Creality Ender 3

I've come to really like the cheap Creality Ender 2 3D printer I bought a while back but have found the small build area limiting. Then a Banggood Black Friday sale spat out an Ender 3 for £129 and I couldn't resist it. Shipped from the EU it came in just two days but I had to wait until I had some free time to put it together.

The improvements in design and packing over the Ender 2 are really obvious.  It's not complicated to assemble, if you can build IKEA furniture you can do this. Every little bag of components is clearly labelled, right down to the bolts, which come with matching washers already threaded onto them. You even get cheap but usable examples of the tools needed supplied. I would really recommend one of these if you want a minimally viable cheap 3D printer. Contenders for 'best value' come and go but the Enders are a consistently safe bet. The contrast with my Ormerod is striking, things have really moved on.

There's a massive modding community for these but I've shied away from doing anything to it at all. When I remember I'll put a neoprene 'sock' around the hot end to stop stray filament sticking and that's mostly because I got a pack of two when I bought one for the Ender 2.