The Creality K1C: A Better Pick Than The Bambu Lab P1S?!

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This is the new Creality K1C. Creality touts it as the K1 for people who want to print carbon fiber-filled filaments. But I think there's something else going on. That this printer is something else entirely. Personally, I think that this printer is Creality's "do-over". And in this video, we're gonna see how well they did. Let's get after it. Ah, and before I forget, this is not sponsored content, Creality did not pay me anything, but they did send me all of these products and some filament for free to review. Background. Just under a year ago, to much fanfare, Creality released the K1, a printer which, in many ways, was their answer to the Bambu Lab lineup. Beyond being their first foray into CoreXY kinematics, it represented a dramatic increase in performance, speed, aesthetics, and user-friendliness. Or, at least, it was supposed to. In reality, as you might recall from my review and many others like it, although the K1 was built on solid foundations, the printer, at least the model that reviewers received early on, was riddled with problems that made it pretty much unusable for some. But since then, based on feedback from members of the community, it does appear that Creality has been working hard to address many of those issues, at least in the K1C. In fact, as you're going to see, they have used a pretty aggressive approach of completely redoing or replacing a lot of the parts thatKwere causing the issues in the earlier K1. Oh, and just a side note here, Some of the smaller fixes that I'm going to cover here may have been backwards integrated into the L1 as well But unfortunately, I don't have a new one of those to compare to you, so if you do please let us all know in the comments which of these fixes your K1 has and which it doesn't, and then I'll go ahead and pin that comment once we all hear back. So let's dive in and explore the first and probably biggest problem that people encountered with the K1: The extruder woes. More than anything else, the Creality K1 launch should stand out in your mind for extruder issues. Earlier viewers like Nathan Builds Robots actually went so far as to replace the extruders completely on their review models. Later reviewers, such as myself, were actually sent two extruders in the box in case one of them was plagued by the all-too-common underextrusion issues. The internet was flooded with talk about how to fix the issues from moving cable chains to tightening screws and eventually, Creality actually made some major material and design changes to the extruder itself. As I mentioned, I don't have a new K1 to compare this to, so I won't be commenting on whether or not they were able to fix it in that printer. When it came to the K1C though, Creality knew that they needed to get this right. Not just because of the damage that fiasco did to their last launch, but also because this printer is marketed as being able to print carbon fiber composite filaments, which are already somewhat prone to nozzle clogs, not to mention being much, much more expensive. You really don't want your entire print to fail due to underextrusion when you're printing a hundred dollar roll of carbon fiber nylon. That's why, as you'll note on the sales page, the very first feature that Creality emphasizes about the K1C is that it ships with a more robust, all-metal extruder with a hardened-steel, quick-swappable nozzle, which, together they claim can deliver over a thousand hours of clog-free printing. I gotta say that's a little bit of an odd statement to make because why would more hours mean that you're gonna get a clog? If it's all-metal and it's an improved design, now why not just say that it's guaranteed to have fewer or no clogs. Seems odd to me, but I digress. So, what's the verdict? Well, from my testing thus far, the K1C has had absolutely none of the underextrusion issues that I had with the K1. Whether printing PLA, PETG, PAHTCF, PLACF, or even TPU. I've had nothing but perfect printing experiences so far. In fact, I think that this printer may have produced the single most beautiful TPU part I've ever seen. So what else is there to say? Let's move on and talk about bed leveling and adhesion. Another one of the issues that plagued the K1 was bed leveling, and adhesion due to improper bed meshing and bed leveling. It just did not seem to be able to consistently produce perfect first layers. This was one of the key features that really differentiated the K1 from the K1 Max, as the latter benefited from LiDar bed meshing. Now, I'm not actually sure what caused these issues on the original K1, but I suspect that it might have been something as simple as oozing from the nozzle, causing the readings to be off as the nozzle probed the bed. Because I was surprised to see that while the K1C still doesn't come standard with the LiDar sensor of the K1 Max, its build plate did arrive with a little silicone brush at the back, which by the way, it's eerily similar to the one on the Bambu Lab A1 series. This is a great idea, and I have said before that I would really like to see more printer manufacturers add a nozzle brush just like this. However, I don't exactly love the way that Creality did it. Instead of putting the brush onto the print bed platform itself, which I assume would have required them to create some new molds or new brackets or something like that, they decided to just glue it onto the print bed itself. That, in turn, means that the bed is only single sided, in this case, smooth