I own a Creality Ender 3 Pro. So far the Only upgrades that I have done are to replace the build plate with a Wham Bam system wihich I absolutely love.
My question is that I see there are allot of upgrade boards in the DIY website. I want to know what are the differences to upgrading the board. What will it improve to make it worth upgrading. Possibly one thing the I might like is more modularity as in the boards that use a separate stepper driver main board so that if a stepper were to fail then the whole main board does not need to be replaced.
I went with a BTT SKR 1.4 simply because the user community that has used it with the ender is pretty big and there is lots of documentation on it. So i could read up on it a lot before committing. I am very glad I went with it, as it has performed very well so far and offers a lot of flexibility and user functionality. Reasons why I upgraded:
*Silent when on and not printing - Fans only come on once the printer goes over 60 degrees
*Nearly silent when printing - I run 5015 blowers for hotend and cooling with TMC 2209’s. The only thing you hear when printing is the 5015 fans - I love it
*Much larger memory, so I could tweak as many features as I wanted without worrying about space. I run a BLTouch, Filament runout and some fiddling with M600 for filament changes mid-print. Tweaking Linear advance is my next project to tackle
*Lots of extra pins if you want to add other sensors or extra extruders.
A more advanced board could help with fancier printers, but I think the BTT SKR series is awesome for the ender range of printers.
If you do get an upgrade board, I definitely suggest you look at better cooling as well. Hero Me with 5015 blowers work a treat for me. Makes a big difference in the quality of the overhangs. As a side note, I also upgraded to the Slice engineering bi-metal heat break on my ender 3 Pro. It was the best R600 I have ever spent. makes a massive difference in print consistency.
Going down the Upgrade rabbit hole is either one of the most satisfying endevours or it can be a PITA.
so regarding MCU upgrades ive spent about 18months now trying to squeeze the last bit of speed out of my ender 3.
The biggest most noticeable Change ive made was moving away from marlin and running klipper.
As it stands now i can print at 100-150mm/s at 2k accel and its made such a difference in how i view 3d printing , no longer is it super slow but I knock out prototypes real quick.
Andy,
Did you have to do any frame or mechanical upgrades as well to get to these speeds? Asking As my prints tend to turn to poop once I go over 100mm, with visible ringing etc. Though, granted, I have not tried to print that fast since my recent round of hot end upgrades.
If you are running Marlin on your printer then stop trying to go that fast marlin is really bad at the calculation for going that speed.
Instead run Klipper with either Fuid/mainsail as your interface and consider running input shaper , i havent run input shaper yet and i can see Slight ringing on my prints ,
As for mechanical upgrades
Belt driven z axis (supported on both ends)
Linear rail on the x-axis
Now non of these are mandatory Upgrades you can still get good results with the plastic wheel setups.
I just tend replace stuff that gives me trouble and never revert back
I over do every thing
Thanks for the reply, Andy. Yeah. I tend to overdo things too. My Ender3 is a Frankensetein’s monster-like thing that doesn’t really resemble the original aside from the frame. I still have to complete the dual Z conversion, but then I think it’s pretty much where I want it.
Have been contemplating linear rails. I have a few HGR15s left over from another project. Might throw them on there if I don’t find another use for them. I see belt driven Z’s have been gaining popularity recently after the Voron printers started doing it. Not sure I’m brave enough to try it