Unprintering an Ender 3 Pro 3d Printer! lets take this bad boy apart!

Alright guys, I am getting a couple things set up here so I can see the chats and we'll get the stream started as soon as a couple people pop in. I'm just hanging out at the moment. We'll tear this guy down in just a few. What up sergeant? Take apart this *******... I'm cussing already. I need to calm down. Then take apart this Ender 3. What's up folks? Give me just a second. We'll get right to it. We're just waiting and see if a few more people show up. We just started the stream here. All right guys, just a few minutes here. All right, so as you can see, I don't have a ton of room back here. We're just starting in just one second here. All right, I want to have... All right, put that where I can see it. So this guy here I... As you can see was in the middle of adding a second extruder. It's kind of a project I kind of put off for a while because I had other stuff going on. And I've taken parts off of this. Kind of robbed Peter to pay Paul here. So I think what we're gonna do is take these bars off and put them on the Ender 3 v2. Just kind of put everything else away. I am gonna use the hot end because I think I'm gonna continue modding for the dual extruder, but we're gonna do it with the version 2 instead of the version 1. So today we need to take this guy apart. And I do have the box here from the Anet AA plus with a lot of the parts in it. I don't really want to confuse some of the pieces, so I'll be putting them aside somewhere else. But some of the pieces we will be just tossing in that box because they're pretty generic. So we're gonna get this cap tube off of here. Maybe. Better we're gonna break the freaking printer. So hard to do all that from back there. Let's get this crap off. And a lot of this that's on here. It's just kind of hacked together from working on this mod here. I got it pretty much dialed in, but then I realized there was really no way to adjust to ensure that the nozzles were perfectly even. So I have some plans for that on the next iteration, but since I have to remake it, we'll do it on that one. Need to get a bag here. Obviously none of this is plugged in. There's a ton of stuff here. I want to take out, just like I did the other day, a whole bag full of wrenches and I can't find the top off here. Whoa, come on. I'm just taking out these bolts up here. I know you can't really see it on the camera there. Hey sergeant, I was debating whether to take apart this one or the Tevo Tarantula Pro. You probably would have liked to see me destroy that T-Pro though, huh? All right. V-slot, no. This is the problem with the couplers for the actual Capricorn tube. They're almost too good. So we'll just unscrew it. Yeah, we're just just dropping in. I'm taking this guy apart. I was working on doing a dual extruder project on it, and then I got distracted by other printers and other things and I was looking at it the other day, and I decided, you know, I'll take these tall bars off of it, and I will take the cap tube and some of the other pieces and we'll put them on there. I don't need the cap tube for that one, but I'll definitely be using this on another printer. So we're disassembling an Ender 3 Pro today. This happens to be a height extended Ender 3 Pro. Goes up to almost 500 millimeters. It's about 450. Where is my stuff? I'm gonna have to open the box of printer parts. I know you guys can't see this, just bear with me for a minute here. There it is. Baggie of cap tube. We'll throw that in there. The couplers can stay in there, too. Why not? I think, if I remember correctly, that this doesn't have a board in it. So most of this stuff should just be loose back here. Yeah, I just gotta clip some zip ties to get things off and separated. If you want to see what an Ender 3 Pro board looks like, I do have it right here. I can show it to you. That and that. So this is the melty board, it's called. This is... Yeah, there it is. Creality 3D version 1.1.3. This was the one that originally shipped with the Pro. As you can see, no spot for another extruder. So I couldn't have made it into a dual extruder without another board. The real reason I put it away, I had ordered another board, and in the time it took to come, I ended up getting like three or four more printers, so was a... Yeah, really can't complain, but no reason to have this guy sitting here half put together. Yeah, okay. I got a bunch of this stuff taken apart already. So... These I can't get to until I get the hot ends off, so let's take those off. Where are you gonna do? Well, all of these unprinters are going into boxes and as you know, hopefully I'll be moving soon. Don't have a destination yet, still not quite there on the goal, but... Well, we have a destination. We just don't really have a place at the destination. But it's gonna be a lot easier to move. Looking at all the printers I have between now and the time that we do leave, I'll probably need a trailer just for all the standing printers that are there. And I don't want to make another trip because that means coming back to this hellhole. So... Not so much. I'll just put them in boxes and keep the ones I actually used together. Oh, that came right off. There we go. All right, so there's a hot end. Let's get this other one out of here. That's the brand new one there. This one's been used and you can tell because it's got cap tube in it. Oh Canada! You're really pushing that Canada thing, aren't you bro? Tell you what, Canada ain't any worse than South Dakota because it's like snowy and crappy out here right now. But... I