Creality K1C vs K1 - Easy Carbon Fiber 3D Printing

creality has just released an updated version of my favorite printer from 2023 this is the original K1 and this is the k1c it's not an entirely new 3D printer but it does have a lot of small but important updates that does make it a vastly better printer let's get into it and they did actually put a label on it that's how you can tell it's the k1c so what does that c really stand for here they say it stands for carbon because this is optimized for using carbon fiber filaments they updated the extruder so it's an allmetal extruder in there so that won't get worn down by that really abrasive filament with carbon fiber built in they've also really changed their nozzle here this is a proprietary what they're calling a unicorn Tri metal nozzle it's got copper in there for good thermal conductivity a steel tip on there for good wear resistance and it's got the titanium heat brake built into the entire thing it's a simple oneand removal very similar to the revo nozzles where it's an entirely integrated piece hopefully the wear resistance on here should last for a lot longer and you really shouldn't need to buy these nozzles because they will be more expensive than some cheap standard brass nozzles but standard brass nozzles do wear out a lot quicker I did some initial testing of carbon fiber Printing and these turned out beautifully better than any other matte filaments I've used these just turned out incredible this Beni I think is one of my favorite benches I've printed that surface finish on there it's both shiny and matte at the same time it's just a really cool thing to look at also made some hooks for multiboard these are really strong I can't get them to break but they are really they are small and sturdy and I can't get them to break in my hand so that's a solid win here the first print that I sliced with their slicer for this carbon fiber pla did have some undere Extrusion issues I use their default profile which is 23 cubic millime per second squared flow rate and then I bumped it down to 18 Mill cubic millimet per second squared which is similar to what they have for generic PLA and that's what I sliced all these other prints on and these turned out beautifully this one just had some issues when trying to push it up really fast flow rates and I'm not sure exactly what the issue is it could be with this Bowden Tube Bending too much friction in the tube or it could just be that filament was struggling a little bit and 18 is kind of the flow flow rate limits there and 23 is a little bit optimistic so if you are having some issues with undere Extrusion check those flow rates that might be a little too optimistic of them and 18 worked beautifully but the real test here will be 6 months down the line after spools and spools of carbon fiber filament have passed through it to see how well these parts hold up against this to see if it really is good for carbon fiber printing so far it's working great but only a few weeks of testing really doesn't show that long-term 6 months 10 kg later of carbon fiber printing so I will have to keep an eye on that to see how things hold up next up I do think we need to talk about the improvements and slight differences between these two printers I have an entire review video on this one and a lot of things are the same between there but let's cover some of the important key updates that this one has fixed I think the most important update here is that they fix the gearing and motors to reduce vertical fine artifacts that was my biggest issue with the K1 and K1 Max so a brief top view of what vertical fine artifacts are these printers use stepper Motors and those stepper Motors take 1.8 de steps there's all these micro stepping and other things to it but basically they take steps and on the K1 and K1 Max the motors are attached to really large gears so each motor step is moving the pulley a lot to move the print head a lot so you get these really large ringing issues here it's not ringing or ghosting and no amount of input shaping can fix it it's just a motor and pulley issue on these printers on the new k1c they've updated these gears so they're much smaller about half the size so each step internally of that motor will move the pulley a lot less there's a lot of complexities of corxy but each step will move the print head less I also noticed they did change the motors inside here they are 10 mm shorter I guess they just didn't need the power output of these larger stepper Motors in there and they were able to use these cheaper ones that are more standard on most printers use this size of print motor that long explanation aside basically vertical fine artifacts are reduced to gone on the k1c versus the K1 still suffers from a lot of these vertical lines that right there was my biggest issue with the original K1 and now it's fixed on the k1c the rest of the updates these are going to be more minor the back of the bed has a rubber brush on there to help clean off the nozzle this helps for bed leveling since it does use the nozzle as the actual probe to probe the bed and I don't know if they've changed anything else but the bed leveling on the k1c does seem improved over the original K1 I did a bed level test between them loading the same file slicing it the same way sending it to both these printers and the k1c looks beautiful the K1 does have some slight imp consistencies in these layers the k1c comes pre-installed with a camera in there with the K1 it's an optional upgrade the k1c comes with a built-in air filter on the back but this air filter does fit on the K1 and they even give you the print file here so you can just print out this file and add in your own carbon activated carbon filters there and install this on there which is