Creality K1 Max review

Though it isn’t a model new know-how, CoreXY is one thing of a buzzword in 3D printing this 12 months. The K1 and K1 Max are the primary fashions from Creality to undertake this methodology of printing and boast of print speeds as much as 600mm per second.

To place that in context, the vast majority of client 3D printers print at round 50-80mm per second as customary, so it is a huge deal because it means prints are accomplished in hours as a substitute of days.

Right here, I’m reviewing the K1 Max which has an even bigger 300x300x300 construct quantity than the K1’s 220x220x250. Each are totally enclosed which suggests they maintain the ambient temperature hotter and extra steady than “open” printers. And that’s useful if you wish to print utilizing filaments akin to ABS, ASA and nylon which want these circumstances.

However even should you’ll stick principally to plain PLA, there’s loads to love in regards to the K1 Max. Let’s dive in.

Design and construct

• CoreXY
• Twin-gear direct extruder with reverse Bowden tube
• Easy PEI construct plate

First issues first, sure, the K1 sequence is Creality’s reply to competitors from Bambu Lab, Voron and others. With the Bambu P1P being such a well-liked selection, it’s value stating that the K1 Max has a bigger construct quantity (300mm cubed versus 256mm cubed. Bambu’s dearer enclosed X1 Carbon has the identical construct quantity because the P1P so the K1 Max will attraction to these wanting the choice to print bigger fashions.

This implies the K1 Max is an enormous printer. That isn’t a criticism: it’s merely a reality. If you would like a big construct quantity, it’s important to settle for the printer will probably be huge. Its 435 x 462mm footprint doesn’t embrace the reel of filament which hangs on a submit that stands proud of the rear, so that you’ll want a desk a minimum of 600mm deep.

It’s 526mm tall, however you’ll desire a house taller than that to take away the glass prime every time you swap filament, as a result of that’s the one method to entry the discharge lever on prime of the extruder.

The entrance door (and prime) are created from tempered glass, however the sides are plastic and never detachable. The entire unit weighs 18kg.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There’s a 4.3 inch color touchscreen for controlling the printer instantly, however you too can ship prints to it remotely: there are each Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections. The display is without doubt one of the solely elements you’ll want to put in your self when establishing the K1 Max: it arrives just about able to go.

The field even features a full 1kg spool of Creality’s newest HyperPLA which has a barely totally different composition to permit for quicker movement charges required for high-speed printing.

The K1 and K1 Max are CoreXY printers. This isn’t the place to enter particulars about the way it differs from conventional ‘mattress slinger’, however it is very important admire that the primary distinction is that the mattress in a CoreXY printer strikes up and down, not forwards and backwards.

Jim Martin / Foundry

This implies the K1 Max wants loads much less house depth-wise than it will if it had been a mattress slinger. Additionally, the printhead strikes in each X and Y instructions and is managed by two motors. That’s one of many fundamental causes the K1 Max (and any CoreXY printer) can print a lot quicker.

The printhead is light-weight and makes use of a proprietary Creality hotend (the half that heats the filament and consists of the nozzle out of which it’s extruded) as a substitute of an off-the-shelf part akin to  Volcano. Nonetheless, Creality features a full spare within the field together with a silicone sock and screws.

Jim Martin / Foundry

See also  WD Black SN770M review

You possibly can view this as beneficiant, or barely worrying should you surprise why the pre-fitted one isn’t sufficient.

The massive aluminium alloy mattress is AC-powered (versus DC) which permits it to warmth up shortly: from room temperature to 60°C in round 90 seconds. It’ll attain 100°C in three minutes, however will go proper as much as 120°C – 20°C hotter than the K1’s mattress.

Embedded pressure sensors permit the K1 Max to construct a ‘levelling mesh’ that compensates for any slight unevenness within the mattress and helps to make sure the primary layer is printed nicely. This all occurs robotically: you don’t must do something – not even set a z-offset. It’s incredible.

On prime of the mattress is a magnetic PEI construct plate with a easy floor. You take away and flex it after printing – a a lot simpler method to detach fashions than utilizing a scraper on a set mattress floor. Creality features a stick of glue for adhesion: you’ll wish to use it as a result of small components will come adrift in any other case. The plate has two notches on the rear which make it simple to align it if you put it again onto the mattress.

Jim Martin / Foundry

If there’s a criticism, it’s that it’s very awkward to achieve behind the printer to examine and alter filament. For a begin, you’ll be able to’t see how a lot is left on the reel and second, it’s troublesome to hold a brand new spool on an unsighted submit, then feed the tip into the lengthy reverse Bowden tube.

