This is a crazy fast CoreXY 3D printer. It's the Creality K1, and we'll go into
more detail on it in just a minute. I'm Bryan, and you are watching BV3D!
Hello, 3D Printing Friends, and welcome back! Creality sent over their K1 3D printer a little
while back, so I could show it to you. Now, we'll do the usual: Cover the specs and features, look
at a few prints, and go over what I like, what I don't like, and give you my overall opinion on it.
So with that, let's get right into it. First off, this printer uses a CoreXY
motion system, and Creality says the K1 can print at up to 600 mm/second. Although that's
the absolute maximum. The regular printing speed is 300 mm/second. The printer is enclosed. While
it's not airtight, it does keep drafts away from your prints while you're printing. Its build
volume is the same as an Ender-3 at 220 mm x 220 mm by 250 mm tall. It has a direct drive extruder
with a brass nozzle that gets up to 300° C. Now, fast printing requires extra cooling. So
in addition to the regular parts cooling blower on the tool head, there's also a big aux blower
mounted on the right side of the enclosure. Now there's also some good LED lighting inside. There
are some optional AI features, such as a camera in the printer to monitor the print progress
and warn you if something's going wrong, and LiDAR, maybe for making sure the first layer
of the print came out right, but I'm not sure about that because neither of those features
were installed on the printer I received. The print bed has a maximum temperature of 100° C,
and it has a magnetic spring steel sheet to make it easy to remove prints when
they're done. And Creality says the bed has an array of strain gauges to allow the nozzle
to probe the bed for accurate auto-leveling. The K1 also has Wi-Fi on board so you can print to
it across your local network, or via the Creality Cloud app. It has a 4.3-inch color touchscreen,
and of course it has a filament runout sensor, so it can... well, you know the drill.
When Creality sent this to me, they wanted to ensure it had the CRATE-est chance of arriving
undamaged. Honestly I don't think this is how they normally send these when you order them. If it is,
I would be very surprised. Anyway, I got the box out of the crate, and then I got the printer out
of the box. Now, there's a flash drive that comes with the K1. It contains three G-Code
files and a zip file. Copy that zip file to your computer, unzip it, and you'll find (among other
things) a video that shows how to set up the printer, including removing the protective
packaging materials and films, and attaching the screen and spool holder, and setting the
voltage input switch to match your region. So I did all that, and I loaded some filament,
and then I set about doing some printing. So here are some of the things I printed with the K1.
The very first thing I printed was this Benchy that was already loaded in the printer. And not
counting the 5 minute warm-up and pre-print activities, by which I mean heating the bed
and nozzle, and probing the bed, this printed in a mere 16 minutes. And it came out pretty
good. The parts cooling was sufficient to prevent any filament curling issues on the Benchy's bow,
and really the only complaint I have about it is that the details on it look a little
blurry. And what I mean by that is the corners aren't as sharp as I'm used to seeing. But then,
this Benchy is optimized to print in 16 minutes, and I think that's contributing to the effect.
This Flexi-Cat was also in the printer's file list, and it printed in an hour and 20
minutes. The articulating segments articulate like they're supposed to, and it's a fine little cat.
This is called the 600S Test, and I think that means it's testing the printer's ability to
handle these S curves while printing at 600 mm per second. It printed in just 9 minutes,
and I don't see any defects on it. But apart from the print quality, the best thing about
this particular model is that the printer sounds like a chicken when it's printing it.
After printing the models that were included with the printer, I wanted to slice some myself. So
I installed the latest release of the Creality Print slicer, and sliced a Benchy. This one was
sliced using the 0.2 mm Normal settings, and it took 37 minutes to print. So, a little more than
double the time needed for the Benchy file that was included with the printer. But this Benchy
looks looks a lot more crisp compared to the 16-minute one. The edges of the round porthole
at the back of the wheelhouse, for example, appear much sharper. As does the frame around the doors.
Well, then I sliced and printed a Cali-Cat model. It printed in 28 minutes,
and it looks mostly okay. There are one or two little extrusion issues around the whiskers
and the tops of the feet, so I don't know what happened there, but the rest of it looks great.
All these light red models were printed with a spool of Creality matte PLA that I've had
for a while. I was basically trying to use the rest of it up. So then I
loaded a spool of Creality black HyperPLA that they sent along with the printer.
Now here's the Rocket Plane model that I like to print, scaled up to the maximum
size possible on this printer, 250 mm tall. This prints in spiral vase mode. That tells
tells the slicer to tell the printer to only print the outer shell of the model as a spiral,
from the bottom to the top. Now, it took an hour and a half to print, and it is almost flawless. I
found a flaw. I don't know what happened here... slicer issue, maybe? Sending the nozzle across to
this engine instead of following the outline of the model? Okay, well almost flawless. A quick
snip with the flush cutters should fix that. Here's an Articulated Axolotl, printed in just
an hour and 3 minutes. Functionally, it's perfect. The segments articulate properly.
