Creality Announces K1C 3D Printer's Launch Date, Pricing and Full Specs: New Flagship is a Beast
The K1 Gets an upgrade.
Six months after joining – and winning — the race for the fastest consumer 3D printer, Creality is back with an updated flagship. The new K1C improves the Ender sized Core XY printer with a superior hotend, beefed up extrusion system and added AI camera.
The K1C will launch on Jan 25th with a starting price of $559. Customers can snag a 5% Early Bird discount on Jan. 24th. It is a fully enclosed Core XY 3D printer with a build volume of 220 x 220 x 250mm and a maximum print speed of 600mm/s.
The K1 line has been Creality’s answer to Bambu Lab’s 2022 disruption of the 3D printing market, which introduced consumers to faster, more reliable machines that require little set up. Though we’re sad to report the C in the K1C does not stand for Color, we did find out it stands for Carbon.
During CES 2024 Creality gave Tom’s Hardware a sneak peek of the new machine. We learned the printer’s ability to handle carbon fiber filaments is due to a harden steel tipped nozzle. Carbon fiber filled PETG and PLA have great mechanic strength and dimensional stability, and are widely used in industrial printing.
Creality is continuing to appeal to the Open Source community by making its new printer and software an open book. The Creality OS, based on Klipper, enables advanced functions like linear advance and allows anyone to customize it. The machines can also communicate over LAN and transfer files with a USB stick for those who wish to avoid cloud printing.
K1C has an all-metal extruder kit and a new “Unicorn” nozzle with an integrated heat break. The nozzle is an obvious nod to E3D’s revolutionary Revo and Prusa’s one piece MK4 nozzle. All three nozzles promise to prevent heat creep and nasty leaks, while being easily changed without tools.
Like the K1, the K1C will come pre-assembled for a plug and play experience. Its auto leveling includes the ability to set its own Z height for a perfect first layer, and auto-calibration will handle all the tuning. The K1C will also come standard with an A1 camera to watch for errors and provide real-time monitoring and time-lapse filming.
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Creality is addressing complaints that the K1 and K1 Max have exceptionally loud fans during high speed printing. To counter that, the K1C will have a “silent mode” that will reduce noise to less than 45dB, making it quieter than an Ender 3 with traditional fans. The K1C will also have a built-in active carbon filter, similar to the K1 Max.
Best of its potential, the K1C was our choice for best 3D printer of CES. However, we're eager to see how it performs when we get one in review.
Denise Bertacchi is a Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering 3D printing. Denise has been crafting with PCs since she discovered Print Shop had clip art on her Apple IIe. She loves reviewing 3D printers because she can mix all her passions: printing, photography, and writing.
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peachpuff Have they fixed the horrible ad ridden app? No? Then go home creality, you're drunk.Reply -
edzieba ReplySix months after joining – and winning — the race for the fastest consumer 3D printer,
LOL. LMAO even. -
peachpuff Reply
They're still stuck on bed slingers, the prusa xl is core xy but its very slow for whatever reason and has questionable tool change design. Quality wise they're top notch, price wise also top notch(as in expensive), they're expending more into enterprise stuff, maybe that's why they're not releasing anything to compete with bambu/creality's new core xy stuff.Blastomonas said:What happened to Prusa? Don't hear much about them these days. -
KungFuToe Reply
This says that it's a news article but reads like an ad.Admin said:Creality spiffs up the K1 with cameras, air filter and more.
Creality Announces K1C 3D Printer's Launch Date, Pricing and Full Specs: New Flagship is a Beast : Read more -
JimmyFallin Sorry I'm skeptical but I started on a Creality machine in 2016, CR-10 and have been 3d printing since. We all know Bambu is kicking their butts,. Couple that with their lack of customer support the writing is on the wall. I was trying to not be another Bambu fan boy but I bought the A1 combo and I'm starting to get it and becoming a fan boy. Just to keep the playing field even I also just bought a CR-10 Smart Pro I like large print volumes. So I'm speaking from recent experience with both companies.Reply -
JimmyFallin Reply
I had to block the app on my phone it was spamming me with so many adds!!!peachpuff said:Have they fixed the horrible ad ridden app? No? Then go home creality, you're drunk. -
USAFRet Reply
I have an X1 Carbon+AMS, Ender 3 Max, and Ender 3 S1 Pro (w/ SonicPad).JimmyFallin said:I was trying to not be another Bambu fan boy but I bought the A1 combo and I'm starting to get it and becoming a fan boy. Just to keep the playing field even I also just bought a CR-10 Smart Pro I like large print volumes. So I'm speaking from recent experience with both companies.
The Bambu kicks their butt (in most cases) -
JimmyFallin Reply
I have been looking at the Sonic Pad, very easy way I can implement clipper on my older Creality machines. I'm waiting on the large format Bambu machines to come out and was so hard to not buy the X1 Carbon with the AMS.USAFRet said:I have an X1 Carbon+AMS, Ender 3 Max, and Ender 3 S1 Pro (w/ SonicPad).
The Bambu kicks their butt (in most cases) -
USAFRet Reply
The Sonicpad makes a major upgrade to the Enders. For me, anyway.JimmyFallin said:I have been looking at the Sonic Pad, very easy way I can implement clipper on my older Creality machines. I'm waiting on the large format Bambu machines to come out and was so hard to not buy the X1 Carbon with the AMS.