What to do with old 3d printers?

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I have three 3d printers, one Creality Ender 3 max, one Creality Ender 5 plus and one Bambu Lab X1C.

The Ender 3 Max is stock except for a 0.6mm nozzle. Upgrade or throw away? Textured Pei bed?

The Ender 5 Plus has a different hotend and I am considering a Mercury One.1 conversion.

What to do with these two Creality printers?

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Never throw away. Find a new home/user. Makerspaces, STEM schools, individual makers etc. can all make use of old machines. I coordinate many, many such exchanges every year.

If you’re handy and want to mod them, you can. There are even CoreXY and similar conversions.

You can also get really affordable new printers for not much more money than the upgrade.

If you’re not excited about doing the upgrade, get a new machine and flow your old machines to those who will make use of them.

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try to swap them to somebody with something you need, i found a new home for my ender 3 with someone that needed it and in return traded me back an old resin printer

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I recently bought a Sovol SV08 and when I retire my Ender 3 I plan to do this with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz3GDKEmv6E

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I keep upgrading my old machines. New hot ends. New controllers. It’s not as fast as newer machines, but it’ll still put down plastic.

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I just gave my two hypercubes to my son. His kedsnwill want ronuse them and they are hia first CoreXY printers.

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Maybe donate to schools or library?

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There are always a few at the garage sale section of RMRRF.

Or talk about 3D printing to everyone and when someone asks a follow up question, “lend” them a printer.

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Hey I was in the same boat. Two ender 3 pros then upgraded to a core xy. I hate throwing things away and didn’t have any friends that would want them. And I like to tinker. I thought about some projects I could reuse the parts for (some good out there, but if you have a mpcnc or the low rider rather useless) I ended up deciding to adapter the duender for my pro models. It’s a corexy conversion that costs significantly less than the ender ng

But I can use two machines regularly.

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I can’t bring myself to get rid of my Ender3. Has a bunch of upgrades and was my first printer. Actually prints better than some of my other ones but MUCH slower…

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After upgrading, I almost feel bad even giving someone my Ender 3 pro. It is still 100% stock (other than the Pi with Octoprint and a camera which I’d keep) and I still think the quality is pretty good. However, my new printer feels like it’s in a completely different league. Just the speed increase alone makes it wildly more useful because iterating through design changes is so much faster. It’s also easier to use.

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Yeah unless you find someone that’s on the edge the market doesn’t seem there either so many for sale for so long. All the maker spaces near me don’t use them as printers but as parts for projects or other designs. Hince my corexy conversion decision. All for giving to the community but if they are just going to scrap it I’d rather see if I can make use of it. And worse case if I give up I can give it to them disassembled :rofl:

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