This is pretty honest, accurate and in depth.
iāve seen a bit of that one before, and sure the review seems ok, but we always need to take these reviews with a grain of salt, thatās why iām following your feedbacks more closely on the other thread.
Not saying that this reviewer isnāt trustworthy, he just might be, but those reviews are always based on relationships between them and the brands, so there might be unconscious bias
an interesting view about these types of things, again not saying itās whatās happening here
I agree 100%. Ive actually shared that same caution video. I try to only share review videos that I agree with, seem genuine in nature, have new information or are interesting in some non 3d printing way.
Reviewers that want to really make alot of money, do actually have to be somewhat honest and accurate. The amount of money they make from viewers far outweighs the value of the free items from companies. Most of them are too busy making videos to really enjoy the merch perks anyway and creality isnt out here cutting million dollar checks.
Maybe beware the noobie youtuber that just got their first sponsorship. They are sus. And never listen to ads that are made by the actual company selling the items. Theyre always like 5000mm/s 65mm/s3, washesnyour car while youre at work etc
.2mm layer height. 250mm/s outer wall and 400mm/s inner. No variable layer height. At normal distance they look great. They would have looked better on a smaller printer or at a lower speed, but I would 100% happy with the part. As said before, any part looks weird at these distances, but I wanted to give a zoomed in look at them.
The shadowing on this first one isnt color bleed. I included another pic of it at a different angle.
Going to run a plate now, with 4 parts on it. Designed to show warp. They will be Creality ABS, Overture PC, Overture ASA and Sarayatech PAHT-CF because I dont have a 4th non CF high temp
Toolhead shots while its not moving.
Poop chute cutter slot. And fitted/ducted hotend fan. Better panel gaps than a Tesla
Seems like my guts were not wrong. May be my next printer.
Thank you @StreetSports for all of this. Appreciate it
Ive found my first issue that I would personally want to deal with before Im 100% happy. The chamber heater is slightly slower than the plus 4 heater. But, this is what im seeingā¦It gets hot af, but theres not much air flow through it and its a big assed chamber. The plastic screen for it has tiny little slits. Probably for safety. The fan for it is silent, so its not an issue with not having a strong enough fan. I think they ran into an issue of the lower wattage heater not being able to heat up while being cooled by a higher speed fan. Ill personally fix it with a better fan if I cant afjust it jn ghe config. The fans look more like a standard pc fan, so im hoping are upgradable. I would also like to swap the exhaust fans for noctuas. They can also fix this with a firmware update by upping the fan speed after the heater has hit a certain temp.
Otherwise, I honestly dont mind waiting, but would rather not.
One disclaimer is that I have no idea how long it should take to heat up because every heated printer ive used, took a long time to hit max temp. Wish someone would just mount a heat gun in the corner and call it a day. 5 minute heat ups but may burn you lol.
As far as the CFS(upgraded knockoff of the AMS) goes, it gave me zero problems. Everything went smooth with the whole print. It really is a nice little unit. A couple desiccant packs kept it as low as 18% humidity here in oregon. Somebody really took their time with the small details.
The loudest thing is the cutting. Not sure why they thought it had to happen so fast.
Im trying to think of as much downsides as possible and show the pics so that they expose any flaws. So far, my thoughts are that in its size, at its speed, with multicolor, preassembled, it is the best atm. My original guess was correct. The heated chamber is a bonus that nobody else has touched in this size and for this price range. It is unique for the time being. (The plus 4 is a smaller printer but also has a heated chamber for around $800. But is slower and no multicolor)
The x1c does make slightly better parts. Especially when finer details are involved at the highest speeds. All of my testing is done at the fastest speeds they can both hit. Whatever creality is doing with the input shaper, is applying a ton of smoothing. The lettering on ghe rear of a 14 minute benchy is very flattened out, but perfect at normal speeds. Edit: But I do feel that the Bambu hotend is near its limit at these speeds and so produces parts with less layer adhesion and a more dull surface finish.
If you need the highest quality at the highest speeds possible, the x1c will still be the current king, with its super light weight gantry. The core one would be the competitor youll want to also be watching in that size. With the exclusion areas of the bambu, they have nearly the same build volume.
Highest quality but roughly 30% slower real worlds speed to achieve that, would be the Plus 4. Its also going to have a hotter bed, nozzle and chamber temps than the k2 plus.
If you need a more universal printer that can do the things ive already mentioned, at 350mm cubed, this k2 plus is the only thing that currently covers it. Size and heater being bonuses. Its packed full of ānice shiny thingsā that make sense but could also end up being problematic later. Its like the forum complainers gave them a grocery list of demands. Its at the beginning of its firmware update lifetime so historically should get better over time and will have alot of fun aftermarket support. Ill be watching for a carbon fiber gantry personally, or making one from an existing Voron design.
Great write up.
Donāt forget about the VFA tower if you get chance, Iād love a comparison to the plus 4 if possible. Right now with all the Bambu drama, itās a battle between the K2 and plus 4. Thereās a tasty deal on the K2 at the moment which is making it more attractive and Iād rather have an AMS which is a temporary negative for the Qidi.
The annoying part is the X1c is the perfect size for me, unfortunately itās just very loud, has terrible VFAās and Iām not impressed with the prison yard approach (sorry walled garden) theyāve fully embraced.
