At a look
Skilled’s Ranking
Execs
- Quick, dependable printing
- Massive construct quantity
- Absolutely automated mattress levelling
Cons
- Rear-mounted spool holder is awkward
- Some options unique to Creality’s slicer
- No multi-colour capabilities
Our Verdict
The K1 Max is a significantly spectacular 3D printer that delivers good print high quality at excessive pace. It’s straightforward to make use of because of many computerized programs and has helpful options corresponding to a digital camera to watch printing remotely. The one factor it doesn’t do is print with a number of colors.
Value When Reviewed
$899
Finest Costs At this time: Creality K1 Max
Though it isn’t a model new know-how, CoreXY is one thing of a buzzword in 3D printing this yr. 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, nearly all of shopper 3D printers print at round 50-80mm per second as normal, so this can be a massive deal because it means prints are accomplished in hours as an alternative 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 absolutely enclosed which implies they hold the ambient temperature hotter and extra secure than “open” printers. And that’s helpful if you wish to print utilizing filaments corresponding to ABS, ASA and nylon which want these circumstances.
However even in the event you’ll stick largely to straightforward PLA, there’s rather a lot 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 preferred alternative, it’s price declaring that the K1 Max has a bigger construct quantity (300mm cubed versus 256mm cubed. Bambu’s costlier enclosed X1 Carbon has the identical construct quantity because the P1P so the K1 Max will enchantment 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. In order for you a big construct quantity, you must settle for the printer shall be massive. Its 435 x 462mm footprint doesn’t embody the reel of filament which hangs on a publish that stands proud of the rear, so that you’ll want a desk at the very least 600mm deep.
It’s 526mm tall, however you’ll need a area taller than that to take away the glass prime every time you swap filament, as a result of that’s the one option to entry the discharge lever on prime of the extruder.
The entrance door (and prime) are comprised of 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 it’s also possible to ship prints to it remotely: there are each Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections. The display is likely one of the solely parts 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 sooner stream 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 you will need to respect 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 rather a lot much less area depth-wise than it could if it have 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 major causes the K1 Max (and any CoreXY printer) can print a lot sooner.
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 an alternative of an off-the-shelf part corresponding to Volcano. Nonetheless, Creality features a full spare within the field together with a silicone sock and screws.
Jim Martin / Foundry
You may view this as beneficiant, or barely worrying in the event you surprise why the pre-fitted one isn’t sufficient.
The large 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 properly. This all occurs mechanically: you don’t have to 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 option 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 straightforward 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 succeed in behind the printer to test 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 tough to hold a brand new spool on an unsighted publish, 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 together with the printer. Or, as a result of the corporate is clearly conscious of the problem, print the spool holder that’s offered within the K1 Max’s 8GB of storage which does an identical job.
The tube is bent at fairly a pointy angle because it enters the enclosure, then goes via 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
- Digital camera
- 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 could have an even bigger space to print.
So Creality has put in computerized movement advance which does its finest to fight these vibrations so your fashions’ straight traces don’t change 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 helpful addition over the K1 is a built-in digital camera. This allows you to test how printing goes remotely (so long as your printer is related to the web) and in addition makes use of “AI” to be careful for issues corresponding to objects unintentionally 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 digital camera can even file time-lapse footage of every print. The outcomes are actually 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 may fail virtually each time leaving a .tmp file on the drive. Luckily, it might be renamed to .mp4 and performed, however solely the portion of the video that efficiently exported.
As a bonus, the digital camera can even file time-lapse footage of every print
The touchscreen itself is generally nice to make use of. It’s giant sufficient, and the interface is intuitive. It may do with some sharpening, because it isn’t at all times apparent in the event you can scroll down and see extra or not. It seems to be primarily based on Klipper, however it’s formally referred to as Creality OS.
Though you should use your alternative of slicer to show 3D fashions into the gcode that the K1 Max can perceive, Creality has developed its personal: Creality Print. It’s truly 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 technique of getting 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 may 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, adverts and nags to improve from the free to Premium model for $79.99 / £79.99 per yr.
Jim Martin / Foundry
It’s vital to know that most individuals don’t want to do that. You may nonetheless monitor print progress and modify settings as a free member.
My desire 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
Just a few check prints are pre-loaded onto the K1 so you’ll be able to test print high quality without having to put in any apps. One is a ‘pace Benchy’ which claims it should print in just below 17 minutes. This little boat is a benchmark file broadly used to check 3D printers and sometimes 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 whole.
That doesn’t embody 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 price leaving all of them enabled to make sure a profitable, good high quality print, particularly for prints that may take many hours.
Jim Martin / Foundry
It’s unimaginable to observe 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. The truth is, 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 a bit 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.
The K1 Max’s pace is a game-changer in the event you’re upgrading from a mattress slinger
Creality claims “as much as 600mm/s” however 400mm/s is the life like prime pace with out compromising on high quality. Even that’s greater than acceptable, and the K1 Max’s pace is a game-changer in the event 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 graceful PEI floor for smaller components to make sure they don’t come adrift after the primary layer or two. You may see the place a chunk hasn’t caught the place no glue was used:
Jim Martin / Foundry
One in every of 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 measurement, these joints are extraordinarily small and so they sometimes want a raft on most printers, even these with textured PEI beds.
Jim Martin / Foundry
Not the K1 Max. With the massive mattress, it was capable of print two – one behind the opposite – with no points by any means. The glue virtually works too properly, 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 pace (utilizing the profiles included in Creality Print). The brand new filament is formulated for larger stream and sooner 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 properly was the rear the place a number of the strands hadn’t cooled shortly sufficient and have 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 difficulty 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 by way of what you’ll be able to print with.
One of many massive benefits of high-speed printing is that it makes massive initiatives attainable. I’d been ready for an opportunity to assessment 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 an alternative of every week.
Jim Martin / Foundry
The good print accuracy meant the sections fitted collectively properly. The one disappointment was warping on one piece, which meant it didn’t align as properly, however this might have been right down to not placing sufficient glue on the mattress: different items have 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 digital camera’s AI in motion. Twice, it paused earlier than even beginning to print, displaying an error on the display saying “A print high quality drawback 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 actually my hand or digital camera, too.
By way of noise, the K1 Max produces numerous it. The enclosure helps rather a lot, however with so many cooling followers and the fast-moving print head, it’s not one thing you’ll need in your residing area 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 recurrently, so it’s price 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 disenchanted. The truth is, 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 factor.
Creality
One different factor to contemplate in the event you can reside with a 256x256x256mm construct quantity is that Bambu Lab’s P1S Combo prices £869 / $949 and helps computerized multi-colour printing, a function the K1 Max doesn’t possess.
General, although, the K1 Max is a superb alternative in the event you’re after a CoreXY printer with a big construct quantity, are pleased with single-colour printing and don’t fancy constructing a Voron package (or don’t know what that’s).