This is not the k1 max, this is the K1, but in this video I want to review the K1 max,
but also review the K1 again. It will all make sense. Or not. Let's go.
So I've been using the creality K1 for over a hundred hours now which isn't much by some
peoples' standards, but for me it means a lot of prints as I usually do small repeatable test
prints, like the ones recently in the last video on VOCs, so 100 hours does probably
represent in the order of 200 print cycles, or enough to tell you what I think of the machine,
and report any issues. And I'm happy to say, not many. There's a couple of things that annoy me
about this printer but I'll go into them as we progress, but surprisingly the printer has not
failed to level properly even once, the bed as you can see is lacking any
traces of nozzle crash, and it's still in good visual condition. As far as wear and tear there's
some marking to the belt at the back, but not a lot else. Continuity issues probably mean
you're seeing the machine in the future in some of these shots so we'll just switch to the max for
a moment and hope you don't notice.
The max is the larger version of the K1, but it's also the nicer version. It has the AI camera and
some lidar on the side of the hot end, the lidar is supposed to help with the first layer although
just like on the X1 Carbon...it's really debatable as to whether it actually does this in isolation -
both those machines have non lidar counterparts that do a fine enough job of first layers.
The glass lid is definitely a welcome addition on the max, making it look overall more premium,
even though the price difference isn't really that huge between the two machines.
They both come with the same A plate. This plate requires glue stick,
although maybe not. I have been using it with glue stick but a couple of test prints on the
K1 without glue stick worked fine. So who knows anymore. Who knows anything anymore.
If you're wondering, there is apparently a B plate and it's textured PEI.
So this camera, you can see it in the APP which would frankly be a lot better if it didn't keep
pinging you with every random piece of news creality wants you to know about,
but more realistically you will want to use it through the slicer and or the web
browser. If you turn on the AI functions it can do some...AI stuff. One thing it
seems to do that bambu didn't until recently if you pay attention to 3d printing drama,
it checks the build plate before starting. Of course the downside to this is that
to a camera, glue stick remains looks like a white print, so, it's not foolproof.
The max is in most other respects then the same as the K1 - at least externally, so let's go back to
the K1. Creality have sent me a small collection of parts for the K1. These didn't all arrive at
once, that would be weird. You get spares with the machine, or at least reviewers did, and they
sent me two revisions although it's not easy to see what all the revisions do. The last revision
is pretty obvious though as it's a bimetal heatbreak, and the extruder is made of some
other metal too. So it makes sense to fit these to the K1, and the camera, and see what that does.
The hotend change was a huge pain to do, I'll be honest, but the extruder was pretty easy.
The camera is also very easy to put on. Once the camera is on, you have to reboot the machine and
then you'll see it in the interface and also the menus on the machine, so there's no config needed
at all to make that work. Surprisingly, and this goes for the max aswell - the camera frame rate is
really high, this is probably down to the X2000E chip that they chose to use, which has some fancy
video encoding on chip, not that a raspberry pi doesn't, but the frame rate isn't a given,
I've seen many printers with low camera frame rates, like the p1s has 2 seconds per frame. Time
lapses can be taken on this machine with the camera which means they can be taken
on the K1 max too, seeing is a lot easier if you capitulate and use the creality app.
So the K1 has survived my changes and the new hotend is supposedly more reliable and should
provide better PLA printing with the lid on for example due to the bimetallic nature,
I might try to explain that in a diagram or I might not, it's to do with the heatsink
temperature basically and the thermal interface in the bimetal heatbreak.
So as you know if you watched the K1 review, which you should if you haven't because this
is kind of an addendum, I'm not repeating a lot of things in that video to save time,
but the K1 and max run klipper, and they both have the same main board inside, which is MIPS based,
which is still kinda unusual, and it's also still closed although creality is going to
be releasing the code soon allegedly, this will be pretty interesting to see so keep an eye out
for that. As things stand the same applies as last video, you still can't legitimately
get root or access moonraker API directly, so you still can't access a lot of what you might
call basic klipper functions. That may change within a few weeks, or it may not. We'll see.
The Max has this extra board on it - this is quite notable because this thing is driving
a mains voltage bed. This is great news for non US users because it means that you have
240v driving your bed heater, while US users on 120v probably won't notice nearly as much
difference from the K1 heat up time. I am a fan of mains beds but obviously they have their caveats
like needing to be adequately protected, it's a lot easier to do on this style of
printer compared to a bed slinger, because these beds just move slowly up and down.
So in terms of final thoughts, I think this machine is actually fine, it looks good, it's
still insanely reflective and hard to photograph, but it turns out that the K1 series, eventually,
after several hotend and extruder iterations, may turn out to be as much of a workhorse as we would
like them to be. Of course printers break down and it's hard to really hear through the noise
especially on popular machines and yes this is a bit of a dig at the people who insist on making
unbased claims about the reliability of creality printers on literally every video, although some
of the comments are well founded, most machines don't need three extruder revisions after
release - but on balance I think the K1 series is actually looking quite solid going forward into
the future, with parts like these that can be replaced and at least creality are addressing
these teething issues, if you had them. It does still hinge on the things I said in the
K1 review about the source code and klipper accessibility which still remain to be seen.
As a final personal musing: It will be interesting to see where creality take
this next. Will there be another K series machine, and if so, what will they change?
And with that, thank you for watching.