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
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.
What a fantastic printer! I have been struggling with an Ender 3, that has done thousands of hours of printing, but never expected speeds like the K1 offers. Prints that would’ve taken several hours now completed in just over an hour. Amazing
Wir sind Neulinge auf diesem Gebiet und haben den Drucker seit Weihnachten. Grundstzlich ist der Drucker gut, allerdings fr Anfnger wie wir, die wirklich gar keine Ahnung haben, schwer zu durchschauen.
Mit Geduld, Hilfe von Freunden und Investition von Zeit, wird es immer besser!
Wir haben schon einige ntzliche Dinge gedruckt, welche man entweder gar nicht mehr oder nur fr teures Geld nachkaufen kann.
Rarely gets to it’s full speed, few fast printers do. But it definitely races along at a fair whack and makes a bed slinging ender 3 look and feel ancient. 8 hair prints on an ender 3 are down to around an hour. Stuff I would never print on an ender 3 is within reach on the k1 max. Good print quality, built in bed levelling via a lidar, inbuilt camera is OK, not stellar but usable. Filament runout sensor built in. It does timelapse on every print, though I haven’t worked out how to delete them. Prints over local WiFi, so a bit octoprint like as you can send your files over WiFi instead of using a USB stick, though that USB option is still there if required. Using a USB stick you can also pull timelapse videos direct to the USB stick. Biggest downsides of the k1? No cura profiles at the time of purchase so stuck with creality slicer. Creality slicer works fine but is limited with only 3 profiles, basically high quality slow, medium still slow, and average quality fast. Options are intuitive in creality slicer. Considering it is basically cura they make things difficult when they shouldn’t be. You can monitor prints over WiFi, but for me it can’t be done from the program itself on the pc, I have to copy the ip address (there is a copy ip option on the print screen so they obviously planned for this issue) to then paste in a browser window which then works fine. If you use a trackball or mouse without a scroll wheel you are in for a miserable time adding custom supports as I cannot find an option to zoom in on the model without that wheel. The only thing to truly HATE with this printer? The phone app. It is full of ads. Ads on ads, ads everywhere. The app is basically an ad app with the printer options you want to access hidden in amongst all the ad misery. Simply put, do not use the phone app if you value your sanity.
Printer has consistently provided excellent results.
Only problem was blocked nozzles when using the supplied and replacement copper nozzles from Creality. Replacing with Creality chromed nozzles has cured the problem.
Needed this printer as I need to print some fairly large parts for a project so wanted high speed and 300x300mm. Also it’s going to be in an unheated and often dusty garage so an enclosure was fairly essential. Also required was higher temperature printing as PLA might be pushing it a bit with regard to structural components on a hot day in summer.
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.
The K1 and K1 Max are Creality’s response the the new generation of 3D printers spawned by Bambu Labs who finally kick-started a stagnant market with repeated iterations of the same basic designs. The K1 Max ‘could’ be a great printer and probably will be. However, Creality do not seem to have made many gains in the quality control department. My printer did 4 successful (and very good) prints before the extruder stopped working. As a person with 6 years + experience in 3D printing, I am used to this and disassembled the extruder in order to troubleshoot the issue. Both of the extruder gears were badly aligned, which was caused by cross-threading of the screws holding them during factory assembly. Thanfully, this was a relatively simple thing to fix with the right tools but, it’s a prime example of poor QC and anyone without experience would have been struggling. It’s a real shame as I was expecting more considering the gushing positive reviews on YouTube.
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.
I have tested a few really cheap filaments lately, and most of them you get what you pay for. This was a huge exception. Typically at around $13/1kg you get trash filament that is a pain to work with. Not only is Creality’s filament properly packaged, and dry, but it’s nearly wrapped with no tangles. It is also very dimensionaly accurate. I printed a few lithophanes with it, there are 3 common filament issues you can have.
1. Any moisture at all will blow holes in your lithophanes. Creality’s filament was truly dry
2. Some filament shrink more than others, causing warping or pulling off the bed. Again Creality has very little shrinkage
3. Dimensionally accurate. Any changes in the diameter of the filament will change the amount of light that gets through, and add random shading. Creality claims both 0.03 mm and 0.02 mm accuracy. 0.02 could be wishful thinking, but with the quality of prints I got, I will not argue with them on this claim.
Only thing that was not near perfect is that between the 2 packs of filament and the double boxing of it, they found a way to make 5 labels that refer to this as a “Value Pake”
So, over all is an amazing value. It keeps going out of stock, but next time I see it back in stock I will have to pick up some more.