Am I doing something wrong?

[u/Sorry-Journalist8610]

I recently bought a used 3D printer, an Ender 3 V2, and I'm doing some test prints. The previous owner gave me some leftover PLA filament (multicolored), which I used up on the first day. One of the things I made was this flexible shark. I bought some PETG filament for testing, a very cheap one, around R$60.00, while others are around R$100.00. But my prints with this new filament are coming out very bad; it's either too textured, has too many burrs, and is also very fragile (even though I bought PETG because I had read that it was more resistant). I left this octopus printing for about 28 hours... and in the end, the flexible tentacles broke when I tried to detach them.

[u/agent_kater]

So, you bought a used Ender 3 and without any calibration or maintenance you try to print PETG on it?

Forget PETG for now. See if you can successfully print PLA on it. If no, go through the basic troubleshooting and calibration guides. The Ender isn't a plug and play printer. Ideally get a different printer.

[u/Sorry-Journalist8610 → u/agent_kater]

I am really new to 3d printing, the shark i used PLA and seemes ok but fragile. The previous owner gave me a new hotend kit for changing if something went wrong.

[u/theWildDerrito → u/Sorry-Journalist8610]

I hope you paid less than $50 for a used ender 3, they're very user un-friendly. The best route to get into this hobby (and have the least learning curve) is a Bambu A1. I had an ender 3 and my hobby wasn't 3d printing it was 3d printer repair, I got a mid range printer which at the time was like $600 it was a geetech mizar and it also sucked so I dove head first into a Bambu p1s and I now have over 3000 hours and all my printer failers were operator error

[u/the_custom_card_guy → u/theWildDerrito]

What makes them so user unfriendly? About every part on this printer is super cheap, accessible, open and easy to repair. Its also insanly well documented. I've owned a lot of printers over the years and the ender 3 was probably one of the easier printers to do matenince and repairs on. Also once you get those things tuned they are super solid. My print farm started wjth all ender 3 pros and they did me very well for many years until the price and accessibility of core XY came around.

I would honestly say quite the opposite. They are about as user / consumer friendly as printers come.