mean, I don't want to live somewhere snowy. Seriously, bro, and it's not just me like I gotta listen to my wife complain every time she feels cold air just layers for the cold. Yeah, I wear layers, bro. I don't know what this thing is about going outside, females going outside in leggings and being like I'm cold cuz... Yeah, you are cold. You got like no fabric on. But... No better than to say that to my wife, right? One would hope. So some of this might look strange because they're not stock parts, obviously. That one's out. It's like I explained in the other unprintering video, this is tedious and monotonous and not really that much fun. But it's nice to have people come and hang out and watch while I do it, I guess. Oh, you're still in tank tops? No fair. Yeah, I'll let her know. She's at work right now and she can't have her phone on her. So I don't know, man. I don't know. They're uh... I'm hesitant to go anywhere just now. Obviously with all the ---- going on in the world. Gotta get the hell out of here, but what happens here in a couple weeks might determine quite a bit of what exactly happens for the next couple years. Not just for the obvious reasons, but... All right, so... Got some bolts off that. Hang on to... You just got the Ender 3 v2 and the z-axis is a little off. Paper and metal shims. Where is it off at? Is it the gantry? I mean, I guess what is the problem? Maybe I could help you out. In Mexico, I'd hang out in Mexico. Yeah, I'm trying to... I'm trying to check out the chat while I'm doing this. I get a little carried away sometimes. As you may well know. So Kyle, with that z-axis, you're gonna want to make sure that all of your frame bars are at 90 degree angles. You shouldn't have to shim them with anything. If you do, odds are good that something else is loose somewhere on the printer. I mean, if it came that way, my suggestion would be to go down to the bolts underneath that go up into the z-axis to these bars and make sure that those are tight and secured. Because if you tighten one all the way and then try to tighten the other, you could have issues. Whereas if you tighten them both halfway and then slowly turn them in. Oh, yeah, here. There goes the gantry. Easy off. We'll pull that up here and take all the pieces off of it in a minute. So we can just take that off too. Let's take the wheels off. The lead screw is off when you screw the stepper motor in. That little... Yes, okay, that makes sense. So if what you're doing is working for you for now, it should be okay. If you need to get another lead screw, I would definitely get another lead screw. And in fact, there are some different couplers. You can get like four of them for like two bucks and they bend a little bit. So if the motor is not exactly square, here I can show you. One second, I just gotta get the pieces out and I'll show you what I'm talking about here. Okay, so this is the actual lead screw that came off of this guy. So if I put it in there, the couplers on the Ender 3 Pro and I see on the 3V2 are solid. But these guys have flex to them. I don't know if you can see that or not. They bend. So if you get these and you put it in there and it's a little bit off, it will kind of tram it up to where you can get it in that hole. And then the frame will actually square up the linear rod as long as it's in the gantry. You shouldn't really have any issues with it. But I would definitely get a new linear rod if you're having problems or if it's bent. I had a Anet A8 Plus, not the one I just took down, but my other one and that still has a bent lead screw on one side, but it's a dual Z and I've never really gotten up to the top where the bend is. So it may be possible to take your lead screw and flip it around too and kind of maybe that'll fit a little bit better. Yeah, the eccentric nuts are a real pain. Well, we got this apart if you want to see. See if I can get closer to the camera here. So on the carriage itself, this guy right here, this is the eccentric nut. And if I tighten or loosen it, you'll get carriage wobble, which gives you a lot of really weird artifacts. And then on the actual carriage, you can see a couple more. This one and this one, and those are to tighten it to the frame. See if I can take these cables up. I had all sorts of weird stuff going on with this mod. I don't like it. We'll get back to that in a minute. We were taking the bed off. Yeah, the Z coupler, that's what that part I was talking about is called. I mean, if you look at the actual lead screw, is it bent? Because if it's not bent, then odds are, like I said, and like Gregory said, something may be loose somewhere else. Let's pull that off. There's the bed. It's a little bit heavier than some of the other beds that I've seen by themselves. This one, of course, has a magnetic surface and a sheet of PEI on it. And I had to re-solder the bottom because this connector sucked and it ripped out one day. And then I was getting heating errors and it wouldn't heat. But I did end up taking care of it. It was a quick fix. I got a video on that around here somewhere. I had a bunch of videos on this freaking thing. Did I lose a screw? No, it's in here. Take that. Put it in the hardware bag. All right, so, I mean, look at all the dust on this thing. You can tell I haven't used it in forever. Which is sad because it's a good machine. I'm not taking it apart because I don't like it. That's for sure. I've lost all my allen keys. Like, I got a whole bag of allen wrenches and the one I need... Ah, there it is. Okay, odds are good. I should probably at least the tension on the tensioner instead of just over-sew. Nope, it's gotta come apart, man. Sorry. Gotta do it. I'm, uh... Let's get the belt off. I'm making space and preparing to eventually move somewhere down the road here, too, so... Nine printers is not... Like I said, I know this sounds stupid. I'm not complaining. I just, I... Gotta do what I gotta do, man. And if you're just joining us, like I said, a lot of these parts are gonna go, like, these super tall brackets here on the side are gonna go on the Ender 3 V2. 