I have been using the Ender 3 printer for quite some time now. Been rather satisfied with it except for the difficulties in using other types of filaments to print. Silky PLA from Strong Hero 3D has been the most challenging printing process so far.
I tend to download the STL from Thingiverse as introduced by the 3D printing course. The templates have been helping me to print a few things from fun things to just things for display purposes. I managed to successfully print a card holder and had to size it up a little because the card is thicker than other ID cards.
As much as I like the simplicity of Ender 3, I dislike how difficult it is at times to push in the filaments. I have developed callouses which in the end, turned into eczema that I have to use the ointment to soothe the impacted parts of the fingers.
The adhesion can be finicky at times when I have been using the same settings for the same filament. The reading of the microSD card is also finicky. I have formatted the card to be FAT32 but after the formatting, Ender 3 kept telling me about the SD card failed to init. I had to buy another card and not format it at all. The downside is that Ender 3 does not have a formatting function.
It can only read up to 1GB of storage before it fails and keeps rebooting itself. Having extra cards allows me to have the flexibility to too many files that I will only use just a few times. The silliness of this.
Since I am not satisfied with Ender 3, I researched on a 3D printer that will allow me to print at home without selling a kidney or liver. If I want the best performance in overall, a Prusa i3 MK3 is the way to go. It can do an auto-bed levelling. Ender 3 requires a manual bed levelling. Manual bed levelling can be tricky at times since my cards will have the wear and tear after several dragging under the extruder head and I would have to either buy cards or use name cards or just give up and buy a 3D printer with an auto-bed levelling programme and I just buy filaments to print.
