Early this year, I purchased my first 3D Printer – a Creality Ender-3 Pro. It cost me about $250 plus $40 in filament ($20/roll), so lets round up to $300 all-in to get started. Everything else was free – at least until you start wanting to upgrade your printer. I think you are better off buying a basic Ender-3 and investing in these upgrades for basically the same price. An Ender-3 runs about $175.00 and you can buy them cheaper occasionally, add on these 3 upgrades for less than $100 and you have an amazing printer for less than $300!

A 3D printer is a pretty amazing tinkerers tool. A sign of a truly good tinkerers tool is something that you can use to create upgrades to adjust the tool. Not all upgrades will be upgrades – they could make your machine run worse, but you learned something about it along the way to make it better. I’ve done lots of upgrades to my printers over the course of the year and I wanted to share some of the upgrades that I thought game-changers!

BIGTREETECH SKR Mini E3 V1.2 Control Board

  • Cost: $30.00
  • Technical Level: Advanced
  • Skills Needed: Customizing Firmware, Wiring, Calibrating

I put this board into one of my standard Ender-3 printers to quiet down the servo motors. I watched lots of videos of people trying to show how much quieter the printer was after installing it – but in those videos, I could never hear a difference. Let me tell you, the sound is insanely different once you start using this control board! You still have the sound of the cooling fans for the Power Supply and the Control Board itself – there are quieter fans on the market, which one day might be found on this list.

Recently they released v2.0 of this board. I have not used it at this time so I don’t have an opinion one way or another. That board is about $45 on Amazon currently.

Ender-3 BLTouch Bed Leveling Sensor Kit

  • Cost: $52.00
  • Technical Level: Intermediate
  • Skills Needed: Customizing Firmware, Wiring

This is something that I have a love/hate relationship. I don’t know how well it really helps – at the end of the day you still need to know how to level your bed. The BLTouch does help deal with a bed that might be slightly off tilted by doing a series of measurements before each print to match out the bed. Combine this with a glass bed and your prints will come out great! I recommend getting the kit for the Ender-3 because it comes with a metal bracket. You could also print a bracket, but why not spend your time printing fun things instead of getting frustrated over a cheap part that is better as metal anyways?

Glass Bed

  • Cost: $15.00
  • Technical Level: Basic
  • Skills Needed: None

I was all jazzed up for a magnetic plate originally. I have used them a few times, but don’t use them as my standard – for that, I use glass! You can buy a (2) pack for less than $25.00 on Amazon and most come with clips to fasten the glass to the bed. Super simple to install and does a good job of making a very flat surface. Its easy to add blue painters tape to the glass or just use a purple glue stick to make things stick better. This is very important for PETG and ABS filaments.