bouncing.
@@kayquexavier Yes, I think that would be ideal, in taking some more precise measurements today, and looking closely at the setup, no matter how little play there is, the front and back will perform worse than the center. The bearing blocks are quite short, and mounted central. To get this right, they need to be exactly 8mm, and the bearings need to be set for 7.98mm, with that little bit of pre-load, it should be quite a bit better. Unfortunately, if I order parts at that kind of precision, they are terribly expensive, and I'd need to drill and tap holes in the ends of hardened rods. I think we need a solution that's better, so I am working on coming up with something that's going to work well.
We all should get paid for BETA testing the printers for Creality.
Too true. I still like my printers, but I do wonder if their strategy will hold up over time with more competition coming in with more finished printers. Cheap and upgradable vs Usable right out of the box but slightly more expensive. My guess is that they know their market pretty well and they know the risks and rewards involved... or I could be wrong.
I print petg exclusively and was considering replacing my sv01s with these printers. Why didn't you just try print at a much slower speed to remove the vibrations ? I print at 40mm /s max.
I was about to buy Ender 3 V3 KE. Luckily I watched your video. I will stay away from Creality.
Or, you could turn down the speed and acceleration settings to something that the printer can actually cope with. I'd be amazed if it actually CAN accelerate at 8M per second..
Sure you could, and it will certainly help. The problem still exists that there is too much movement at the front, with time and wear the quality will suffer; it needs to be addressed. I don't think people that buy a fast printer will want to settle, nor should they for having to slow their printer down to the point of not bothering to move to a 'faster' printer.
@@NeedItMakeIt But they are often not "faster" than last years models. They are often, in the case of Creality at least, cheapened versions of previous models with the *ability* to print at stupid speed, but they are just aren't built to cope with such speeds. Anyone can set their accelerations to 8000 and claim their printers can do 500mm/s, the fact that the printer will produce utter shit prints and shake itself apart after a few month at that speed isn't mentioned. You are right that people won't settle for having to slow their printer, but why buy a printer then have to spend twice the amount on "upgrades" to get the advertised speeds with acceptable quality?
@@frankhovis Yeah, all good points, I think we can agree. The point of my videos is to make people aware of the problems and hopefully I can also provide a solution which can allow them to get to the faster speeds they were promised without having to spend too much. The main issues that need to be addressed on the printer are the rods and the extruder, especially when printing in an enclosure, that light-duty extruder isn't something made for high speed printing and lots of people are having problems with it already. It needs to have been the metal version of the Sprite at least. Creality needs to up their game to stay competitive, there are a lot of solid competitors coming in, and in the case of Bambu, has quickly made a name for themselves (with the little hiccup with the A1 being the only major issue) which is bound to happen with such a quick release of new printers. For fast prints, I still believe CoreXY is the best option, it also happens to have an easily enclosable frame if it's not already closed up. As we learn more about particulates in the air which are hurting us, it'll become even more important to seal up our printers.
@@frankhovisI think a lot of this depends on the prints themselves. There are a good number of prints where quality doesn't have to be 100% and the KE is good at delivering speed that can complete a print, visual artifacts and a bit of post processing included.
@@NeedItMakeItI've seen a video where the air quality was tested with PLA on a moderate sized print farm in a medium sized room, the particulates produced weren't even measurable, so unless printing ABS, I wouldn't worry too much.
That said, I do run a small DIY fume extractor nearby (mainly out of respect for my family) and I can't vouch for every additive that may be included in PLA.
thanks gunna keep saving up for a bambu labs a1
Me gustaria ver las barras de 8mm y tambien las guias lineales. Saludos desde Spain
Please try the linear rail if it solves it.
Sounds good, if there is some more interest I will go ahead and order the parts and start on a design that looks good and makes it easy for anyone to do the mod themselves.
thank you! helpful!
Thks great video try to find the parts a test
Thank you very much. I have the parts on order to make the change to linear rails, I'm just waiting for them to arrive and we should see something within the next few weeks. Hopefully the linear rail solution will provide the stiffness that we need to reach the highest speeds that this printer can run at!
@@NeedItMakeIt great to hear i will buy one and make that modifications
@@visoutech They also have a new printer called the Ender 3 V3 and they'll have a Plus version of it as well sometimes soon I believe. I think it's a bit more expensive than the K1, but it has some nice features that the KE does not. I'll try to get my hands on one to test out in the coming months. There is a video out by Nathan Builds Robots showing that new Creality Printer if you wanted to see what I mean.
Program Slicer ?
I'm using Orca mainly, I only use Creality print if I haven't rooted any new printers.
You dont need to be rooted to send wirelessly in orca for those curious.
Thanks for that, actually do you have a reference for what you need to do, I think this could be helpful for people to know more. Can you enter the IP alone into Orca along with the root password?
Why not go to a higher tolerance bearing, or the drylin style bearings. Instead of re inventing the bed guidance
The problem is that until you return this printer and get a replacement you can't know if this problem is on this unit or all the units of this model.
Chinese companies are notoriously bad with testing stuff before releasing (see the Bambu heat bed cable debacle for instance) and even worse with QC.
