Review on Enhance 3D Printing with Ender MKK Carborundum Motherboard: 220x220x250mm Superior Performance by Ralph Gerry

The first 3D printer I bought. It took me ages to get stable prints. There are numerous design flaws. It feels like they just evaluated the Ender 3 without considering the various mechanical and structural requirements associated with these changes. After a disappointingly short time, dozens of issues related to these design flaws surfaced. The standard bed mat is not very good so I replaced it with a glass bed. Unfortunately, I bought the official Creality brand. It was too thick and didn't dissipate heat well. Texturing on the glass bed was also a challenge. Cut the glass yourself or purchase an EZFlex mat. In the end I opted for the latter. As with many printers, the Bowden tube needed to be replaced almost immediately. I used a Steinbock tube for this. I also had to upgrade the extruder gearbox. I went with a dual gear, although Creality's metal brand also works well. Extruder location is also suboptimal, and many dual gear kits do not perform well when material is placed so close to the lead screw and vertical rods. This placement also causes a lot of plastic to fall onto the Z screw. I recently printed a bracket to mount the extruder on the top rail. The hotend didn't work properly either. It heated unevenly and frequently clogged no matter how I tried to mitigate it. I replaced it with a Microswiss all metal hot end and those problems were gone. I couldn't bring myself to stop stretching either, no matter how hard I tried. Ultimately the solution was to print the bullseye channel. I had to do this twice because the first one was so hard I had to install it and then print the next one. Side. This caused a lot to go wrong. I've tightened, loosened, remodeled, flipped, swapped, balanced and done everything I could think of or find online to fix it. Wheel alignment/replacement didn't help. Lubricating the lead screw did not help. Nothing worked. I finally gave in and bought a kit with a dual motor Z-axis. Also, the belt tensioning method for this printer is basically "prying up the tensioner clamp to create tension by screwing it into the guides," which is tedious. I also bought belt tensioners. Additional Note: Many of the belts advertised for this printer are the wrong size and will only fit the Ender 3. Measure the belts yourself and order a specific size. You are not on the Creality website. Overall, I learned a lot about 3D printing. It was good. But the downside is how much time and money it took to get it right. If I could do it all over again I would only buy one high end brand and one high end model. In the end it was the same result, but it took a lot more effort than it was worth. Also, this printer only allows you to set the print settings in multiples of 4. So if you want the layer height to be less than . 2, you have to go down to 0.16, then 0.12, etc. Same goes for the increase: 0.24, 0.28, etc. Very strange, but still. Kind of a pain for some fine detail prints. Also, Cura is the only slicer that doesn't seem to be monopolizing this printer. So be aware that this will bind you to Cura. It's good if you have the money to buy a printer AND upgrade it. Now my prints are very high quality and I've learned a lot. But by default you get different results on printouts. If I hadn't improved it so much my print quality rating would have been 2 stars.