This guide is intended to be as inclusive as possible as to what Ender 3 Pro upgrades* I have found worthwhile. Linked here are upgrade guides I found helpful as well as guides for calibration/tuning of the printer.
*Functional upgrades. There is no shortage of printable accessories and upgrades on Thingiverse but the vast majority of them are for convenience or appearance -- and not all of them are necessarily good. In fact some are actually a bad idea. Described here are functional upgrades -- those that will improve printer performance.
NOTE: When choosing your upgrades, be sure what you're looking at is for the correct printer. The Ender 3 has some crucial differences from the Ender 3 Pro (e.g. different power supply, placement of the mainboard fan...).
First and foremost, it's important to be sure your printer is tuned and calibrated for the best possible prints. All the upgrades in the world can only do so much good if your fundamentals aren't in order.
If you install a BLTouch, see this guide for calculating your Z-Offset: Calculating Z-Offset with a BLTouch ABL system.
If your firmware supports Linear Advance (the stock Creality firmware does not), calibrate it using this guide from Teaching Tech: Linear advance guide - Free and easy print quality improvement.
If your firmware supports PID Autotune and you have access to a command console via e.g. Octoprint or Pronterface, you should tune your PID values. Untuned or wrong values can result in your printer's Thermal Runaway protection being triggered. PID Autotune is easily done with two commands (Note: this guide was written for the SKR Mini E3 board, but the procedure should be the same for any board running Marlin with PID Autotune support enabled)
Before you start upgrading, I recommend you spend some time familiarizing yourself with your printer in its stock configuration. Learning the defaults will help you understand what value various upgrades bring.
Plenty has been written on this topic. For most users, this is a worthwhile and easy upgrade.
Most people use something like binder clips to attach the bed to the heating plate. Although this works, it reduces your usable print surface area.
Rather than using clips, I prefer to stick the glass bed on with silicone pads. To get everything to stick properly you can heat up the bed (~60 C), install the pads and glass, then clamp it on with binder clips for a short time (remove them after allowing the bed to cool).
One of the first upgrades you should do is enable auto bed leveling by installing a BLTouch probe. Note that with the stock Creality mainboard this requires an aftermarket Pin 27 connector as well as flashing firmware with BLTouch support.
See also: an alternative BLTouch installation video guide and an accompanying custom firmware tutorial from Teaching Tech.
Another easy upgrade is replacing the stock extruder, which is prone to a slow failure over time. This one cost me a lot of time troubleshooting intermittent underextrusion issues until I finally found the cause. Installing an aluminum replacement such as this one will prevent this from ever becoming a problem.
Especially with the stock extruder, it may also be worthwhile to print a filament guide such as this one.
The next two sections involve a lot of decision making around fans. Be sure to read up on the topic and make as informed of a decision as possible. Noctua fans are very popular [1] [2] due to their high quality, great warranty, and low noise -- although some recommend against them.
In its stock configuration, the Ender 3 Pro is a fairly noisy printer. This can be addressed with some combination of:
- Installing quieter fans
- Installing a silent mainboard such as the SKR Mini E3 v2.0
- Adding stepper dampers to the stepper motors
- Damping vibration noise by printing damping feet or something similar
This guide covers all 4 topics: Ender 3 - Silent Fan Replacement Guide.
This guide covers flashing custom firmware onto an SKR Mini E3 v2.0/Ender 3 Pro setup: SKR Mini E3 v2.0 Firmware Guide (reddit).
Additional video on the SKR Mini E3 from Teaching Tech: SKR Mini E3 - The best Ender 3 upgrade from stock?.
This is a long and extensive topic (covered in part in Ender 3 - Silent Fan Replacement Guide above) but the TL;DR is:
- When printing PLA, part cooling is essential to good print quality (less so with other materials -- e.g. with ABS it can cause layer delamination)
- The stock part cooler is passable at best but will eventually be a hindrance to getting the best possible print quality
- As with anything, DYOR but some of the best upgrade options for part cooling are:
- With stock fans: Bullseye duct
- With upgraded fans: Petsfang or Hero Me Gen 5
A printer enclosure helps with print consistency due to protection from drafts or ambient temperature inconsistencies. In the case of some materials like ABS, an enclosure is practically a must. In any case, an enclosure can be a great way to vent away VOCs given off during extrusion.
One popular DIY enclosure is built from IKEA Lack tables. There are plenty of published Lack enclosure plans (including 3 in the preceding article and many more on Thingiverse). Building an enclosure is full of personal choices and customizations. Once I build my own Lack enclosure, I will provide details on it.
Ender 3 PrusaSlicer profiles by sn4k3 - PrusaSlicer profiles tuned specifically for the Ender 3