Go for the the sovol 7 or the Elgoo neptune 4

Creality’s quality control has plummeted over the last few years.

I Concur, ninja kitty is the source of all bad first layers

This, creality’s quality control has gone to crap, I would go with a Sovol over the ender

I was looking at that a while ago but none of the reviews I’ve read have been good

https://www.theverge.com/23612429/ankermake-m5-review-3d-printer

The price on it also dropped from 800 to 400 in just a year which isn’t a good sign

And there’s nothing wrong with ender 3’s , besides creality’s quality control in the last few years. They are a good machine to start on. They print well once they are dialed in and force you to tweak and upgrade them, so you are kinda pulled into learning how things work.

It’s harder to justify them when you can get a decent prusa clone on AliExpress for 250-300 bucks though

Honestly, ( and I say this as the owner of 2 ender 3’s). Just upgrade the control board and the extruder, and maybe print out some stuff to make it look nice. You’ll spend more money upgrading it than it will cost to just buy a sovol 6 or 7 which is a much better machine with all the stuff you would end up adding to the ender anyways.

Between my two Enders, upgrading to direct drives with decent extruders, double z axis screws etc. I could have just bought a nicer machine. I also have an Ideaformer print mill and a bambu p1s and it’s well worth the money to jump to a better machine when you can

You all are fighting over all these cad programs and most of us are over in tinker cad going “look! I made a box yay!”

Lol, don’t feel bad, I have a couple of ender 3s in my mix of printers, and one stopped extruding. I cleaned, then replaced the hot end, then moved on to testing the motor by plugging one of the other motor cables into it. Replaced the motor thinking that was the problem. Nope.

So then the only thing that could be the problem is the control board right? Fine, ordered a replacement and it STILL doesn’t extrude.

……it was the damn cable that goes to the extruder.

How is that out of hand? There’s only one printer there.

Too late, I’ve come from Reddit and I’m here to tell you to level your bed