Surface quality wise, it's not bad, but it's not as good as it can be either. How do I
know? Because as an experiment, I tracked down a printer configuration file that adds the K1 to
PrusaSlicer, and I sliced and printed the same model. To me, the one I sliced in PrusaSlicer
looks better. But here here's the thing. The K1 printer configuration in PrusaSlicer isn't tuned
for speed. So this higher quality print is higher quality because the printer went slower. At 2
hours, 45 minutes, the PrusaSlicer-sliced model took over twice as long to print.
Is it such a huge quality differ that we should say, "Wow, the K1 sucks when it prints fast!" I
don't think that's fair. Probably the way to say it is, "when the printer takes its
time it produces a nicer result." Here's an hour and a half print,
Loubie3D's Aria the Dragon. And though this one's got some wispy stringing, it came out
pretty good. But there are some vertical lines here, and I don't know what's causing that. Now,
just for fun, I scaled this up to the maximum size the K1 could print it, and loaded some EXTREMELY
red Polymaker PolySonic high-speed PLA. It printed in 3 and 1/2 hours, and like the 1-hour Axolotl,
it has a lower quality to it. So, in an attempt to improve the quality, I slowed the overall print
speed from 300 mm/second down to 100 mm/second, and sliced and printed again. This time,
it took 4 hours and 11 minutes to print, and the surface quality did indeed improve. It's not as
lumpy looking, but now vertical lines are showing up. I don't understand what's causing those lines.
If anyone know knows what's going on there, and what the fix is, please comment and let me know.
Hey, if you're getting something from this video, a subscribe would really mean a lot to
me. That lets me know that I'm making content you enjoy, and you want to see more like it! Thanks!
Okay, now that we've gone over the specs, usage, and prints, let's get into what I like and don't
like about the printer, starting with what I like. It's fast, capable of printing at
600 mm/second. And it's a good-looking printer. That obviously doesn't impact how it performs,
but I appreciate the look. The tinted acrylic sides, clear lid, and glass door are nice,
because they allow you to observe the printer in action from the front, sides, and top.
The touchcreen is nice, and the user interface looks... strangely familiar.
The LED lighting inside the print chamber is more than adequate, and the printer has Wi-Fi
on board. If you're already a user of Creality Cloud, you can add this printer to your account,
and send print jobs to it from the Creality Cloud site, or from the mobile app. Or if the
printer and your computer are on the same network, you can send print jobs directly
to it from the Creality Print slicer, or upload G-Code files to it from a web browser.
Now, here's what I don't like about the printer. I'm not super happy that the spool holder is on
the back of the printer. It can be difficult to access back there. The magnetic spring
steel flex plate has a print surface on it that requires a layer of glue stick
to keep the filament from sticking too well. I would have preferred to see a textured PEI
coating on the flex plate. For most prints, it doesn't matter. But for things where the first
layer is actually the top, like on a box, I like the textured look from the PEI coating.
The glass door is held shut magnetically, but it would be nice if the hinge had a bit of friction
to it, so the door would stay open when I open it. If you're printing, and you need to leave the door
open for cooling purposes, you have to prop it open with something or it'll close itself. And
last -- and this is just a minor thing -- it would be nice if the angle of the screen was adjustable.
So, final thoughts on the K1. While it's fast, that speed can come at the cost of quality. The
K1 has input shaping, which helps improve the quality of high-speed prints by reducing or
eliminating ringing. But from what I can see, the print quality is better at lower speeds.
And the higher-speed quality issues aren't manifesting as ringing, though. Some of the
prints are just... lumpier. So I think running it full speed is great to quickly prototype parts,
or print things that you're going to do additional processing on. And I'm talking about sanding and
painting. For better or worse, the path of least resistance when it comes to slicing models for
the K1 is the Creality Print slicer software. But Creality Print needs a bit more polish. I called
it out in the Ender 3 V3 SE video, and it's still a work in progress. It has two "easy mode" print
options for the K1: one at 0.1 mm layers and one at 0.2. But I feel like it needs more than just
those two. Having additional options for lower speed and higher quality would be very welcome.
That said, the out-of-boox experience that I've had with the K1 is that,
when paired with the Creality Print slicer, it works pretty well. The cooling fans can
be a bit loud, but the enclosure does a good job of cutting the noise level down.
The bed leveling has worked flawlessly, and I haven't had a print fail to stick,
or fail to release yet. Even if you're coming into 3D printing for the first time,
you'll likely get decent prints using Creality Print, without having to mess around much with
the settings. Everything I sliced and printed with Creality Print, with the exception of the rocket
plane and the slower version of the big red Aria Dragon, was done using the 0.2 mm preset without
any changes. So if you're looking at getting a fast CoreXY printer and you're on a budget,
the K1 isn't a bad option. There are links in the description if you want to check it out.
So that's the Creality K1. Thanks again to Creality for sending this over free of charge,
so I could show it to you. And big thanks to everyone who supports the channel,
whether with channel memberships, or by using the links in the description. If you liked this video,
give it a thumbs up, and maybe subscribe so you don't miss new ones. Well, 3D Printing Friends,
that's about all the time we have for this one. And now that we're at the end,
let's go print something fast! I mean cool! Cool and fast!