PEI. In my opinion, that's a huge missed opportunity to add a double-sided bed with texture on the other side. It's also, In my opinion, a big giveaway that the whole carbon thing is at least in large part just marketing hype. If this printer were really geared towards printing carbon filaments like CF Nylon or PETG CF, it would come with another print surface besides just smooth PEI, which, as it says right on there, is really ideally suited for PLA and is likely to get torn up by things like PETG. Plus, if you're printing carbon fiber filaments with their unique textured finishes, you're probably gonna want the underside to have texturing as well and since this printer doesn't have LiDar, there's really no good reason why it doesn't at least include an extra textured build plate. Now I don't want to spend too much time here because I do have a tendency of taking 20 to 30 minutes just to talk about build plates, but the addition of the silicone brush to the build plate makes it much more difficult to find aftermarket build plates or use the ones you already have on the K1C, at a time where there has been a huge explosion of exciting new print surfaces to try out. Now I guess you could probably find some silicone brushes and glue them onto the plate yourself, but any double sided build plate that you're gonna buy is going to be a waste of money since it won't sit flat once you glue the brush on. So Creality, if you're listening, if you're not gonna include two print surfaces, then at least give us the option to add the textured build plate at checkout without having to buy some whole big bundle. With all that said, I do have to give it to Creality. The smooth PEI sheet sticks beautifully to every single material I threw at it, including carbon fiber nylon, without the need for any glue stick and the silicone brush does seem to solve the bed leveling issue because my first layers have been perfect every single time and I guess if you are going to ship it with just one print surface, this is the one to have so fair enough. But now let's switch over to my second biggest gripe with the previous model: The firmware and slicing experience. The second biggest complaint I and many other reviewers had about the K1 was the firmware, slicer, and mobile app. Basically all the software and firmware. To put it gently, they were bad. Both the slicer and the web interface had extremely limited feature sets that really couldn't take full advantage of the printer or its potential. What's more, though some early reviewers were able to jailbreak the firmware and unlock the full version of Klipper underneath it, Creality was actually actively patching exploits early on to stop users from doing this. And the smartphone app, don't get me started on the smartphone app. That's why, when I was given the opportunity in September to actually sit down with Creality's software engineering team in Shenzhen, I basically begged and pleaded with them to take a totally different approach. Instead of trying to out Bambu Bambu Lab with proprietary and very user-friendly software, why not do something that Bambu Lab will never do? Give users full control over fully open source firmware, and then let them do whatever they want. After all, if you're going to use open source firmware like Klipper, you do need to at least publish your changes as open source anyways. The team at Creality seemed really, really amicable, and I was delighted to see that a few weeks later, Creality published their source code. So, that was fantastic. Fast forward to today, and the entire K1 series now ships with the ability to gain root access right from the touch screen. Instead of locking things down, Creality has made the decision to allow users, with ample warning of course, to actually open things up. In fact, they're even shipping these printers with rooted firmware out of the box, meaning that you don't even need to flash the device or anything like that to unlock its full potential. You can simply install an open source installer helper created by a community member right onto the main branch of the firmware, which will then allow you to install Fluidd or Mainsail, OctoEverywhere, your own Macros, Klipper's timelapse utility, you could, for example, link it to your smartphone app of choice, you can slice with any slicer you choose, or even control the printer within OrcaSlicer. Whatever you want, really. By the way, I do have an entire video on all the Klipper upgrades that I install on every printer I get, so if you're curious, I will link to that right here. Oh, and get this, even if you do choose to customize things and ditch the Creality web interface, Creality has actually fixed the firmware so that you won't have to sacrifice their beautiful interface on the touchscreen display on the device. It still works as normal, as does their own simplified web interface, and even the smartphone app. So basically, as I see it, you're getting the best of both worlds. You have the full open source Klipper and the ability to use your favorite slicer on one port, and then you have Creality's own interface on another, plus the extra convenience and functionality of Creality's touchscreen design and their cloud services. Now this, in my book, actually puts the K1C ahead of some other printers that ship with just Klipper and Klipper Screen. After all, most printers that ship with Klipper will require you to upgrade to a paid, third party service like OctoEverywhere or Obico to get remote access or print failure detection. And I'll even concede that it does seem like Creality