2208s. I mean, yeah, but I want everything, so... I don't know what I'd put them on right now, though. It's gonna come falling off of here. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. It's kind of whiny. It is a little loud. But I gotta... I'm so far behind on stuff I'm supposed to be doing. I got a Chimera dual extruder from them, too, and I have it printing. I just don't have it dialed in and I haven't had the time to mess with the settings. All right, how many times have I tried to undo this and not taking it off? Let's see. Worst part about this is I'm doing this because I don't have enough room, but I need to stay organized while I do it, which is hard when you don't have enough room. Bed. All these wheels, I mean, everything still seems to be in nice shape. It's dusty, but still usable for sure. Let's see. That's empty. Oh my gosh, that's the cutest little cable I've ever seen. Put that over here. Let's take this guy off. I mean, they have linear conversion kits. I can't remember what the kit is called off the top of my head, but I know I've seen one for the X. I think there's one for the Y, too. Jordan, I'm actually unbuilding a printer. This used to be an Ender 3 Pro and I was modifying it and quit modifying it to work with the 3V2 here, and I decided to take some of the mods off of it and put it on here. Since I did that, it was pretty stripped down, so I figured we might as well disassemble the whole beast. So it's getting down to bare bones now. We will soon be done. Oh, there goes the coupler. Whoops. I never flipped this upside down before. This notch here has got to be... Yeah, I have because I had to put it on. There's a notch up here. I assume it's where the cables were, but I took everything out, so who knows. Yeah, it had an extension kit on it. That's one of the things I'm doing. These two bars here, these tall guys, I'm taking off and we're gonna put those on the Ender 3 V2. One of the things I haven't done on the version 2 yet in any of my videos is the firmware. There's a couple different versions of the firmware and you can do some interesting things with the colored screen, but with this printer that I'm holding in my hand, the Ender 3 Pro, in order to get it to go up to the height with these added bars, I had to alter the firmware. So I'm assuming I'm gonna have to do that with the Ender 3 V2, so we'll get into the firmware part of things here in a minute. Well, not in a minute, but eventually here. This video is just about the disassembly and even though it looks like this printer is coming apart quite a bit, there is still a lot of stuff to disassemble, so yes, this 20 by 40 extrusion right here is massive. Let's see. So I mean, I don't know, maybe we'll go wider with the Ender 3 V2 instead of taller because I never really utilized the height on this. Although a wider bar wouldn't necessarily give me a wider bed, but I do have other beds laying around. Who knows? Probably just do the height mod because I did use it once in a while. Some of Creality's stepper motors, like they're so tiny. All right, so two bars are down. Hang on just one second. That was just Cortana knocking on my door, asking me questions. Let's see if we can, I don't think we can get that out without taking the plate off, so I'll just off the front. Okay. If I could drop that one more time, it would be great. Maybe, maybe twice more. Like I said, it's cool that everybody comes to hang out and chat. I don't have... This is really boring to just sit here and do by myself. It really is. Why do they all have to be a different size? Just make them the same size, Jesus. Gotcha. Plate. And again, let's just grab the wrong wrench 20 times. What's up, Dan? So your Y-axis, if you're going across this guy right here, it is just a 2020 V-slot extrusion or T-slot extrusion, I guess, depending on where you get it. And it uses T-locking nuts. That's at least, that's the setup you're gonna have for the stock carriage here. You can make a new plate and widen the wheels and things like that if you wanted to upgrade. If you're gonna go really, really wide, going to a 20x40 wouldn't be a bad idea, but then you would have to update the whole carriage, like I said. Yeah, I cheated. This poor screwdriver saved my life more times than I can count. It's got Allen key heads. I used one that was slightly too big and kind of just jammed it in there. But the downward pressure I got from that, that I can't really get from these. Yeah, yeah, that was the X. Did I say Y? I might have. Yeah, and that you were asking about the Y. So this is actually the Y right here, and it's 40x40. That's what the belt rides on, or what the bed rides on. The reason, it actually, the reason that it's 40x40 and not 20x20 is because you need to have room for the wheels to clear. Or you won't be able to adjust the height of the bed. You know, it might, I have one right here. And I really don't see, I don't see a way to get that to mount to a 20x40, but I can take it off in a few minutes, and I have a 20x40 right here, so we will find out. We will find out together. Well, yeah, I mean, so