Creality Ender 3 S1 Pro review

Creality’s Ender 3 is a massively in style funds 3D printer which was launched again in 2018. Now, the corporate affords an enormous vary of Ender fashions together with 9 simply within the Ender 3 vary.

The S1 Professional sits on the high finish, slightly below the newly launched S1 Plus, which affords an even bigger print quantity however lacks of a few the Professional’s quality-of-life options such because the LED strip which lights up the construct plate.

The S1 Professional could not qualify as a funds 3D printer, but it surely has all of the options you’d need and doesn’t want any of the upgrades that many house owners make to cheaper fashions.

So when you worth comfort, this might effectively be the 3D printer for you: when you can dwell with its drawbacks.

Options & design

• 220 x 220 x 270mm construct quantity
• Touchscreen
• Direct-drive printhead

The Ender 3 S1 Professional is a reasonably sizeable gadget, measuring 490 x 455 x 625mm (plus the spool of filament on high). It’s able to printing fashions as much as 220 x 220 x 270mm, just a little smaller total than the Anycubic Vyper’s 240 x 240 x 265mm.

Each take up the same quantity of desk house, and each have comparable design and construct. Out of the field, it seems to be like there are many elements to assemble, however in actuality it’s fairly easy.

Don’t use the short begin information if that is your first 3D printer: watch the video on the included SD card as an alternative. It takes round quarter-hour to connect the print head to the gantry, the gantry and display screen to the bottom, then plug within the wires which all have totally different plugs and might’t be plugged into the fallacious sockets.

All of the instruments you want are included, plus some flush cutters for chopping filament, and a scraper which appears superfluous because the S1 Professional comes with a versatile, magnetic construct plate which makes it easy to take away fashions after printing.

There are another helpful additions together with a vibrant LED strip throughout the highest of the gantry, a run-out sensor that stops printing robotically if the filament runs out, twin Z-axis screws for protecting the mattress degree because it rises and a 4.3in touchscreen for altering settings, choosing recordsdata to print and extra.

Jim Martin / Foundry

An sudden bonus is the bearings within the spool holder, which permit the spool of filament to rotate easily. Most printers simply have a hard and fast plastic tube and the spool turns round that because the filament is drawn into the print head by the extruder.

A fast phrase on the print head: it’s Creality’s Sprite direct drive with twin steel gears. Together with a hotend able to 300°C, it means the S1 Professional can’t solely deal with the frequent PLA filament: you too can print with PETG, Nylon and – helpful in some instances – versatile TPU.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The one challenge is that this isn’t an enclosed printer (the place Creality’s Sermoon sequence is) so if you wish to print at these excessive temperatures, you’ll virtually actually have to put the S1 Professional in an enclosure – even when that’s a useful cabinet someplace in your house – to take care of a better ambient temperature than if the printer was simply positioned on a desk or desk in a room.

The mattress can attain 110°C, which is advisable for printing ABS.

The cooling fan is positioned at an angle underneath the motor, however this makes it very troublesome to see the nozzle and the print: it’s not a large downside, and it actually appears to be efficient at its job.

Within the field, you’ll discover a helpful plasticised sheet with the settings Creality recommends for every sort of filament, reminiscent of temperatures, whether or not an enclosure is required and the retraction settings you need to use within the slicer. The slicer is the software program which turns the 3D mannequin you need to print into directions the printer can perceive.

Connected to the aspect of the print head is Creality’s CR-Contact probe. This robotically checks the peak of the mattress at 16 factors which explains why Creality says the S1 Professional has computerized mattress levelling.

Nevertheless it isn’t totally computerized. In reality, as you might have already seen from the photographs, there are thumbwheels beneath every nook. These have to be adjusted – utilizing the aforementioned plastic sheet – to do the preliminary mattress levelling, precisely like 3D printers that require handbook levelling.

Jim Martin / Foundry

As soon as that is achieved, you possibly can run the ‘auto levelling’ which checks for any minor variations throughout the print mattress and compensates for them throughout printing.

After this, you then use the sheet once more to manually regulate the z-offset, which is the peak of the mattress relative to the nozzle on the print head. Within the picture beneath you possibly can see that is set to -1.80. You’d think about that auto levelling would do that, but it surely doesn’t.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Even printers with ‘correct’ auto levelling (just like the Anycubic Vyper) nonetheless require you to regulate the z-offset, so it isn’t an issue with the S1 Professional. The one gripe is that the up and down buttons regulate the offset in 0.05mm steps, which is just a little coarse.

However there may be one other gotcha with levelling. For some cause the printer doesn’t warmth up the nozzle or mattress earlier than any of the levelling course of, which it ought to do for the very best accuracy.

You must manually set the nozzle and mattress temperatures to these you’d normally print at when you don’t need to find yourself having to repeat the levelling course of.

Even the person handbook refers back to the course of as ‘assisted levelling’.

The clue is probably within the Professional suffix, however the Ender 3 S1 Professional isn’t designed to be newbie pleasant. Not like Creality’s Sermoon V1 Professional, whose touchscreen guides you thru loading and unloading filament, the S1 Professional assumes loads of 3D printing data.

One factor which may confuse a first-time person is that there isn’t any choice within the menus for loading or eradicating filament. That may be a handbook (however quite simple) course of the place you set the nozzle to an acceptable temperature for the kind of filament you’re utilizing (reminiscent of 220°C for PLA) after which use the lever on the print head to launch stress from the extruder gears and permit fillament to be both inserted or eliminated.