has continued to improve their web interface, the firmware, and the slicer, and even the smartphone app. The latter still feels a bit like AliExpress, with a lot of noise, and points, and popups, and a not-so-premium design. But they now at least give you the option to disable the annoying popups and notifications without sacrificing the printer-related ones. Still, I'm probably not going to be using the Creality app, the slicer, or even the simplified web interface personally. Don't get me wrong, I understand and I appreciate the fact that Creality, like basically every 3D printer manufacturer right now, wants to attract new demographics by making their printers user-friendly. So I'm actually glad that they're continuing to improve those elements of the experience. But for more advanced users like myself and probably you, being able to get under the open source hood and change whatever we want, even if it's just using a third party smartphone app, is really a huge boon. It is, in my opinion, low hanging fruit for any company out there looking to differentiate themselves from Bambu Lab. And Creality has done that masterfully with this latest firmware, giving us really the best of both worlds. So, bravo. Camera. When Creality first shipped the K1, it did not come with a camera or AI failure detection. That was reserved for the K1 Max. Unfortunately for Creality, as soon as they released the K1, Bambu Lab countered them by starting to include the camera and an auxiliary fan with the P1P. Touche. So, as you can imagine, the K1C, with its 60 dollar higher price tag, does include a camera for remote monitoring and timelapses. And unlike everything in Bambu Lab's lineup but the flagship X1 Carbon, this one apparently does have AI failure detection capability. Except it's in beta. Also, despite my best efforts, I couldn't actually get it to work. Which is a bummer, because if it did work, that would be a major selling point and a big competitive advantage over the P1S. Also, the camera doesn't work as seamlessly as I would like in third party apps. I can't, for example, get my new favorite remote printer management app to recognize it, and it doesn't show up in the Klipper timelapse plugin at all, which I installed through the command line helper utility. Apparently, according to that utility, my K1C has the latest version of the camera, which is not compatible. So while I'm sure that there can and will be a fix for both of those issues, right now, I haven't been able to get either working in order to test them for all of you. Though I will say that this is another instance where it's really actually very cool to have both the open source Klipper and Creality's cloud services running simultaneously. Because it turns out that at least the Creality Cloud version of the timelapses has been working smoothly in the background. Still, I would like to be able to both use my own remote management viewing app that I use for viewing all my printers, as well as the built-in Klipper timelapse utility that has more customizability. So I really hope that someone fixes all of that soon. And sorry, what's that you ask? Why yes, I am wearing the all new Next Layer merch, which by the time you watch this video should be available somewhere in the description with some kind of link. So if you like this and want to support the channel, there are two shirt designs and maybe if you guys like them, there'll be more in the future. Okay, hang on because before we get into the next item on the list, I do need to take a moment and thank this video's sponsor, which is none other than PCBWay. Sure, the K1C can print all kinds of high temp and composite filaments. But you know what it can't do? Metal 3D printing, CNC machining, MJF industrial printing, injection molding, PCB manufacturing, sheet metal production. But fear not, because PCBWay has you covered for all of those things and much, much more. They offer incredibly affordable prices, fast turnaround, and super high quality, no matter the quantity. I even had a chance to tour one of their many facilities while I was in Shenzhen, and I was absolutely blown away by the professionalism and scale of their operation. So whenever it is you need to make for your next project, make sure to check out the link in the description which not only supports this channel, but also gets you an awesome new user credit at your very first order. Thanks to PCBWay, our longest running sponsor. Alright, let's get back to the K1C by looking into yet another K1 issue that I really hope they've solved: Hot end woes. Even after I managed to fix the extruder issues and roll my old K1 back to open source hardware, the main reason that it ended up collecting dust here in the studio was actually an issue with the hot end thermistor and prints randomly failing in the middle due to all kinds of invalid readings. Apparently this was a common issue because when I reached out to my rep at Creality, she knew all about it and she assured me that they were now shipping a fixed hot end version and she offered to ship me a new one the next time they had a package coming my way. Due to the war here in Israel breaking out, that never happened, but I am pleased to report that I've seen no such issues with the hot end on the K1C. What's more, though, many, many people reported issues with the K1 hot end cover melting when printing high temp materials, I have been able to print some things like PAHTCF without any issues so far, and they actually print it out as easily as PLA if you can believe it. So while this printer might be Creality's