Hi Guy's ‘n’ Gal's,

I'm a complete Newbie to the 3d printing scene and looking for some advice on which direction to go with 3d printing and my first printer.

My dilemma is, chose between a Creality Ender 3, Ender 5 Plus or a Tronxy X5SA Pro?

I've been looking into and researching buying or building, when I stumbled on the BLV Cube, and thought WOW.

Now before we go any further. I have mechanical, electrical and electronic skills. I have much machinery, pillar drills, band saw, chop saw and a lathe, and were not talking small hobbyist's machines either "No offence to anyone who has". I also have reasonable skills with Arduino's and NodeMCU's ‘ESP8266 wifi devices’, to the point where I was ‘regarding the BLV Cube notion’, going to build my own Duet Wifi from an Arduino Due, NodeMCU and build my own drivers etc.

I got in touch with the friendly BLV crowd on their FaceBook page ‘thank you for your advice Guy's’, and the general advice was, start with a smaller, cheaper printer such as the Creality Ender 3 and learn 3d printing with that, then start to build the parts for the BLV on the Ender 3. But then I started looking at the Ender 5 Plus and the Tronxy X5SA Pro.

So do I go with the Ender 3, and later start to build the BLV, or do I go with the Ender 5 Plus or Tronxy X5SA Pro and then just stick with One of these Two?

I would love to hear your thoughts and advice, especially from those that have experienced these units.

Regards.

Dizzwold.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2020 05:15AM by Dizzwold.

You're going to get mixed advice from the people here.

However, I'd offer this:

I agree with getting the Ender 3 to learn the ropes. There's a massive community of Ender 3 owners out there, including printable mods etc.

1. Whatever printer you buy, DO NOT commence with modifying the printer until you've learned how to print well with the machine and have learned it's strengths and weaknesses. People all too often get to modding right away. It causes more problems this way. Do one mod at a time. Re-tune and dial things back in before your next mod.

2. Take that time and learning experience to determine if you still want to make the blv cube. I've seen the design before, it's a good one but there's a lot of other good designs to choose from.

3. Damn near every mechanical design aspect of a 3d printer comes with some kind of caveat or compromise, you'll want to know which ones are acceptable to you when choosing the final design.

4. Don't discount v-wheel based linear systems like what the Ender 3 has, they can be reliable and accurate if set up right.

Hi obelisk79,

Very grateful for you advice and wisdom. I was starting to think that this was a secret society regarding the lack of replies. LOL.

Learning the ropes. I appreciate that we will always be learning more, newer and different ways in 3d printing, but from knowing nothing, as I have no practice experience in 3d printing, to having the skill set to build a working BLV Cube, with say around 30 hours a week. Would we be talking a year, or 2 years or more?
I ask this, as if we're talking say a 2 years or more before I have the skill's to tune an operate the BLV Cube correctly and well. The cube, although it'll never be obsolete and always upgradable, there maybe a better and newer design's by that time. So, in the longer term I maybe better opting for one of the larger units, the Ender 5 Plus or the Tronxy X5SA Pro.

My ambition's with 3d printing are to print 1:50 scale model parts ‘to start with anyway’, so I'll be looking for accuracy and detail more than speed ‘if I'm correct in saying that I'll be needing a smaller nozzle such as 0.2mm and printing at slower speeds’. As progress and learn more, I'l be looking at printing bigger things, hence the BLV, or sticking with a Ender 5 Plus or Tronxy X5SA Pro ‘if these units can provide the detailing I wish to achieve. I Also would like to print filaments like TPU at some point.

Upgrades. I'm so very, very glad you've shared you're knowledge on this, as sadly it sounds that many other people have made this mistake, and I possibly would have to. Although I had no intentions to immediately do any upgrades, I had ‘even now before I own one’, started looking into this. Not anymore !!! With the exception of a nozzle, if I'm correct about the detail and speed? Some of the first thing's I will be printing, will be thing's like hinges, brackets and handles for an enclosure for the unit to protect it from dust etc, and building a Dry-Box for filaments. So I'm still thinking of upgrades, but of a non-intrusive fashion regarding the mechanics and electronics of the printer.
So I'm really grateful for your input on this, as I would have made this same mistake.

The Ender series from what I know are 8 bit, where the Tronxy X5 series are 32 bit + Stealth Chop Drivers. The noise of the unit isn't that important to me regarding the driver, but, quieter is nicer !!! Also in the longer term, I think 32 bit is the future?

So although I may have already answered my own question, I really appreciate any input, advice and wisdom.

Thank you again for sharing, and preventing me from throwing-a-spanner-in-the-works regarding upgrades.

Dizzwold.

Hi Guy's,

The way I see it, is that I currently have 3 choices;
Tronxy X5SA Pro
Ender 5 Plus
Two Trees Sapphire Plus
Are there any others I should consider / you'd recommend, and which of the Three above would you guy's go for?

Dizzwold.

Quote
Dizzwold
My ambition's with 3d printing are to print 1:50 scale model parts ‘to start with anyway’, so I'll be looking for accuracy and detail more than speed

You might want to consider resin printers rather than filament.

They're still a bit more expensive to buy (but prices are dropping), and resin is more expensive than filament, but I'm told they produce better products.

0.2mm nozzles on a filament machine basically means it has to be twice as accurate at positioning and leveling than with a 0.4mm nozzle. And possibly you run into heat creep due to slower filament feed speed (Halving the nozzle size means quartering the nozzle area). Certainly doable, but you may need to do a lot of setup and tuning. And, of course, halving the nozzle size means it takes 4-8 times as long to print.

I'm not sure about 8- vs 32-bit. I suspect it might move to 64-bit (e.g. Raspberry Pi with real-time extensions e.g. PandaPi), or 64-bit plus 8-bit real-time hardware (e.g. klipper on Raspberry Pi with RAMPS).

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2020 05:43PM by frankvdh.

Its definitely worth asking the question.
The problem is there are very few people who have all 3 machines.
And lots of us are not prepared to look them up and check specs.
So don't be put off by the lack of responses.
I found a review of them here "https://www.gearbest.com/community/jPi9iT"
Though i know little about them and don't trust the specs, on that basis you could go for the Tronxy as it says its got the biggest print volume, high power psu and not the most expensive.
The two trees seems to have dedicated bracketry so may be harder to update or repair later. If you later decide to build an enclosure you want the electronics outside so the bespoke design may be a problem.
Not sure i like the single Z motor on the Tronxy.
Its probably harder to live with the larger print volume if its a larger bed as its harder to get stable bed temperatures. Might be better going for the Creality Ender as a newbie. Most of us are living with that bed size.
Just have to check pricing and see what you feel comfortable with.
If the Creality is the cheapest im temped to pick that one as you have cash remaining for upgrades.

Hi Guy's,

Thank you for your replies and advice. Very valuable points.

Hmm 64 bit. I wasn't aware of that. I'll look into that. Thank you.

Gearbest review, Thank you for the link. Ill have look at this too.

I didn't spot the Two Trees had dedicated bracketry. I just thought it was general 2020 or 2040 stuff. Failing that I could print my own, once mastered?

Already on the electronic's regarding an enclosure, and made enquiries into extension cable's / looked into purchasing from 3rd party companies.

Again, grateful for your input.

Dizzwold.