I have an Ender 3 S1 that I use every couple of months at this point because it’s just such a pain to use. I have to adjust the bed tramming and z offset and run auto bed leveling for every single print and often times that’s still not good enough.
It will often take 30+ minutes just to get the first layer going down successfully.
Is this a me problem or did I lose the creality lottery?
I have the S1 plus. I’ve upgraded everything from the bed to the extruder.
The biggest benefit I’ve seen is from removing the stock software and using klipper. It’s a lot to setup and calibrate, but it works well.
I feel your pain. I bought the Ender 3 S1 when they were first released and the bed was severely warped. I can get it to print, but only part of the plate is really usable. The time investment for every print isn’t worth it for me so I don’t use it anymore. Luckily, I have other printers.
There are so many things you can do to make these cheap printers reliable that I really could not list them all. When it comes to bed and first layer issues here are the biggest ones
Make sure your X gantry is tight and not sagging. The eccentric nuts on the guide wheels should be set so that there is very little play. If you lift the left side it should not move much without raising the gantry.
Tram your bed with the screws almost bottomed out. Loose screws mean that the bed is moving more and will not likely hold a level for long.
The bed must be warm during abl. these things warp and twist like crazy when you heat them. You will not get good results on these cheap ass beds if your machine measures its shape cold.
If you are not using a pei coated sheet to print on buy one asap. It is a superior print surface and a huge leap in print technology. It’s less important with pei, but it is worth noting that the print surface must be clean. Oils from your fingers mess with adhesion to the print bed.
Those are the big ones. There are like I said a million little things you can do. These things can be made into reliable work horses but it takes A lot of research, work, time, and often money to make them such. My ender 3 has cost me more than a prusa would have, which is pretty dumb tbh. On the other hand, it’s mine and there is no part of it that I do not understand. I like my printer. It’s very fast, very reliable, and I made it that way.
Like others said, consistent leveling can be a pain on cheap printers like ender. Your printer have 4 leveling screws while you need only 3 points to define a plane. 4 screws are recipe for problems on such a small plate, and then they also ship deformed bed plates or frame…
There are better quality machines available, but there are also so many people with enders that print amazingly well. So you have to decide if you want to dig deep enough to fix/upgrade/tune/thinker until quality is accaptable. Some people enjoy tuning more than printing, while some want to spend money on more like plug&play experience
I started with a cr10s that I actually got for free. The first print was amazing, then every following attempt just shit it’s pants. I spent about 20 or 30 hours trying to look up what the fuck im doing wrong. Tried reprinting again and again and again tweaking settings only to fail and it was extremely infuriating. I then started disassembling and reassembling and found that my problem was a broken cable.
Point of the story is I learned so much about 3D printing trying to figure out why the prints are not working. Now I got 2 more printers and if something goes wrong I can easily identify what’s wrong.
Don’t give up hope. It could be that you have a broken machine, but it’s more likely that your settings are just wrong.
