Hands-on review: Creality Ender 3 V3 Plus 3D printer
Of all the technology I've tinkered with and reviewed over the years, from motherboards to pool robots, I've never used a 3D printer. I've been messing with 3D computer modelling for nearly thirty years, but my main outlet for realising 3D models has been via virtual reality, and more recently mixed reality. I've never needed to view a model as a tangible object. Of late, though, I've found myself needing things around the house, or for projects, that are difficult or impossible to find in shops, but I could easily model in 3D and output if I had a 3D printer.
So, I set out to buy myself one.
At CES last year I marvelled at the 3D-printed designs on show at the Creality booth, so I thought I'd start there. A bit of scope creep later and I was the apprehensive owner of a Creality Ender-3 V3 Plus. The main draw for this model was the size of the prints that the large 300mm x 300mm x 330mm volume can accommodate.
The Ender-3 V3 Plus needs a bit of assembly. The bulk of the printer comes in two pieces: the base with the hot plate and the gantry with the hot end. Being such a large printer there are also two support arms to keep it stable. The box also contains an LED touchscreen, a filament rack, a selection of tools and a reel of white PLA filament.
The best way to put the printer together is to watch the videos on the Creality website, as the included instruction manual isn't particularly easy to follow. Bolting the gantry to the base and adding the supports isn't too difficult, though.
With the structure together, the cables and connectors need to be clipped into place. It's obvious what connects to what, and there are large stickers on the cables to indicate where they should be connected. The touchscreen probably needs the most care as it is connected and clipped into place. It took about 30 minutes to carefully put the machine together.
After switching the printer on for the first time, there's an easy-to-follow wizard on the touchscreen that runs you through connecting to your network, registering the device to your Creality account and calibration.
Feeding the filament into the print head went without a hitch. The filament first goes through a detection port (that switches the device off if it runs out of material) along a Teflon tube and into the hot end. There's a very positive locking switch that clips the included PLA filament in place.
The Polylactic Acid (PLA) filament is a natural renewable thermoplastic polyester made from corn starch or sugar cane rather than being a petroleum product. This means that there's no real smell when printing, but more importantly it is kind of bio-degradable and recyclable. You can also feel less guilty about filling the house up with bits of 3D-printed rubbish.
As well as PLA, the 3D printer is also compatible with TPU (95A), PETG, ABS, PLA-CF, PETG-CF and CR-carbon. The materials all require different levels of expertise to get good results and can result in the hot end wearing out faster. PLA seems to be the easiest and most common 3D printing filament for modern FDM printers.
The printer works by moving the print head up and down (on the z-axis) and left to right (the x-axis) using the gantry, with the hot plate moving backwards and forwards (the y-axis) on the base. This means that you need a bigger area than the footprint of the printer, or else the rapidly moving hotplate may hit your wall (also, don't bend down to watch the printing up close in case you lose your front teeth). The printer's movement is surprisingly fast and likely to shake all but the most firmly positioned desk or table. Whilst the table I placed the printer on moved a bit, it didn't seem to cause a problem with the print quality.
Several 3D models are included with the printer. These range from the standard "benchy" boat to optional parts for the printer itself. They can all be selected directly from the touchscreen for printing. There are also a few models, as well as documentation, videos and a copy of the Creality Print app on the included USB stick.
Whilst you can import models directly from the USB stick, which can be inserted in the USB slot on the side of the touchscreen, the real functionality comes from using software apps. Typically, 3D printing apps are referred to as slicers. There are several slicers out there, the most popular being Prusa3D and Cura. Creality has its own slicer software, Creality Print, which is currently in its sixth iteration.
For this review and my testing, I've been using Creality Print 6.0. This comes with profiles for both the Ender-3 V3 Plus and the Creality filament that I've been using.
It's worth noting that the Ender 3 V3 Plus can only have one filament colour loaded at a time. If you want to change the colour, you will need to remove manually change the filament.
You can't change the filament midway through the print, either. The only way to get multicoloured prints is to use multicoloured filament.
In the Creality Print app there's a simple drop-down menu to select the profile matching the filament. This automatically selects the temperature and other settings best suited for the material. You can, of course, customise these for other materials from different vendors according to their suggestions and your test results.
The Creality Print app had me printing in minutes. In pairing the printer with your Creality account and signing into the app with the same account, you not only end up with the printer being detected over your network but also over the Internet. This means that you can also use the Creality Cloud mobile app to start and monitor prints.
Both the desktop Creality Print app and the Creality Cloud app have 3D models that you can download and print. Many are free, but most are not.
As well as downloading 3D models via the Creality shopfront, you can import and print your own STL, OBJ, 3MF, OLTP, STP, STEP, SVG and AMF files. You can find loads of 3D printer-suitable models on the Internet or make your own.
I've printed fidget toys, parts of a Lara Croft figure and even some AI-converted 3D busts from a portrait photo. I've only had a couple of failures due to my own carelessness.
The quality of the prints is very good, with very little banding. Increasing the quality to the 0.1mm Fine setting from the default 0.2mm Standard setting produced results practically indiscernible from molded objects.
I found the most impressive thing, was the ability to build a 3D model in a program like Sketchup and print it out. This allowed me to make some small parts for my obsolete windows that are impossible to buy.
3D printing is a slow process. Whilst likely better than it was, prints still take time. An 80mm fidget toy took over an hour to print. Something like a simple facemask could take up to five hours.
The Creality Ender 3 V3 Plus is compatible with Creality's Nebula camera for monitoring your printing. It's a cheap 1080p webcam with a manual focus that plugs into the printer's touchscreen. It comes with a little tripod. It's pretty much plug-and-play. The quality is OK, allowing you to monitor the printer, even remotely, via the app and produce time-lapse videos of the printing process. There's a beta option that has the camera detect a print failure and stop the printing. It's a worthwhile investment.
3D printing is about where virtual reality was a decade ago. It's not quite ready as a piece of consumer technology. It's still a bit too messy and a bit too finicky for everyday users. But the Creality Ender 3 V3 Plus is not a bad device at all, and I'd recommend it as your first 3D printer. It's relatively easy to set up and get good results using the Creality Print app.
The instruction manual and the Creality overseas customer support leave a little to be desired, but this shouldn't put you off as there's a huge 3D printing community that's very willing to help.
As with VR/AR/MR, I can see 3D printing becoming more and more prevalent over the next few years and eventually part of everyday life. The Creality Ender 3 V3 Plus, with its ease of use and ability to print large objects, is a good way to get ahead of the curve.
