I’ve recently returned to the hobby, after some lifestyle changes brought on by the pandemic. It’s been a lot of fun catching up on the latest developments, like the emergence of Bambu, etc. My printer is an Ender 3 from Sainsmart, bought in late 2019. I’m guessing it’s one of the earliest hardware revisions. I printed a few of the suggested upgrades back when I first bought it, but it was printing pretty well out of the box, so I never did any real mods.

I couldn’t help but pick up some recent deals: I ordered the Ender 3 V3 SE, along with a Sprite Pro extruder and dual Z-axis kit - so I can still have a nice machine to print with while I upgrade and tune my old one.

So I wanted to ask the community a few things:

  • Am I likely to need a new motherboard to run this extruder? Hoping I can get away with just firmware

  • Same question, but for Klipper? I currently run Octopi, if I switch away from Marlin, will I also need to drop that as well?

  • Are there any other mods I should be considering to maximize the machine’s potential? I’d like to use what I have available where possible, just couldnt resist the Sprite Pro as I want to do ASA and TPU.

Would love to hear folks’ thoughts, seems like a better time than ever to be in the hobby!

  • @[email protected]English
    4•10 months ago

    Hey I’m almost in the same boat! I have a 2018 Creality ender 3 which I’ve had sitting for a couple years now… I look at it in my garage constantly wondering when I will pick it back up. What is Bambu? What brought you back into the hobby?

    • FuglyDuckEnglish
      5•10 months ago

      Bambu is a company that’s making some hype at the Moment. They print fast and neat. Though a major caveat is that they’re cloud-driven. To the point that recently they had problems with running gcode when not asked to.

      (Or at least moving.)

        • @rug_burnEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          I just took the dive on a P1P and you can print offline using an SD card just fine, it’s just not really pointed out. My E3V2 served me well over the years but the Bambu is a game changer

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      I had moved back in 2020 and the space I picked to be my shop/lab wound up being the space where I shoved everything that didn’t get used regularly, to be organized later. I’ve now gotten married and have the help and motivation needed to get the space cleaned up and useful. I was more into functional printing, but nowadays I’m printing art and knick knacks for the family, which has been fun.