what I'm going to do it's not an amazing filter but it's going to help a little bit the side mounted spool holder is really nice on here it is a file you print out yourself and then change some of the screws it comes with two different models you can print and mount the spool on the side it also is really easy to change where you have it mounted if you have it mounted on the side sometimes but if you want to move it to the back it's really easy to swap back and forth between side mounting and back mounting these feet come glued in place so they're not going to pop off on you on the original K1 it was really easy to accidentally lose one and then your printer is going to be wobbling around on here so another simple fix that you could glue the feet onto the original k one but I just never got around to that the front door here is improved the hinge is dampened here so it's not going to just swing open all of a sudden it could swing open and hit something be very easy to break it is still glass so it is still breakable I've broken my K1 Max's door by if you overextend it if it's open and you accidentally bump it backwards it will shatter on you but this new one is updated with a protective film on the inside which should reduce the amount of shattering and sending glass particles everywhere this one is really easy to accidentally just bump and it slings all the way open and would be really easy to break off they've also improved the left side gasket here there is a rubber flap which reduces the amount of air that can escape from the hot chamber inside another minor update they changed how the cable chain is run to the hot end it's a bit taller which should reduce some of the angle on the Bowden tube going from the cable chain into the hot end and because of that they gave you this rubber gasket to put on the top hat here so it shouldn't be rubbing against and wearing out this top plastic cover I usually don't use the plastic cover because I mostly print pla anyways so that covers most of the differences between these two printers but a lot of things are still the same the chassis is still the same size the print volume is the same size the print speeds are still going to be the same speeds they're both using the same software and firmware it's an open source Clipper build here so you can get in there run fluid on your computer and totally adjust and change things as you want you can install third party mods to Clipper if you wanted a time-lapse mod if you wanted whatever you wanted to change on here it's totally open source and you get to do that yourself another big usability similarity here is that the screen and Screen interface is the same between the k1c the K1 and the K1 Max so if you have any of these and you learn how to use the interface you know where the buttons are it makes it really easy to use and I really like these screens they're large capacitive bright colorful very easy to use it's also really convenient that they do use the same slicer and the creality slicer is I think one of the best ones for managing multiple printers if you have more than one creality printer it's just really easy to interface between all of them at the same time on the first tab of the slicer you select which printer you want to use then you put your model on there select which profile you want to use slice it and then select which printers you want to send it to so if you had a bunch of the same printers you could slice one file and send it to a bunch of the same printers at the same time it also makes it really easy to monitor all of your printers at the same time each printer has its own Clipper like interface there which makes it really easy to use and really powerful if you want to adjust or change things while the print is happening so in the end the k1c really is a pretty solid upgrade to the original K1 I think they've taken all of the things that they've learned in the first 6 months of this new platform and really put them into this new printer this one is a lot better and I think really replaces what the original K1 was in the end which of these would I recommend easily the k1c the bed leveling I think is better they've reduced the vertical fine artifact facts and those are my two biggest complaints with the original K1 they both work but those vertical fine artifacts were kind of annoying in closeups of prints and now it's fixed price-wise how much would I recommend it more I would say if it's within $50 get the k1c if you could find the original K1 on clearance or a great discount where it's closer to1 or $150 difference the K1 is still a great printer and I would probably still recommend that you could buy a camera you can update the nozzle you can you can fix and change a lot of the things on here but the updated extruder vertical fine artifacts bed leveling being better those are solid upgrades here and if you are looking to pick up either of these printers I will have some coupons and affiliate links in the description down below those do really help the channel out if you're thinking about buying any printers right now those links they help me at no additional cost to you if you have any more questions let me know in the comments down below I feel like might have skipped some things cuz a lot of things for this review was covered in the original K1 review that was more of a deep dive review this is more of a surface level of the changes between these printers well I hope that helps you out go out there create something amazing today and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: JJ Shankles

Views: 25,874

Keywords: GoatToaster9, JJ, JJ Shankles, JJ3D, 3D Print, 3D Printed, 3D Printing, 3D Printer, creality k1, creality k1c

Id: v2G7vNL3iVY

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2024