After printing for a while, you may start looking to add some upgraded parts to your print. Maybe because you are looking to improve your print quality or you just want to do a little tinkering. No matter the reason for doing it, you are going to be bombarded with a ton of different parts when searching online. Hotends, fans, extruders, stepper motors, and the list goes on. It can start to get really confusing which parts do you really need, or which ones actually make a difference. Prices can range for $10-$150 just for a hotend. So you think to yourself do you really get 10x better quality prints with the most expensive one and do I really want to throw hundreds of dollars into my printer to have tiny differents in my prints.
Lets use what is possibly the most popular printer for beginners as an example for the upgrades I will show you. The Creality Ender 3 is a good printer for the price straight from the factory but with a couple of parts, you can make it more reliable and easier to you. If you are unfamiliar with the parts of a 3D printer, then first take a look at All Parts Of a 3D Printer And What They Do.
Extruders
All Metal Extruder – If your printer comes with a plastic extruder, this should be the first upgrade you should do. The plastic factory extruder is highly prone to cracking. It’s not a matter of if but when. This area is constantly seeing stress while printing cause it’s what feeds the filament to the hotend.
Dual Gear Extruder – This is an slight upgrade from the All Metal Extruder. Not only is it all metal but it feeds the filament with more grip causing less skipping. Both the motor gear and the idlers gear are connected causing both sides to feed or retract.
BMG Clone Dual Gear Drive Extruder – This is my preferred choice out of the three. With a 3 to 1 gear ratio, you will get more torque out of the stepper motor. If you are looking to convert your printer to a direct drive extruder this with a pancake stepper motor is exactly what you need. Even if you wanted to keep your bowden tube setup, it’s still the one you should get cause you’ll be ready if in the future you change your mind. I had all three of these extruders and if I knew what I do now, I would have gotten this from the start. If you o decide to convert to direct drive then the next two options aren’t needed anymore. (insert The Pros and Cons of direct drive and bowden setups)
PTFE Tube & Pneumatic Fittings Tube
Capricorn PTFE Tube – Replacing your PTFE tube with a genuine Capricorn tube will improve your print quality and reliability. These have a smaller inner diameter than the factory tubes which help with retraction and stringing. Also the materials they use make it slipperier and able to handle more heat when using a PTFE heartbreak.
Pneumatic Fittings – Eventually you will come across your PTFE tube sliding in and out of your fitting during retractions while you are printing. When this happens you’ll see the stinging on your print getting worse and it might take you a while to know why. Upgrading to better fittings and using clips will help save you from this. Just make sure you pick the right ones. The PC4-M10 fitting let the tube run all the way through. Mainly used on hotends where the PTFE goes all the way to the heartbreak or the back of the nozzle. The PC4-M6 captures the end of the tube in the fitting. These are mainly on extruders.
Bed Leveling Springs
Bed Leveling Springs – Factory bed springs that come with cheaper 3D printers have a harder time keeping the bed level. These stiffer springs keep your bed exactly where you left it print after print.
Solid Silicone Bed Mounts – If you assembled your 3D printer properly and made sure your frame is perfectly square these are better than any springs. While springs are good they also may let the bed move under high stress from the Y-axis movements. Solid mounts keep it in place and eliminate layer shifts.
Fans
Noctua 4010 Fan – If your fans are just a little too loud for you, then these will make a huge difference. You’ll barely even notice they are even on. You can’t get any quieter than Noctuas. But be careful. 3D printers run off of 2 different power supplies. 12v and 24v. Noctuas only come in 12v fans but our example printer, the Creality Ender 3 and all other Creality printers run off a 24v PSU. If you try to run these fans with 24v, you can kiss those motors goodbye. This doesn’t mean these aren’t an option. All you need to do is use a buck converter to regulate the voltage.
Buck Converter – These are needed to run 12v fans on a 24v PSU.
4020 Axial Fan – Hotends from the factory usually come with a 4010 hotend cooling fan. If you have ever come across your prints failing because your hotend just stops extruding mid-print, then it was probably caused by heat creep. Heat creep is when the heat from your heat block transfers to far up the heat break and make a hard blob on the end of the filament. That blob gets stuck in the heat break and causes a jam. This can get really frustrating. Better cooling will help stop this and keep you from wasting filament. 4010 fans blow around 6 CFM of air and the 4020 fans blow around 9 CFM.
5015 Blower Fan – Blower fans are used for part cooling. Mainly because they create a steady high-pressure flow of air that can be directed to a specific point. If you want cleaner looking perimeters, better overhangs and longer bridging them upgrading your part cooling fan or even adding a second one is a must. I explain why part cooling is so important HERE. (insert Part Cooling And How Important It Is)
Hotends
BTT All-Metal Hotend – If you ever want to print materials that need a higher temperature like nylon, then you need an all-metal hotend. PTFE tubes burn and put off some bad VOCs when heated over 245 degrees celsius. I personally only use all metal because I don’t have to keep trimming the end of the tube when it get old and dirty. For our Ender 3 this is a direct replacement for the factory hotend. No modifications to the X carriage are need to fit this upgrade.
V6 All-Metal Hotend – These have to be the most popular of all the hotend designs out there. The V6 mounts directly to the BMG extruder keeping the entire X carriage fairly compact. If you want to keep your bowden tube setup then all you need is to print a mount and use the pressure fitting that it comes with. You’ll find a handful of designs to download online. Finding replacement parts like the heat block, heatsink and heat break are easy because there are a lot of different companies that have their own versions.
Titanium Heat Break – You don’t have to replace your entire hotend just to convert it to all-metal. Technically you just have to replace your heat break. If you do go this route, the best choice is titanium. It helps stop heat from transferring too far up the heatsink minimizing the chance of heat creep and jammed hotends. Even though this is the easiest way, I would recommend you just purchase one of the hotend above. For only a couple dollars more you get an entire hotend and they both come with titanium heat breaks.
Flexible Build Plate
Flexible PEI Steel Build Plate – While this is the highest priced item on this list, you’ll get the most bang for your buck. The PEI coating helps print stick to the bed better than most other surfaces. Even the high-end printers use this as their build plate but you can get this type of performance for even the cheapest printers available. It’s kind of like having 2 build plates in one. One side has a textured finish that grips to the model and keeps it there till the print is finished. The other side has a smooth finish that creates a nice-looking bottom surface of your print. When your print is done, you don’t need to wait for it to cool down and use a scraper to pry it off the build plate. Just remove the entire build plate off of it’s magnetic base and flex the sheet.