Nevertheless, on the S1 Professional, when you hunt round, you’ll discover an In/Out management underneath the Prepared menu which lets you specify what number of millimetres to maneuver the filament in or out. This isn’t actually any simpler although, but it surely does provide the capacity to feed a identified size of filament via the hotend and use this to calibrate the e-steps.

Jim Martin / Foundry

On the entrance is a full-size SD card slot and a USB-C port you should utilize to attach the S1 Professional to a PC, or maybe to a Raspberry Pi when you needed to make use of Octoprint to watch prints from afar (there’s no built-in digital camera such as you get with the Sermoon V1 Professional.

To the fitting is a pull-out tray for storing the included instruments.

Upgrading the firmware could be very removed from simple. You could not have to, however when you do, it includes updating each the mainboard contained in the printer by way of the full-size SD card slot, and individually updating the display screen’s firmware utilizing a microSD card you have to insert right into a hidden slot which you will get to solely by disassembling the plastic cowl that protects the display screen.

Opposite to Creality’s directions, the display screen have to be up to date first, in any other case the printer will seem like bricked – and freeze on the Creality brand. Ask me how I do know…

Efficiency

One of the crucial noticeable issues concerning the S1 Professional is how quiet it’s. Particularly, the stepper motors are a lot quieter than on different 3D printers we’ve examined.

The followers are nonetheless fairly noisy, although, with a high-pitched whine that’s not simple to disregard. Total although, it’s one of many much less intrusive printers for noise.

Out of the field, the S1 Professional delivered some very clear prints – whether or not printing fashions provided on the SD card or utilizing the default settings of the S1 Professional profile in Creality’s slicer.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The one change I made was to the Z Seam alignment, which Creality units to be on the again of the print. That’s superb for fashions the place you by no means see the again, however the place will probably be seen, altering the situation to Random helps keep away from a visual vertical seam the place every layer begins and ends.

Jim Martin / Foundry

As ordinary, the primary print was a 3DBenchy. This a a torture check which supplies a good suggestion of how effectively the printer can deal with essentially the most troublesome prints with out taking too lengthy, utilizing up a lot filament and leaving you with a pleasant mannequin that isn’t match just for the bin.

There was just about no stringing, the place wisps of filament are left because the print head travels from one place to a different however isn’t supposed to really print something. And bridging can be very spectacular, with filament printed over surprisingly giant gaps with out it sagging and leaving no assist for the next layer.

And each subsequent print was equally effectively dealt with, with the identical degree of high quality, even when you use the touchscreen to extend print pace as much as as a lot as 150% (from the advisable pace of about 60mm/sec).

In ‘vase mode’ it printed a thin-walled vase just about completely, the twin Z rails serving to to make sure no layer shifting because it constructed up the virtually 200mm-tall vase.

Jim Martin / Foundry

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The one downside I encountered was when printing articulated (versatile) fashions whose first layer is made up of small particular person sections. Though the primary layer tended to stick superb, some sections got here away from the mattress after round 10 layers.

Printing with a raft (proven beneath) mounted this, however added time to the print in addition to utilizing additional filament.

Jim Martin / Foundry

And, to be fully clear, this occurred on the second S1 Professional that Creality despatched me. The primary had a levelling downside that couldn’t be solved: it will print one object, however would at all times fail to print a second (as proven beneath) until the levelling course of was carried out once more. Whereas making an attempt to diagnose the problem I discovered that a number of different S1 Professional house owners had encountered comparable issues.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Fortuitously, the alternative behaved itself and was in a position to print object after object with no levelling worries.

Plus, the articulated fashions, reminiscent of the favored slug from Thingiverse, wanted only some sections to be freed up after printing – they have an inclination to get caught collectively, particularly when you go for the ‘customary 0.2mm’ high quality within the slicer quite than going for the best high quality that takes significantly longer.

Printing at 140% measurement, the slug took round 7.5 hours to print at ‘customary’ high quality, and a 3D benchy took about an hour and 40 minutes.

Value & availability

You should purchase an Ender 3 S1 Professional from Creality for $479. In case you can dwell with out the LED strip, touchscreen (and use a rotary knob as an alternative) the non-Professional S1 is $100 cheaper, but it surely additionally has a decrease most nozzle temperature of 260°C and its mattress can go to solely 100°C.

These within the UK can now purchase immediately from Creality’s web site the place the S1 Professional prices £469.

Confusingly, the www.crealityofficial.co.uk web site isn’t the official place to purchase one of many agency’s printers.

For $529/£539, you might as an alternative go for the Ender 3 S1 Plus that has a construct quantity of 300x300x300mm.

Nevertheless, as talked about firstly, when you’re proud of the S1 Professional’s construct quantity however not the worth, then Anycubic’s Vyper prices $359 or £350 from Amazon UK.

Cheaper nonetheless, however missing auto levelling, is Voxelab’s Aquila S2 which is barely $229 from Amazon and £219 from Amazon UK.

Verdict

The Ender 3 S1 Professional could also be easy to assemble and produce glorious high quality prints, however it could have a steep studying curve if it’s your first 3D printer and it’s fairly a bit costlier than a number of the competitors.

On condition that, the problems I had with my first S1 Professional had been disappointing. It’s extra reassuring that the alternative labored completely, however it’s value pondering laborious about the place you purchase one from. It might pay to get it from Amazon the place it may very well be simpler to return when you do have any points.

3D printers are nonetheless a approach from being mainstream units and no-one ought to count on to have the ability to press ‘Print’ and immediately get excellent prints.

For these with extra expertise and maybe trying on the S1 Professional as a second printer, you’ll be up and operating in subsequent to no time and getting nice prints with minimal effort.