I had resisted owning such a newfangled gadget for a long time. But after the thought came to me with various manufacturing projects: If you had a 3D printer now …

Still hesitant as to whether this is a useful extension of my skills, at Easter 2021 and at the height of the pandemic, I said to myself: buy a cheap machine. A Creality Ender 3 it was … THE, at the time, widespread entry-level printer.

Captured by the fascinating process and the huge range of possible applications around the home and workshop, my skills grew … and with them, my requirements. The Ender 3 is missing a lot – and so I, like so many others before me, was infected by the upgrade virus: bed level probe, geared extruder, belt tensioners, second Z spindle, all-metal hotend, HeroMe cooling system … you name it. Of course, a housing based on Ikea Lack tables had to be built … but with my own twist. Then came the desire for more speed and linear advance, i.e. self-compiled Marlin firmware … first on the original 8-bit control board … then soon on a 32-bit board from BigTreeTech.

But now I've reached a point in the further improvement that is problematic: a conversion from Bowden to direct extrusion is possible, but brings along new problems. And even if it was INCREDIBLE fun: now the time has come when, instead of a permanent project, I simply need a machine that just always works reliably and smoothly.

So I treated myself to something new – more on that soon. A friend of mine will take over the massively modified Ender 3 … and I'm very happy about that, because this long-time project still stays somewhat around 😅

Do I regret buying cheap and then spending time and money on upgrades? No, not at all. In addition to the great fun, I learned a lot – that wouldn't have been possible with a printer that works perfectly out of the box 🤓