I do have that right here, too. Like I said, it'll fit on a 20x20, and there's no different holes. There are some different holes in it that I'm looking at now that I'll show you in a second. Which actually, yeah, it looks like that might be to put it on a 20x20. This is why we take things apart, folks. Show you, show you what he's talking about here. And in fact, I guess we could just try it out. Either way, okay, so this is a 20x20, or a 20x40. And this is what, this is a 40x40. This is what it sits on, and the reason it sits on this and is that tall, like I said, is because of the wheels. But there are these two other holes on here, and I think you're right. I think if you put those on there, you could get it to sit on there like this, and use a 20x40 rail. So now that's making me curious, because the belt holes, I thought it would be off-centered, but I'm thinking about it backwards. It would still be centered. That's kind of clever, really. I'm gonna have to play with that mount. Oh, he talked you into getting a Mini, huh, Jordan? That's it. He's got you in his clutches now. It's only Prusa forever. We got most of the pieces off here. I'm just gonna get this last piece and pull out the end stop, and then we'll disassemble the rest of the carriage as well. All right, man. Yeah, I'll hit you up. Are you heading out or what? I suppose you got to go back to your own stream, huh? All right, there's that. There's the end stop. There's the last piece. Right. These get piled in there. Eventually, I need to take all of that out. So let's get on to the gantry. There. Let's see if I can get you a little closer here to my messy-ass table. Just don't look down here where I throw stuff that failed. So, you get all these pieces, parts, everywhere. Belt off. There goes the tensioner. There goes the belt. We can actually, I think... No. No, we got to take this off first. Okay, we're learning. This part came pre-assembled. No, I literally did. I didn't have to put this on here. So, how am I supposed to know how it comes off? Geez. All right, so I wonder who that is. That doesn't sound familiar. Now I'll come off of there. Okay. Belts go in the belt pile. Carriages. You know, I've also been thinking, with all these extra pulleys and belts and motors and bars, maybe a Core XY printer would be fun to play around with. That is a lot of a lot of work, though. So, yeah. Let me know what you think about that. I'll take it with a grain of salt. How about that? I have thought about it quite a bit, though. I think maybe I should get the dual extruder going first. There's some people waiting on that mod. So, this guy's mostly taken apart. I really don't need to take it down any more than that because these angle pieces aren't gonna fit. in any smaller space. Very similar, yet very different. I might have something in mind for that, too. Let's see. Let's get this the rest of the way out. And stop. And stop. I need that bit. Yeah, I think it'd be fun. Is the Hypercube 300, that one's Core XY? You guys can't even see what I'm doing. I'm just chatting now. I'm not even working. Taking extra mounts off motors. We're gonna have to pick all these screws up. Kind of put everything away where it goes. We're getting pretty close to wrapping this stream up, though, because there's not much more I can do. Get the extruder off. It's just a mount. Okay, so. This was the second extruder I put on there. That's why this motor is so big. But regular NEMA 17. Creality NEMA 17. And this is actually a Yu Song Shine. I've used some of their resin. It's really nice. There's the other end stop. We'll put that to those guys. All these washers. Plastic parts. Cables with the other cables. Hey, thanks, Eric. Yeah, hopefully there'll be more. Hey, Mika. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I plan on doing. So the stuff that we just took off of here. I don't know how long you've been in the stream, but this was an Ender 3 Pro. And these were the side rails. So we took them off. We are, I think, going to be putting them on this guy instead in a future video. So that is one big Ender 3 V2. And it should be pretty fun. Yeah, that is the plan. Oh, you mean on the Core XY? Yeah. You know, what's nice is I have a box full of this extrusion right here from the last printer I tore down and some spare pieces from random things. So, I think I have too many ideas. Yeah, do what Sergeant says. Definitely check out the Discord if you're not over there. It is worth giving a look to. There's a lot of cool people on there. Some of you know that already. I am going to wrap this up. I got to go get my kids ready for bed, and I still got to put all this mess away. So we have successfully unprinted the Ender 3, and here's the box, if anybody's curious, of printer stuff. In that box, there is probably 80% of an Ender 3 and 100% of an Anet A8 Plus, as well as a bunch of other random parts and goodies. Where is this snake right here? So, this is a brand new hotend. This is the one that I was adding to the machine. This is the old hotend. You can tell because it's got a used nozzle. But I did learn a few things in my assembly of the Chimera that I think I'm going to iterate into my design, too. So, this new head here will eventually be going on here next to this one, but not quite yet. I have quite a bit more work to do before we get to that point. I'm gonna go ahead and call it there, guys. Thanks for stopping by and checking out the stream. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the likes, the views, everything, and yeah, stick around, and we'll see you in the next one.