Ender 3 V2 – Build Plate Upgrades – Flex build plate, Adjustment Knobs and Pulley Wheels



Hello everybody and welcome to another video tutorial.  In today’s video we’ll be upgrading the Ender 3 V2 by Creality to use a flex build plate, upgrade to adjust knobs and replace the pulley wheels.  I purchased all of these components for the purpose of this video, and no money has exchanged hands.  Full disclaimer, I’m in no way responsible if any damages may occur, so do this at your own risk.

In today’s article we’ll be updating the Ender 3 V2 to use a flex build plate, upgrade to adjust knobs and replace the pulley wheels.  I purchased all of these components for the purpose of this video, and no money has exchanged hands.  I’m in no way responsible if any damages may occur, so do this at your own risk.

Like many users of the Ender 3 V2 and the remainder of the Ender 3 series, I was tempted to see what all the fuss was about when it came to these flex build plates.  Pretty much all of my current machines had the glass build plate until recently, and for the most part I haven’t found it necessary to upgrade as yet. Now it should be noted that at the time of writing this article, I had just purchased two machines with flex build plates and those reviews have since been posted.  

As far from mods go, this one is fairly simple to complete, but it best paired with two others if possible.  So instead of just adding the flex build plate we’ll be upgrading other surrounding components as well since we already need to remove it.  To start things off, we’ll first take off the glass that’s on the machine, followed by the adjustment knobs.  Something to be very careful about is to not damage the wire connections on the bottom of the build plate.  Without the springs holding them, they can easily be ripped off if you’re not careful.  We can now remove the screws for the pulley wheels while making sure to leave the timing belt in place.  For testing purposes, I wanted to see if these wheels make any difference in performance, so I bought a bunch of these to test out for a latter video.   Very important to note is where the eccentric nuts are located.  If you have my Ender 3 V2 PDF, then you’ll have a diagram of where they are located, and you can use that as a reference. Making sure to keep this order for the components, we’ll attach the new wheels into place.  Using the eccentric nuts, you’ll adjust them so that the build plate doesn’t wobble but still moves freely.

For the next upgrade, we’ll be adding some new adjustment knobs and springs.  When I did this, I originally used springs, but I recommend using the silicone columns instead for a couple of reasons.  With the flex build plate, there’s quite a bit of motion that occurs when you remove and re-install it into place, and what can happen is that it does loosen over time.  For me, this occurred quite quickly, so it was easier to simply replace these to prevent any more issues from occurring.  Now, adding a CRTouch did in fact lessen this, so you might also want to take this into consideration.  When re-stalling the build plate, you’ll want to add the screw, then the spring followed by the adjustment knob, and it should look like this once you’re done.

For the build plate itself, we simply have to attach adhesive magnetic sheet, but this will make it more difficult to change the levelling screws in the future since they will be covered.  Although that’s rarely an issue, it is something to keep in mind.  To attach the magnetic sheet, you’ll want to peel up the top portion and fold it so that you have a flap that’s sticking out.  You’ll then align this and slowly while using a squeegee begin pressing it down while pulling off the protective sheet.  It’s very important to remove as many bubbles as possible to prevent any issues in the future.   In most cases, you’ll need to adjust the end’s stop to keep the hot end from crashing into the build plate.  To do this, I used my feeler gauge key to get the right thickness, but you could simply mark the original location with a marker and adjust it by eye.  Once all the basics were complete, I was then able to begin levelling the print bed using the feeler gauge method.

Now there are a couple of things to keep in mind with this modification and the main one is the print bed temperature.  For this print bed I did find that I needed to have a higher temperature than normal and if it was off by more than 5 degrees my prints would lift from the print bed.  One more thing to take into consideration, is that you do not want to clean it with isopropyl alcohol, but instead use some soap and water.  To do this, I simply add a small amount of soap to a wet paper towel and gently scrubbed the surface. Using a new paper towel, that only has water on it, I then clean off all the soap until there was no more residue left on the surface.
I did review all the mods that I made on this machine, so if you want to find out which ones were worth the money, you can see that article HERE.


About

Yasmeen completed both the 2D and 3D animation course at Algonquin College and worked in the animation industry as a freelancer for a number of years before being hired to manage the 3D printing services at ItsYeBoi. While using the Alias of "Jenny" during her services, she was responsible for the testing, maintenance and upgrading of the machine while also filming and developing 3D printable assets for various projects.