https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3
Quality is pretty top notch. It worked out of the box flawlessly and with no futzing.
1. They use crappy MOSFETs that are known to fail closed. This means you can get a runaway heat on your hotend. A 40w cartridge can melt the alu heatspreader
2. The beds are anemic for heating. Not enough power
3. Crappy steppers
4. No features for jam detection, autoleveling, skipped step protection, filament runout
5. "Chinese" quality: good luck in getting any sort of tech support. Once they have your money, you're fucked.
I'm fighting right now with Pine64 over defective eMMC modules that ignore the first read, causing initrd to fail to boot. Of course, they were chatty on Twitter prior to purchase, but have ignored every way of contact AFTER purchase. But pretty much every Chinese company is like this.
1. They’re IRLR3103PBF operated within their SOA. They’re fine. Most MOSFETs fail short due to the construction of the MOSFET. I’ve actually got a few scars on my arms from the buggers exploding on me misusing them on purpose as RF PA’s as a ham. I’ve seen them blow up in various bits of expensive US made kit too (tektronix 22xx in particular grr)
2. I’ve had absolutely no problems at all with mine and adhesion.
3. A decent stepper costs as much as a Prusa i3. All the steppers at this price are crap. But they work pretty damn well.
4. These are luxuries really. If it jams the Bowden tube pops out and you clean it up and off you go. I levelled it in 3 mins myself. Skipped step I’m not sure if the scenario. Filament run out doesn’t happen if you pay attention to the Cura filament length and don’t try to wing using up the ass end of a roll.
5. I’m not paying for support. I’ll fix it myself. I’m quite handy with a screwdriver, a compiler and a soldering iron. The thing is just an AVR running open source firmware. Nothing complex.
The main thing is I can get functional chunks of spare parts for this next day via eBay.
As for comparing Chinese support to US support, I’ve had better luck out of the worst Chinese company than Microsoft and Apple.
I had the experience of getting and assembling a Prusa MK3 kit for myself, and getting access to a cheap Chinese printer at roughly the same time.
The Prusa cost more than twice as much and I've already made upgrades. Worked correctly right after assembly. I've already gone through several kilos of successful prints. And the frills just make it so much nicer to use: spring steel bed, auto mesh leveling, the Prusa fork of Slic3r just keeps getting better and better.
The Chinese printer required you to attach the gantry to the bed. But after weeks of tweaking. It still doesn't work correctly. It's completed prints. But none of them have been of decent quality. Now, some of the Chinese printers appear to be good. But do yourself a favour and research the specific models if you want to buy one.
Otherwise, if you really care about designing and prototyping, spend the extra cash and spend more time making things. There are a few brands out there. I reckon Prusa has the best kits if you swing that way.
It's just too finicky. Too many odd issues with jams, adhesion. I left it sitting for a while and for some reason when I came back to use it I had to play with the belt adjustment. The magnetic bed doesn't align properly so you need to intentionally line it up in a way that doesn't cleanly overlap the metal base.
And I'll admit recently there's a trend of Chinese companies in the space actually working on conscious iterative design based on feedback, especially Creality... but it's still obvious they're just reacting to whatever pops up, instead of trying to get ahead of what people want (which Prusa excels at)
Creality tried tried to fix the fan issue everyone complained about (fan exposed to dust and filament refuse) in the Ender 3... by mounting the board upside down with the fan mounted on the bottom millimeters away from your work surface. Which made any modifications that needed access to the board a massive headache (I actually didn't bother putting back half the screws, since to access them you need to put the entire machine on it's side... )
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Long story short, when I want to print something, I want to know, this thing will be ready to go. The hard part should be designing it, if I can't rely on the printer to just work™ when the motivation is there, I just don't bother.
And this is someone who likes to tinker, it's just when I want to tinker on X, I don't want tinkering on Y to get in the way.
I personally don't understand why step motor control is something that needs to be outsourced. Just stick an H-bridge between the microcontroller and the motor and improve the control algorithm with every release.
