Are you thinking about getting an Ender three 3d printer well you might want to check
out the Creality Ender 3 v2. They just announced this machine, it's not
available until June but they are taking pre-orders. It's got some nice features.
It's a little more expensive than the current Ender 3's so we're going to
cover those features and help you decide whether to buy now or buy later right
here at Filament Friday. Filament Friday is brought to you by these patreon supporters.
If you look at the v2 it's really an upgrade to the Ender 3 Pro. It's got
a meanwell power supply although mounted to the bottom. So
instead of the back it's underneath. Part of the electronics. It's got the control
board mounted upside down just like the Ender 3 pro. It's got a wider base
for the bed just like the Ender 3 Pro. What it doesn't have is this
magnetic bed. I was never a big fan of that. They've gone to a glass bed. I like
that feature. There's a few features they've added which you can find in my
videos now and you can get from the community. One of them are these
adjusters that go on the X and the Y to keep the belts tight. They're very very
handy. I have that on the machine back here. I did a whole video on it but
that's something you can buy now. Another thing they've added is a knob up here on
the extruder. Just like I have here. You can 3d print that. That's not a big deal.
Another thing to have on the front, is a drawer here. This space is filled with a
drawer so you can store little tools. There's different designs on Thingiverse.
They've added that to this machine. One feature I really like is they've added a
silent board to this. Now they're saying it's new electronic so it may be an
improved version but you can get a Creality silent board for this machine
right here. It converts to the 2208 drivers which are a lot quieter and
makes the printer print a little bit better. So it's definitely worth it.
Thirty to fifty dollars depending on where you buy it. And I've done a video
on that. In fact several of my machines have it. Big difference. So the fact they
put it on this machine, I've been asking for that for a while, fantastic. Now
whether they've gone to the 2209 drivers, and that's why it's new
electronics and there's different ways to drive those? We'll have to see they're
not giving us those details yet. But I really like the
fact there's a silent driver on here. Another change you may notice is the
control box. It looks a lot like a Prusa mini. But it's got icons instead of the
text and crude graphics on the current machine. But it's not touch. You still
have a knob that you have to turn and select. And I hope they keep this open
source so we can still have access to that if we have to update the machine.
They don't give the full specs yet so I don't know if the build area of this guy
is the same as this guy? I assume it is. They also claim 30% more efficient
cooling so maybe that'll give a little higher temperature range for the hot end.
Now what I didn't see them change is the extruder top. It's still the plastic
extruder top which comes on machines now. If you buy one of the latest machines
they do now have a metal insert going into that arm so the filament can't rub
it, which was the part of the reason I put the filament on the side, so that's
carried over to this guy. But they have an upgrade kit where they give you
Capricorn Tubing. A metal extruder top and then the silent board. So they put the
silent board on there but they didn't put the Capricorn tubing or the metal
extruder. Why I don't know. So I did contact my creality representative and
asked them about adding those two. I'd probably put an EZR on mine anyway
but to me if you're gonna do a v2 it should at least have the upgrade kit you
recommend. So I hope to get one of these before the June release because it's
awful hard to test a virtual machine like this. But with the glass bed I
wonder if that's going to deteriorate the prints, because glass beds do tend to
be heavier and so you get a little more ringing in your prints. So we'll see if
they sorted that ou. So I'm excited to try it out but now the big question; is
it worth the $289 list price? And you can buy it one right now for $269 on their
site as a pre-sale. Which is $60 more than the standard Ender 3 and 30 dollars
more than the Ender 3 Pro. So is it worth waiting and then pay that extra? I don't
know. That's a tough one for me to call because a lot of the stuff that this has
you can add to a machine now. So it'll be interesting when there's more specs out
what we find out about the electronics, the build size, things like, that to see if
there's other improvements that I'm missing. But I just wanted to let you
know that this exists. Go check it out at the Creality site. I'll put links to
all this stuff in the description below. That's it for this week. I'll see you
next time right here at Filament Friday