That will be the very next test. Right now Im tuning filament for this test. Any specific material, color or test you had in mind? I can start drying the filament now
Added this.
Edit: But I do feel that the Bambu hotend is near its limit at these speeds and so produces parts with less layer adhesion and a more dull surface finish. This probably helps with fine details.
The heated chamber also seems to be heating the CFS.
It got moved by a moderator.
Great write up, thank you again.
A question. If you slow both printers down to, letās say 300mm/s inner walls, 300 infill and about 200mm/s outer walls, is the quality comparable betwenn both machines?
I am asking because those are the speeds i use mostly for quality prints and even for prototyping and they are fast enough to get the job done fast and with much quality. I never used the default Bambu speeds because i donāt like the finished parts they produce.
If the Creality accomplishes that with a bigger bed and gantry, then itās a perfect replacement for the X1C.
The bambu will most likely have slightly better quality at any speed. If both printers are running that speed. Im not sure if youve ever had the gantry off, but it weighs nothing.
I will say that if I handed you a random print, you couldnāt tell me which printer it came from. If I handed you a part from both, you probably could tell.
The creality uses nice closed loop steppers and has a smart belt setup, but its a large printer. At any comparable speed, its going to need more smoothing. Now, if they put all the same components in a 260mm printer, the x1c would be obsolete to me.
This k2 is the best 2nd printer if your first printer is an x1c,/P1S/Plus4 or if you can only have 1 printer for everything. Thats why I say its a swiss army knife. The Bambu is the scalpal. Precise but wont cut down a small tree. Need helmets? Want to make large nylon parts, like intake manifolds?
Thank you. Thatās enough for me. Time to stick my fingers in my wallet and pull some bucks out
Canāt wait to go klipper once again
Will keep using my bambu printers, of course. X1C, both P1Sās and Miniās. They are already paid after all and they do their job and are great at it. But this time around it seems that my wallet has voted differently.
I guarantee the next Bambu will be better but all logic also says it will cost twice as much. If anybody disagrees, I would like to hear how they would still be able to keep the X1E at $2,500 if the new one isnt atleast as much. Or has less features than the plus 4 or k2 plus.
Maybe they will discontinue the X1E, I feel like the features it has donāt justify the 2x price increase from the X1C
@StreetSports Are you using someone elseās filament presets or just creating your own?
Making my own based on presets ive made for other printers. Then tuning flow rate and Pa for the new printer. Im sure there are a bunch on github, but it doesnt have many pre built in filament profiles that arent creality filaments. And honestly, the creality profile for creality Pla and creality ABS both sucked⦠Best bet is to copy them from bambu slicer and then edit as needed. I think Bambu studio has the most types of filament.
This is the huge downside of multiple printers. gotta Tune each filament for each printer. I dont trust any auto tune.
Edit: For the actual print profile, Im using the preset .2 profile and making my own adjustments to speed, walls, arachne etc. Just basic stuff that I think most users will do. When comparing to the bambu, I just copied the bambu preset speeds into the creality preset profile. To keep it fair while still doing an apples to apples comparison.
I suppose it can activate the cutter by moving at full speed without any fear of losing steps because⦠closed loop.
Heres a worthwhile update. Switching back and forth between pc, asa, abs and paht for tuning gave me some extruder errors that paused print, I was able to continue by hitting resume. Fixed it by lowering the ai detection level. Must have been false detections or the purge between filament types isnt large enough.
I can also say that even though the carbon gilters look like they suck, I havnt smelled any filament yet. The chamber is sealed off pretty well besides the small poop chute opening.
I recall K2+ had the strange issue of not being able to print multi-colour if you use less than 0.2. I wonder if the issue is still there
100% agree. It takes way too much time. Even though Iām far better at it now than when I first got my X1C, mostly thanks to the calibration tests built into Orca Slicer, it often still feels like a frustratingly fiddly process to fully dial-in a filament. Itās an absolute chore, and I donāt enjoy it.
Again, 100% agree. When I first purchased X1C, I had high hopes that the lidar and such would get better. Maybe it has, but it falls so short that I donāt feel like I can rely on it at all.
Now, imagine that an AI were developed which really could do a world-class dial-in on any new filament. Iād probably be willing to pay double for such a machine if it could remove all the drudgery, especially if it could truly perfect the dialing-in better than any human could. If built on a platform which had ample cameras and sensors to evaluate the prints, surely this would be an achievable goal?
Yet, thereās an obvious perverse incentive which is likely to get in the way of this: all the printer manufacturers want to cash in on selling us their filaments. If they built an AI that would make it easy to use filaments from anybody, then they stand to lose those big profits.
So, where will the necessary innovation come from? Because the printer manufacturers are conflicted, it can only come from an independent software team. Not a printer manufacturer. And if it does get built, it wonāt be built on a 3D printer thatās closed source. Not for reasons of ideology, but because It obviously canāt be.
Think back to the original DARPA Grand Challenge to develop self-driving cars. Who cracked the problem? It was a team of computer scientists from Stanford that focused purely on developing the needed software, which they ran on a hardware platform that Volkswagon developed separately on its own and donated to the project. The other competing teams, like the one from CMU, were trying to develop both the vehicle and the software, and they all failed, even though they were far better capitalized than the Stanford team.