New to 3D Printing and Very Happy with the product
I've wanted a 3D printer since they had their first surge on the consumer side years ago, but never had the disposable income to pick one up. I finally decided to pull the trigger on it and am very happy with what I got.<br /><br />(Picture descriptions in Part 3- Use)<br /><br />## Why Ender 3:<br />Before purchasing I watched a bunch of videos from various people and even though they consistently said "I like X printer over the Ender 3" most of them would also qualify their opinion with "I've owned 2-3 Ender 3's". Frankly, if you've bought a product that cost a Couple Hundred Bucks *MULTIPLE* times, then I can only take that as an endorsement.<br /><br />I also looked at many samples from Ender 3 that made me confident that the quality would be acceptable.<br /><br />Furthermore, it's pretty clear that Ender 3 is easily mod-able and is well supported within the community, so it seemed like the easiest machine to troublehshoot/fix/improve if I needed to (and I assumed I would need to)<br /><br />## Assembly:<br />I have some degree of mechanical intuition (nothing I would boast about, but I can get around alright), so even though the instructions only had pictures, I was able to get through about 80% of the assembly easily.<br /><br />The X gantry (the crossbeam assembly with the hotend, in case I'm using the wrong part name since, again, no text in the assembly instructions) was a bit ambiguous based on the pictures so I had to pull up a video tutorial to assemble that.<br /><br />The wiring instructions were also a jumbled mess that I had to stare at for about 10 minutes before finally realizing what went wear (even then I initially plugged the "x" stepper cable into the "z" stepper and only realized my mistake when I couldn't find a place to plug the x limit switch's cable).<br /><br />## Use (with pictures)<br />I spent about 15 leveling the bed using the ubiquitous "Paper Method" that I had seen on several Youtube videos (put a paper between the nozzle and the bed and then adjust until the paper has decent pressure but can still be moved).<br /><br />Picture 1 is the Bed Leveling test print I used at that point, which told me I needed to spend another 20 minutes leveling the bed again.<br /><br />After that I started to print the Test Dog Creality provides. While it was printing, I found out via Google that a) it was going to take longer than I wanted to wait, and b) the filament Creality provides isn't even enough to print the Dog (which seems really shortsighted to me, since most beginner users like myself would assume that you would be able to print at least one of the test pieces with the provided filament).<br /><br />During those two initial prints I had heard this "Pacman" type noise (similar in tone to when you pick up the power dot). Since it sounded like your typical piezo/computer board speakers, I found a cover for the one on the Ender 3's PCB and printed it out.<br /><br />As you can see (top of Picture 2) it came out pretty badly warped. It was late so I continued printing to use up the rest of the filament, but the following morning I did some research and found it was probably because my X Belt was a hair loose; felt tight to me, but I gave it a good tug to make it as tight as I was willing (I didn't want to break anything after all) and I haven't had any problems since<br /><br />I had also already downloaded a whole list of interesting things to print so I picked out the Wire clips to use up the rest of the filament (Picture 2- bottom). I didn't notice the warping as much on those ones, but the walls clearly had gaps in them. I wasn't able to find an explanation for that one on the internet, but haven't had that problem since I tightened the X Belt, so I assume that's all it was.<br /><br />The following day after work I pulled out the last of the starter filament and put on the roll I had bought with the Printer and printed my first Benchy (Pictures 3 and 4). While there are some clear defects in it I'm actually extremely happy that it turned out as well as it did (I'm a bit of a pessimist).<br /><br />Based on the Benchy, I re-leveled the bed again and have since been printing upgrades to my Ender 3 which have all been turning out extremely nice: I had 1 burr on a 1 screw hole and some very, very light stringing on one of the 10 pieces I've printed so far.<br /><br />## Final Note of Significance<br />Don't under estimate how long it takes to make a 3D print. Going into this I was of the opinion of "Well, **I'm** not doing any of the work, so it doesn't matter how long it takes", but there are two hang ups that I didn't really factor in.<br /><br />First, when you're excited to have something Printed you're inevitably more impatient to have it done. I'm a pretty patient person, but even for me I end up sitting at my desk glancing every 15 minutes to see  how much longer it's going to be before I move onto the next piece.<br /><br />Second, smaller pieces may take significantly longer, depending on their shape and quantity. As an example, I'm currently printing the recommended Cable Chains for the Ender 3. After this review is done I'll take the mounting clips off the bed and then print the *Bottoms* of the Chain Links. Just looking at the Chain Links, they seem like they should be pretty small and that they should get done relatively fast.<br /><br />THEY WILL TAKE 11 STRAIGHT HOURS!<br /><br />There are 3 primary reasons for this: I need 25 of them; they have long, vertical extrusions; and they are thin. Because those extrusions are vertical, they get sliced into many layers instead of just a couple (if they were horizontally oriented). Because they are thin, the printer can't take a shortcut by just using an infill  mesh on the inside. Finally, because it takes extra long because of those other two points, the quantity because a serious factor as well.<br /><br />And that's just the *Bottom* of the clips: I'll have to print the Top of them after that...<br /><br />## Bottom Line<br />Despite that last point, I still love this printer and look forward to continuing to use it for a long time in the future.