Jim Martin / Foundry

An answer is to purchase Creality’s Dry Field for round £50 / $50 and put that along with the printer. Or, as a result of the corporate is clearly conscious of the problem, print the spool holder that’s supplied within the K1 Max’s 8GB of storage which does the same job.

The tube is bent at fairly a pointy angle because it enters the enclosure, then goes by way of a runout sensor and eventually spherical to the extruder. It means swapping filaments takes a couple of minutes, not least as a result of the Extrude / Retract features take some time to do their job, so it pays to press the button earlier than you get your new filament prepared.

Options & apps

• LiDAR
• Digicam
• Creality Print and Creality Cloud

Printing at excessive speeds is nice, however there are some drawbacks. One is that the print head causes the printer to vibrate much more because it shoots round, and that’s exacerbated when you’ve an even bigger space to print.

So Creality has put in automated movement advance which does its greatest to fight these vibrations so your fashions’ straight traces don’t turn into wavy. So long as you allow it within the settings, the K1 Max will print a zigzag sample earlier than every print and use the LiDAR bolted to the facet of the print head to scan it for imperfections. It then makes use of this knowledge to compensate when it’s printing.

Jim Martin / Foundry

One other useful addition over the K1 is a built-in digicam. This allows you to examine how printing goes remotely (so long as your printer is linked to the web) and in addition makes use of “AI” to be careful for issues akin to objects by accident left on the construct plate or even when a bunch of spaghetti is forming due to a failed print.

Jim Martin / Foundry

As a bonus, the digicam may even file time-lapse footage of every print. The outcomes are definitely shareable, if not the highest quality. The one method I may discover to dump these time-lapses was to export them to a USB drive, and within the firmware model I used to be utilizing this could fail virtually each time leaving a .tmp file on the drive. Fortuitously, it might be renamed to .mp4 and performed, however solely the portion of the video that efficiently exported.

The touchscreen itself is generally nice to make use of. It’s massive sufficient, and the interface is intuitive. It may do with some sharpening, because it isn’t at all times apparent should you can scroll down and see extra or not. It seems to be primarily based on Klipper, nevertheless it’s formally referred to as Creality OS.

Though you need to use your selection of slicer to show 3D fashions into the gcode that the K1 Max can perceive, Creality has developed its personal: Creality Print. It’s really fairly good, with all of the choices you’d anticipate finding and a reasonably clean-looking interface.

Jim Martin / Foundry

It’s designed to deal with your complete means of making ready a mannequin, together with including helps – manually if you wish to – slicing after which sending the file to a printer in your native community.

There’s an alternate: Creality Cloud. You possibly can entry this by way of the online portal or cell app and each allow you to select a mannequin, slice it and print it. The app has the feel and appear of AliExpress, as the house display exhibits fashions you’ll be able to obtain (lots of which value cash) and also you’re bombarded with pop-ups, advertisements and nags to improve from the free to Premium model for $79.99 / £79.99 per 12 months.

Jim Martin / Foundry

It’s vital to grasp that most individuals don’t want to do that. You possibly can nonetheless monitor print progress and regulate settings as a free member.

My choice was to slice fashions in Creality Print and export the gcode to a USB drive and print from that.  You’ll have to ensure the construct plate is clear and apply the glue stick earlier than every print anyway.

Efficiency

A couple of check prints are pre-loaded onto the K1 so you’ll be able to examine print high quality with no need to put in any apps. One is a ‘velocity Benchy’ which claims it should print in slightly below 17 minutes. This little boat is a benchmark file broadly used to check 3D printers and usually takes an hour or extra to print.

Creality claims on its web site that the K1 Max can print a Benchy in 13 minutes, however even utilizing the included HyperPLA it was barely over its personal estimate at about 20 minutes in complete.

That doesn’t embrace the four-odd minutes the K1 Max spends probing, wiping and doing all its different pre-flight checks earlier than every print, however I’d argue it’s value leaving all of them enabled to make sure a profitable, good high quality print, particularly for prints that can take many hours.

Jim Martin / Foundry

It’s unbelievable to look at the K1 Max print at even 300mm per second: you’ll be able to see small fashions such because the Benchy rising shortly – an impact you merely don’t get at 60mm per second.

High quality is surprisingly good too, with no zits or different undesirable issues on the primary hull and good, clear edges. In reality, the K1 Max’s print high quality at excessive speeds is noticeably higher than many mattress slingers printing 5 instances slower, together with Creality’s personal Ender 3 S1 Professional. There was just a little stringing as you’ll be able to see within the photograph above, together with a couple of dangling blobs on the prime of the arched door however these are all fairly minor complaints.

