Ender 3 V2 is a budget open-frame FDM 🏷️#3d-printer released by 📝Creality in 2020, typically selling between $275 and $300 as a partially assembled kit. It prints a 220 × 220 × 250 mm volume through a Bowden extruder onto a heated Carborundum glass bed, driven by a 32-bit silent mainboard and a knob-operated color LCD. It ships unassembled enough to teach its owner how it works, which is most of its design intent.
The V2 is the mid-life refresh of the Ender 3, the 2018 machine that made sub-$300 printing a mass-market category. Its changes are quality-of-life rather than architectural: the 8-bit board becomes 32-bit with quieter stepper drivers, the removable magnetic mat becomes glass, the monochrome screen gains color, and belt tensioners and a filament drawer arrive as standard. Manual bed leveling stays, which is the line separating it from the auto-leveling Neo revision and from the enclosed, self-calibrating machines 📝Bambu Lab shipped from 2022 on. What it retains from the original is an enormous modding ecosystem — every part is documented, replaceable, and printable on the machine itself.
This was my way into 📝3D Printing in December 2020 — a bunch of fun printing toys and small functional parts until I tried conductive 📝PLA and spent four weeks failing to get a first layer to stick. That fight ended the hobby for me for five years.
Key Features
- 32-bit silent mainboard — Self-developed board with quiet stepper drivers, holding operation under roughly 50 dB.
- Carborundum glass bed — Heated glass build surface; prints release on cooling instead of needing to be pried off.
- Resume printing — Recovers a job from the last recorded layer after a power loss or filament runout.
- Open, moddable frame — Every component is documented and replaceable, including firmware and printable upgrades made on the machine itself.