do-over, there definitely is some justification to the marketing claim that it's also much more suited to printing high temp and carbon composites than the K1 was. But, and this is a big BUT, I have to give the disclaimer that reviewers like myself are always trying to walk a fine line between really thoroughly testing a machine and still getting the review out before the printer is completely old new. So I wish I could test this thing for a few months before I gave you the thumbs up on whether things like hot end longevity or the housing not melting were fixed. But by then, who knows? I mean, Creality might've already moved on to their next product launch. So, when I say that everything has been working really, really well for me, keep in mind that I've really only put about 30 to 40 hours on this machine so far, which is absolutely nothing in review terms, and only some of that was with high temp materials. Not to worry though, I am going to keep testing and pushing this machine to its limits, and I do always make sure to post YouTube shorts. Or community posts, if I ever change my conclusion or my opinion of a printer after further testing. So, if you want to be alerted of things like that, just to make sure you don't buy a printer after I have major issues, do make sure that you're not only subscribed, but also that you click that bell icon so that you get alerted when I make posts. Speaking of community posts, when I asked my subscribers what their biggest questions and concerns were about this printer, one thing came up time and time again: Vertical fine artifacts. On the original K1 Creality chose to use rather small pulleys on the stepper motors, which resulted in a big problem with vertical fine artifacts or VFAs. Fortunately, you'll notice that Creality has swapped these out for much larger ones on the K1C and as noted by Lost in Tech, this seems to have resolved the problem. From my testing, that's certainly the case, so let's not waste any more time on it. Instead, let's skip right over to the loosey-goosey doors. Recently, I got a chance to interview the one and only Uncle Jessy, link in the description if you haven't already seen that episode, and one of the things that we joked about is the fact that he will never live down the time that he shattered the K1's glass door while unboxing it. Yes, Uncle Jessy does seem to have really terrible luck with new 3D printers, but all jokes aside, this happened because of a small design flaw in the K1. The door hinge was extremely loosey-goosey, and would allow the door to swing open violently and potentially break. Some users also felt that the door didn't close firmly enough when you close it. Personally, I actually don't remember that being an issue, and I don't have my K1 anymore to test, it was that bad. But I am happy to report that the door on the K1C feels great. It not only has a magnet to hold it shut, but it's also attached to the hinges with a lot more friction. So it can be fixed at any angle you want, kind of like a laptop screen. This will be great If you want to be able to moderate the amount of airflow without risking drafts or warping, though you can also remove the top or just turn on the carbon filter chamber fan if you want to control the temperature. Same thing. But on top of that, Creality went way overboard by adding anti-shatter film to the glass. Let's be honest, this feature was only added to protect you from Uncle Jessy-ing your door if you ever have to tilt the printer for maintenance, but it is a great addition and it goes a long way into giving the printer a much more premium feel. Up next, warped beds. Another common complaint about the K1 was that many people apparently received warped beds. Now, I did look into this really, really quickly with a straight edge, as well as the Klipper bed mesh, and I was able to determine that at least on mine, the bed is really quite flat. Nuff said. But what about spool placement? Another thing that many people, myself included, dislike in a 3D printer is when the only option for mounting a spool of filament is all the way here on the back. Even if you don't have a dozen printers on industrial shelves like I do, most of us do want to be able to push the printer up against a wall. Needing to move it or turn it every time you want to change the spool is just a pain. Creality hasn't actually fixed that per se, but they do ship the K1C with a pre-sliced GCode file for a side mount spool holder, which I really appreciate. But now, let's talk about nozzle swapping and proprietary nozzles. At this point, we're really getting into the nitpicky stuff and just looking for faults. But one other thing that people are coming to expect is a quick swappable nozzle. With things like the E3D Revo on the aftermarket side, and the Prusa Nextruder, or Bambu Lab A1 quick-swap nozzles on the OEM side, it is becoming common, possibly even expected, that a nozzle should be quick and easy to swap without tools. For the K1C, Creality is introducing a new nozzle type, the tri-metal "Unicorn" system, which is really very similar to the Prusa Nextruder nozzles. It's cold swappable due to the new design. Some folks will welcome this ability to quickly swap the nozzle without needing to swap the entire hot end like you would on a Bambu Lab printer, because I understand that removing the entire hot end here is kind of a pain. But personally, as someone who already has a lot of printers and a lot of nozzles, and some of them are very, very high quality nozzles that I like to use on different printers, I don't welcome