Official Creality K1 3D Printer High Speed with 600 mm/s 3D
Official Creality K1 3D Printer High Speed with 600 mm/s 3D Printers Auto Leveling, Dual Fans Cooler, 0.1 mm Smooth Detail, Printing Size 8.66×8.66×9.84 in, Straight Out of The Box for Beginners
From the brand
I have had many 3D printers, mostly creality, and after an incident (dropping my CR-10s while moving house) i wanted a new printer.
the print speed and quality using the Creality hyper PLA is short of miraculous! a few years ago i attempted to 3D print a full spartan suit, but after 30 days for a single print for the helmet (that failed mid way through twice!) i gave up. I rendered the same print on this printer and was shocked that with the same quality settings and size, it was going to take 7 days! i haven’t started it yet due to not having enough filament but from what i have printed, the detail and precision from things like a ornate chess set, some deco pieces and a pineapple plant pot (25cm high that printed in 8h) it’s insane, a full high detail benchy, including calibration in 17 minutes!
There has been lots of posts about issues with this printer, maybe i just won the quality lottery, but it is an incredible printer!
Worked out of the box.
Initial benchy print was perfect.
At higher speeds, this is a noisey printer.
The Creality Print program interfaces with the printer easily.
Dissapointed that this is shipped with the older print head, old stock.
Had a problem with one print, see pictures. Sliced with Creality Print.
Only problem was blocked nozzles when using the supplied and replacement copper nozzles from Creality. Replacing with Creality chromed nozzles has cured the problem.
First off, packaging is excellent and printer arrived with zero damage. There’s a printed quick start brochure which is adequate but YouTube videos are better. Assembly is basically: unbox, remove protective films of glass panels, fix magnet handle onto door, remove three transit screws from the print bed (big yellow arrows point to these), plug in and mount the screen, mount the supplied reel of filament on the spindle and push through into the print head and switch on. It’s really that simple. Once powered up set up is as easy as it gets. It painlessly connected to wifi and updated the firmware. Levelling etc is fully automated- you do nothing. It takes about 15 minutes to calibrate itself and sort itself out before you can print your own jobs.
I also installed Creality print (slicing software) on a pc and it connected straight away to the printer over wifi. All in, was ready for 1st print well within an hour of opening the box.
My first print was a tooling jig I designed myself in CAD. I found the slicing software intuitive and the auto placement and auto supports was fine. I used the default settings for the filament (supplied Creality hyper PLA) and sent the file to the printer and started it going remotely from the pc. Built in webcam shows you the print in progress and status with regard temperatures, time gone and time remaining.
Software estimated just over 1.5 hours to print this tooling jig and it was pretty accurate. Printing is fast, very fast and the printer shakes about like some demented lunatic. That said, the print quality was plenty good enough for me and removal of the supports was easy. Oh, did I say this was the 1st time in my life I’ve ever used a 3D printer?
It’s quite noisy with the fans and print head traverse motors screaming. And that’s with the door shut and (removable) lid on. In no way is it ear defender territory but you wouldn’t want it in the living room when you’re watching tv.
It saves a Timelapse video of the print – remember to turn the interior light on and remove the protective film off the camera lens (not in the instructions).
Adhesion. What can I say. I did precisely nothing with regard to prepping the print bed and all 4 prints I’ve done have stuck just fine. They’re also easy to remove by taking off the magnetic metal print bed and flexing it.
Size wise, it’s a bit of a beast, you need about 600mm height and depth and about 500mm width space for it. It’s just about small and light enough to wrap your arms around it and carry it if you need to move it.
Too early to say about quality and longevity, only done four prints on it so far.
I haven’t bothered setting up a Creality cloud account nor putting the app on my phone.
Summary. It works, set up is a breeze and you get good quality prints from the get go on default settings. And this is coming from a complete noob. A bit noisy but haven’t tried dialling down the speed to see if that quietens it.
Ps. Gave tech support 3 star as I have to put something down even though I haven’t needed to use tech support.
In some ways, this is a small thing but, when spending 800+ on a printer, no-one should expect to have to get out the tools (including a 3mm thread tapper) within 24 hours of unboxing it due to shoddy assembly.
That aside, it is a truely great printer. Fast, high quality prints (results comparable to the Bambu P1P) and a reasonably straightforward unboxing experience (though not as ‘joined up’ as a Bambu). Creality slicer is ‘OK’ but still limited if you are a more advanced user. It took some time to dial in a profile for OrcaSlicer. The Klipper install is also locked down so the web interface is a ‘display’ and file upload interface with next to no control. Once again, a shame considering Klipper is Open Source and Creality are delaying opening up their firmware (as is required). At the time of writing, there is rooted firmware to provide a full Fluidd interface which makes the whole thing a lot more practical for an advanced user.
Would I buy another one? The answer is yes but those niggling issues must be addressed before I could wholeheartedly recommend it to others, especially first-time 3D printers.