Linear rails aren't necessarily always better than linear rods. You'd probably get the best experience from watching MattThePrintingNerd's video on linear rods where he made his printer go 2000mm/s. He compares the best steppers and rails, and bearings to find the absolute best combo. That might mean a more accessible upgrade than linear rails too!
I don't disagree, the rods would need to be larger, they have a bit too much flex, but the main problem to avoid is the teeter totter setup, having the centralized bearing is not a good idea to make it work well at high speeds. Everything needs to be stiff and with plastic parts and small standoffs on top of that we're not going to see the best results.
I went looking for quality hardened rods locally and we're about $60 per rod over here and the length is non standard along with the tapped holes in each end.
Mag-lev would be awesome to try out!
@@NeedItMakeIt Those are expensive rods!! And I agree, an LM8LUU seems too small to support the entire bed, especially with cheap bearings. Will you have space for 2 linear rail bearings on each side? I bet you're right about the plastic parts contributing to flexibility, too. I wonder if they could be beefed up.
I have a friend who will probably get one of these, so maybe I'll get the chance to experiment myself! My OG Ender 3 Pro runs at 200mm/s and 15k accel, travel 500mm/s, and quality is great! Doesn't even have the silent board 😂
Check your extruder driver voltage
I had one heck of a time finding it, and that's because the extruder control is on the board itself like the Enders used to be the rest of the steppers are controlled through changes in the .cfg. I'll give it a go thanks for that!
@@NeedItMakeIt this is the only thing you did not check. And from my experience with bowden it does depend from filament to filament how would the extruder act (may be because of cheap extuders? :D)
But the friction inside would depend on where the print head is because it changes the angle that filament goes into extruder.
Anyhow I watched some stuff about the voltages last few days and just a tip: The current you are setting depends on the driver and software you are using. Example: For old drivers on ender it should something lime 0.8 but if you go to SKF board and TMC 2209 you should set it to almost a half (0.5 or smth). Just google "ender tmc driver current" and see the first redit post for some good info and explanation.
I don't understand why when looking at movement artifacts you jumped to extrusion issues as your first port of call.
For an easy test of bearing issues on the carriage I'd have printed some igus bearing knock-offs and subbed them straight in.
I think I mentioned that I've never seen issues like this before, and having taken the extruder apart, it seemed that the extruder was the likely cause. At the time it didn't occur to me that the bed was moving slightly up and down, since with the linear rods and bearings it was very hard to detect by eye. I had to experience the problem, and go through the process. Googling didn't help me on this one unfortunately. I don't claim to know everything, but I'd like to go through the process of figuring it out and gaining a better understanding.
In the previous video I attempted this, however the tolerances required for this printer to be successful are too tight. I didn't have the IGUS, and it is far to expensive to warrant it. I think it's a good idea if you have the tools to be able to re-machine the outer/inner diameters of the bushing after you've printed them.
Watch the previous video and listen to his explanation in this video and you'll understand why. It's very easy for any of us to be led astray by bad data or confirmation bias. He had PLA prints that looked perfect as well as PETG prints that looked great, so why were there issues with this specific PETG or this specific test? There were multiple factors to eliminate, but because the printer was clearly capable of good prints, it pointed more towards how the extruder was interacting with filament or printing certain models. What we missed was the position of the prints used for testing. It's just a simple mistake. :)
My 2 cents worth.......have you considered that the design of this printer in he Y axis does not follow the design principle of a lathe bed in that you are attempting to guide the bed with 2 sliding surfaces and you are not sure if the mounting of the rails is truly level.......My contention is that the rails should only be guiding in 4 planes.... up and down and side by side on one side only and in 2 planes up and down only on the other rail......if you understand lathe bed design this will make sense.
BTW, having 2 linear rails doing the guiding over their length will not make it better as any slight t misalignment of the rails to one another will cause the bed to wobble ...........you cannot have two linear rails in an exact flat plane when the mountings of the rails is on plastic.
I actually don’t see the problem… all prints look equal to me and i cant make out why or where anything was fixxed…
thank god i had a "let me watch another YT video" moment before ordering it xD guess I'll wait your final parts to arrive and see whether it suits me or no
thank you for the awesome videos
LOL, when I was younger, breaking things always came naturally to me, putting them back together, well that was a different story. I think with most reviews we see, they're biased and you don't see the truth. I think we have a printer that has good potential but it needs two adjustments, those rods and linear bearings and it needs a better extruder or at least the all-metal version of it. They have a new printer out or it will be shortly, the Ender 3 Plus, but I think that it has a similar setup, so we'll see whether it has the same issues.
When printing in the outer corners and adding weight as well, it'll be more likely to have problems the bigger the prints get as well, I don't see anyone testing them in this way.
I'm glad it helped you out. The final fix video should be out within a few weeks, it'll be even better than the best bed slinger... at least in the Y axis.
Thanks for taking the time to write a comment!
I hate that every printer coming out has at least one design flaw or oversight
Yeah, they need to at least cover the basics. It seems that other people have the issues I've been having, but some people also tell me that their printers work great. I'd have to ask them to print on the front and back corners to be sure, most people probably center the print and may not realize.