the addition of yet another standard to the already long list of nozzles and hot ends that I need to keep on hand. I understand that this was done for better performance, better wear resistance, and easier use. I understand that not everyone has 15 printers, but I do find it a little annoying. Perhaps, like Prusa has done with the Nextruder, Creality can release an adapter kit, so that I can use, say, my diamond V6 nozzles on the K1C if I want to. Till then, I am stuck with the 0.4 nozzle that it shipped with, unless I want to order some more of these proprietary ones. So, those are, as far as I can recall, all the different issues that the K1 had, and which, for the most part, the K1C does not have. But now, let's take a look at the big picture. The final verdict. In my honest opinion, the Creality K1C is the printer Creality should've shipped almost a year ago. At the end of the day, it's still a Creality K1 at it's core, but with a dozen or so fixes that make the printer perform properly in pretty much all the ways the K1 did. Though these are mostly very small changes individually, together, they accumulate into a much better overall experience with the printer. And because this is Creality, the king of releasing so many models with such confusing names that you literally don't even know which one is which, yeah, I'm looking at you Ender 3, V3, SE, instead of just fixing the K1, they created a new version of it. So what's my verdict? Do I actually like this thing? And will I be using it, shelving it, or getting rid of it? Well, like I said before, as with all reviews, the requirements of getting this video out before the printer itself is completely old news, means that I do still need a little more time before I'm confident that it's a keeper. After all, I have had printers perform very well during the couple weeks of review, only to crap out on me or become an overall nightmare just a few months later. But right now, as it stands, I'm really impressed with the Creality K1C. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "phenomenal". And I can't believe that I'm actually going to say this but I might even recommend it over my current best printer recommendation for hobbyists, the Bambu Lab P1S. Hold on though, hold on, don't get me wrong. If you do care about multicolor printing or you need the extra build volume or you just don't want to mess around with the firmware and software upgrades and macros to unlock the full capability of your printer, you'll still be better off with the Bambu Lab, but if this printer proves as reliable as I think it's going to, quite honestly, it has a number of advantages over the P1S. Whether that's the open source firmware that gives you full control over the printer, the hardened extruder gears and nozzles that are generally reserved for much more expensive printers, the built-in AI failure detection, when they actually get it working, or the beautiful touchscreen interface. There's really a lot to love about this printer. And by the way, did I mention that it's a full 140 dollars less than the Bambu Lab P1S? The performance is, as far as I can tell, right on par with the best printers out there, but again, even if it's not quite up to snuff, the fact that you can unlock a full unrestrained version of Klipper and tweak everything that you want, from Z-offset and input shaping and more, means that you can get it perfectly dialed in. So yeah, that's the new Creality K1C. It's actually really good. And while I'm definitely not going to be getting rid of any of my Bambu Lab machines with their multicolor capabilities, the easy to load AMSs, and the larger build volumes, this printer is easily going to become one of the go-to machines here in my print farm that I turn to when I just need high quality parts printed out quickly and without hassles. So if you're in the market for an enclosed, fast printer at a great price, I would definitely recommend skipping right over the K1 and just picking this up instead for 60 bucks more. By the way, if you do appreciate the review and you want to support the channel, you will find a referral link in the description. That doesn't cost you anything extra, but I will earn a few bucks from your purchase, which helps me keep the lights on, or more realistically, the printers on over here. And no, those few bucks are not enough to influence or sway my review in any way. I can recommend any printer and earn the same commission, so you don't have to worry about bias there. On the note of keeping the lights on, let me also take a moment to thank our YouTube members and Patreon supporters, particularly our Nylon and Peek members, Chip Cox, 2 Krazy Ketos, Amir Chen, Kris Miller, and Don Arledge.. You guys rock. That's all for this week, but I will see all of you on The Next Layer.
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Channel: The Next Layer
Views: 76,853
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: creality k1c, creality k1, creality review, best 3d printer 2024, 3d printing, extruder issues, creality products, printer comparison, printer review, creality k1c 3d printer, creality k1 max, creality vs bambu lab, bambu lab p1s, bambu lab p1s vs creality k1, creality k1c unboxing, creality k1c vs bambu p1s, 3d printer, creality k1c review, creality, k1c, best 3d printer, 3d print, k1c 3d printer, bambu lab, creality vs bambu
Id: 2USBq4zGHbI
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Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)
Published: Tue Feb 27 2024
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