Creality claims “as much as 600mm/s” however 400mm/s is the reasonable prime velocity with out compromising on high quality. Even that’s greater than acceptable, and the K1 Max’s velocity is a game-changer should you’re upgrading from an mattress slinger.

I discovered that there was no want so as to add any brims, rafts or different mattress adhesion within the slicer, however you do want to make use of glue on the sleek PEI floor for smaller components to make sure they don’t come adrift after the primary layer or two. You possibly can see the place a chunk hasn’t caught the place no glue was used:

Jim Martin / Foundry

One in all my favorite issues to print is the lovable octopus: a print-in-place articulated mannequin whose eight legs have a number of joints. At the usual dimension, these joints are extraordinarily small they usually usually want a raft on most printers, even these with textured PEI beds.

Jim Martin / Foundry

See also  Asus Vivobook 13 Slate OLED review

Not the K1 Max. With the massive mattress, it was in a position to print two – one behind the opposite – with no points in any respect. The glue virtually works too nicely, and I needed to resort to utilizing the included scraper to take away most fashions after printing.

There’s not an enormous distinction in high quality between Creality’s new HyperPLA and its common vary when printing at excessive velocity (utilizing the profiles included in Creality Print). The brand new filament is formulated for greater movement and quicker cooling, and does result in cleaner prints. I printed a second Benchy utilizing Creality’s rainbow PLA and the one space that didn’t print as nicely was the rear the place among the strands hadn’t cooled shortly sufficient and had been sagging. If something, there was much less stringing utilizing the usual stuff.

I additionally printed a couple of fashions utilizing ABS and the K1 Max’s enclosure meant warping was a lot much less of a problem than open printers. I didn’t have any ASA, so couldn’t check this, however the reality the K1 Max’s mattress heats to 120C makes it very versatile when it comes to what you’ll be able to print with.

One of many huge benefits of high-speed printing is that it makes huge initiatives doable. I’d been ready for an opportunity to evaluation a CoreXY printer to print a guitar (the Prusacaster) and the K1 Max allowed me to print the six items in simply a few days as a substitute of per week.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The good print accuracy meant the sections fitted collectively nicely. The one disappointment was warping on one piece, which meant it didn’t align as nicely, however this might have been all the way down to not placing sufficient glue on the mattress: different items had been just about excellent with no ‘elephant’s foot’. That’s the place the decrease few layers are wider than these above.

Most spectacular of all, there wasn’t a single failure among the many dozens of prints I attempted on the K1 Max, barring the one the place I didn’t apply glue throughout the entire space to be printed. That meant I didn’t get an opportunity to see the digicam’s AI in motion. Twice, it paused earlier than even beginning to print, displaying an error on the display saying “A print high quality downside has been detected and printing has been paused”. Nonetheless, on the backside of the display a separate message says “International object detected” so Creality must replace the error. The international object was virtually definitely my hand or digicam, too.

By way of noise, the K1 Max produces various it. The enclosure helps loads, however with so many cooling followers and the fast-moving print head, it’s not one thing you’ll need in your dwelling house at house.

Value and availability

The Creality K1 Max prices £859 / US$899 direct from Creality’s web site. That’s fairly much more than the £579 / $599 K1, however you get greater than merely a bigger construct quantity.

Creality presents reductions pretty usually, so it’s value conserving an eye fixed out for these: there was £60 / $60 off the K1 on the time of writing, however no deal on the newer K1 Max.

If that is too wealthy for you, do learn our roundup of the very best 3D printers for cheaper choices.

Ought to I purchase the Creality K1 Max?

I had excessive hopes for the K1 Max and positively wasn’t upset. In reality, it exceeded my expectations and churned out print after print with out drama.

If Creality’s proprietary tech places you off, one bonus is that claims it should open-source the code for the K1 and K1 Max in September. This implies the group ought to be capable to modify and add options, and is undoubtedly an excellent factor.

Creality

One different factor to contemplate should you can stay with a 256x256x256mm construct quantity is that Bambu Lab’s P1S Combo prices £869 / $949 and helps automated multi-colour printing, a function the K1 Max doesn’t possess.

Total, although, the K1 Max is a good selection should you’re after a CoreXY printer with a big construct quantity, are proud of single-colour printing and don’t fancy constructing a Voron equipment (or don’t know what that’s).