Creality Ender 2 3D Printer Kit Review

 

Creality and the CR-10 reviews were everywhere in 2017. Only Prusa got better press from what I could see. Justifiably, I might add.

 

The Creality Ender 2 kit is a cut-down CR-10. Literally, it is like half a printer. Does it perform half as well? Let's see ...

Half a printer?

The Ender 2 is like you have taken a regular 300mm x 300mm CR-10 and sliced it down the middle, taking the whole right side of the printer away.

Ender 2 in action

Weird thing? It works, and it works well!

Creality Ender 2 Specs

Let's start with the price because outside of everything else, this is the reason why this kit gets attention.

~$200 USD at Gearbest.

+ GET $30 OFF WITH THE CODE GBTE AT CHECKOUT

What do you get for that?

• 150 x 150mm heated build plate with 200mm Z-height
• Open 1.75mm filament, mk10 bowden hotend and extruder combo (0.4mm nozzle supplied)
• Print USB or SD card
• 12V PSU
• LCD screen and control box
• Metal construction

See? Exactly as you would expect from a cut-down CR-10.

It is a little more involved to put together than a CR-10, but it is not as involved as, say, the Anet A8 or similar, and the major parts are metal so it is a bit more forgiving for clumsy folks like me.

How does it print?

It prints very well, like it's bigger brothers and sisters basically.

Any problems?

• You will want to get the community supplied slicer profiles (Chris Bennet has a good one but I can no longer find it).
• Creality are not honoring the spirit or the law with the open source Marlin firmware that they supply with the printer, they should make their customizations open.
• The belts have some severe rubbing so I need to go back and do some tweaking.

Bottom Line

This is an excellent printer at a great price.

You can get it right now at Gearbest (who sent me mine) for the best price.

+ GET $30 OFF WITH THE CODE GBTE AT CHECKOUT

Buy it as a first printer, a portable/travel printer, use it for smaller prints such as action figures, robot parts, props, or this would be an excellent printer to teach.

Would I buy this over the Anet A8 at a similar price? Yes, if you don't need the extra capacity that the 200mm bed of the A8 provides. I would say the A8 has more community modifications and upgrades available for now also.

If a 150mm bed is fine then I would go for it. My first printers were 150mm (Makibox, Printrbot, Cube3) and they served me pretty well until I wanted to build an Astromech (which I still haven't done, by the way).

 

 

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://makerhacks.com/creality-ender2-3dprinter-kit-review/

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