Ender 7, Its big, but is it fast, does it even work?

I have continued my work on a review of the Ender 7 and I ran into a problem that cost me a couple of days. Suddenly the printer was significantly under extruding. Unfortunately, when something goes wrong I start second-guessing everything I have done before that. I messed with slicer settings. I messed with the extruder pressure adjustment screw – yes it has one. I tried different filaments. I also tried running the printer much slower.

Then it got worst. Now two prints failed because the filament stopped extruding in the middle of a print.

Ultimately the problem was mechanical which at the end of the day is no surprise. The grub screw in the gear attached to the extruder stepper motor was loose allowing the motor to spin without turning the gear. Here is a picture showing the misalignment between the grub screw and the flat spot on the stepper motor shaft which was the giveaway. (PS. I love the new macro mode on my iPhone 3 pro. Expensive but a nice ad to the gear I use for my videos.)

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Ok, I have to align the flat spot, tighten the screw and reprint about 24 hours of prints to make sure I am properly evaluating the printer. I thought my new job as a Youtube reviewer would be easy. I will report back once I do some more tests.

Irv

Glad to see you solved your problem as easy as you have. The gear looked like my printer which at one point I had the flow up to 200%. The gear was supposed to be flush. I ordered 5 replacements, which are bronze. I, at this time have only had my Artist-D 3 months and feel it should have not worn that much. I studied about the problem and decided the steel gears available with more than 26 teeth at double the gears at half the price is a better choice and I ordered.

These issues seem to keep coming up. I’m thinking we all need to start using LockTite.

That fixed the problem. Yes, LockTite might be a good idea. In this case, I think the gear was just loose from the factory. Here is a 3dBengy scaled 200% printing with the default Creality Slicer Profile, which is quite fast. Sliced for the Ender 7 this print is estimated to take 5 hours and 33 minutes. Sliced for an Ender 3 this same model is estimated to take 7 hours. In this case, the Ender 7 is estimated to be 27 percent faster.

However, this test print is 95% complete at only 3:51 elapsed. If the Ender 3 estimate is correct, and Cura which the Creality Slicer is based on is relatively accurate about Ender 3 times after years of fine-tuning, then the Ender 7 is about 75% faster if the last 5% of the print completes at the same rate as the first 95%. Yep, lots of potentially bad assumptions there.

Gut feel from watching this printer my guess is that it is 1.5 to 2x the spend on an Ender 3.

In this video, you will see the very fine stringing which does not bother me at all. 3 seconds with a heat gun will make that all disapear.

[video=youtube_share;fHTJcdb4U_8]Another Ender 7 with Repaired Extruder - YouTube

Nice. The printer sounds almost like some unusual band playing a tune.

The printer is quite loud. I will get a DB rating when I start it up with the next print. Most of the noise comes from the fans, lots of them, and the extruder. I reduced the extrusion from 8mm and 80mm/s to 6 at 40mm/sec and it is if you can believe it quieter.

The print surface sticks almost too well. So here is the Bengi in the freezer chilling down. After about 5 minutes or so it pops right off. Much better than hacking at it with a paint scraper while the surface is still hot.

As you can see the print quality is quite good even with the 250mm/sec profile. (PS. Heads up while the top speed is set to 250 most of the other speeds are much slower. Move details coming in the video.)

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