XYZprinting Crazy3DPrint CZ-300 DIY 3D Printer

This was my first 3D printer. I've had it for 6 months now. The printer prints well, but after getting another printer that's a different brand, I realize other printers have FAR better print quality, in the same price range. With this printer, print quality is mediocre, it's a little on the loud side, and my biggest complaint is that support is terrible. I had 2 issues with the printer out of the box. First, two of the stepper motor connectors were swapped. Not a big deal, as I they luckily reached where they needed to go so I could plug them in to the correct spot (with the incorrect color code). Second, the y-limit doesn't work. I contacted support about this the day I got my printer, 6 months ago. They still haven't resolved it. I ended up putting a piece of folded blue tape underneath the bed for the y-limit sensor to detect, and that works fine, but I expected at least some kind of help from support...

The CZ-300 is a really good printer for how much it costs. You expect it to have tons of issues, but it actually prints extremely well if you get the right plastic (don't bother using much of the stuff they ship it with, it's very cheap plastic that doesn't print well). It's easy to set up but the instructions are very difficult to understand, took us a couple hours to figure it out. We also had to hot glue the glass print bed down; it comes with some clips to hold it down, but we found these to be too flimsy when printing. If you turn down the print speed, and especially the bed speed, and buy good plastic, the printer is excellent, well worth the money.

Well. . .let me say that the setup was little quirky but manageable. . . took about an hour to figure it all out but once you got it right, it prints like a race horse. . .I would buy it again and just might for a second machine. . .great large platform and build space area. . .little noisy but not too bad. . .

I couldn't resist this printer at the price! It's my first 3D printer. A few key points: Go to the website and download the latest version of the manual. It was very different than the paper copy that came with the printer (had more info). Update the firmware on the printer, following the directions. This wasn't simple, but I managed to stumble through it, asking the internet for help. Only use the settings for this printer in the slicer -- I was able to load it into Cura 4.4 (after searching the internet for how to do that). Assembly took a little while, and the directions aren't exactly clear. I went back and forth between the manual, and the video tutorial at the website, and it still wasn't always clear. But a lot of it is pre-assembled, so it wasn't too bad. Some things weren't even in the manual, like how to load in the filament (there's a little lever to hold back that lets you push the filament into the tube). It came with a small roll of PLA filament included! However, two of the connectors on my printer are wrong or something -- it wouldn't work until I swapped the blue connector and the white connector at the extruder & z-motor. Was able to figure this out because when I selected level bed it would try to feed filament instead of moving the printhead down. Also, whenever it moves the bed all the way back to set its position, it makes a loud sound that at first made me think something was really wrong. Apparently it does that every time to learn the y-direction limit? There's a sample print of a nut & bolt included on the SD card. When I print that, it looks awesome! When I print something else, I guess I'm still figuring out the settings, because it looks pretty good, but not as good as the sample. I've been getting good bed adhesion most of the time, just on the glass bed, IF the bed is level and adjusted close enough. I tried using different settings in Cura (chose the Fine profile) and that messed everything up -- got a lot of stair stepping. So apparently it really needs the profile specific to this printer. I'm pretty happy with it and it's fun, but just be prepared for a little bit of frustration to get things going.