I've been a happy user of a Monoprice Mini V2 since summer 2017. That printer has been awesome, since there has been virtually no issues since I bought it and with the right slice settings, anything within 120x120x120 has been printed just fine.

Time has come to print bigger objects, unfortunately with the COVID situation, I started printing mask supports on the Mini v2,  but any other design would be modified too much structurally in order to make it fit into the printer.

Enters Creality Ender 3

I decided to start looking for my second printer, and to be honest, too many models and tweaks have been available since 2017. After doing a quick comparison on the current brands and models, I decided to move on by ordering the Creality Ender 3.

I just want to make a note about ordering the printer. Since the 3D topic is so hot nowadays due to the excellent effort of the 3D printing community to provide help to health care workers, most of the sites where you could buy the printer were either out-of-stock or they were sending from overseas with an arrival date of mid May to June. No too long to wait. I think what I took more time was to find a store online that actually had the product on store and that shipped from a USA warehouse.

Then finally I received the printer within 5 days. Yay!

Unboxing

When I received the box, first thing I did was to spray it with Lysol and let it sit on my garage for 2 days.

I proceeded to open the box and take all the items out and line them up into a big table.

 Building the Printer

The box comes with a nice instruction set with drawings and diagrams.

I followed those instructions and was able to finish building it in about 2 hours.

Power On Test

The first thing to verify after putting the printer together was the power supply.

I connected the power cord and clicked the power button, and... no power. :(

After a quick support post in the Facebook Creatily Ender 3 Group, it was clear that I missed the setp to "SELECT THE PROPER VOLTAGE" in the power supply.

I changed it from 230 to 115 and then it powered on. Great!

Axis Test