Creality Launches a Color 3D Printer for its 10th Birthday Party

Creality
(Image credit: Creality)

April 9th marks 3D printing powerhouse Creality’s tenth year in business, and it is celebrating with a new line of color printers, a laser, and two scanners.

Creality focused on speed during 2023, releasing several high-speed printers such as the K1, K1Max, and Ender 3 V3 KE. The long wait for Creality’s entry into multicolor printing will end this summer with the launch of the K2 Plus and the Creality Filament System (CFS).

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Denise Bertacchi
Freelance Reviewer

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.

  • pbcrunch
    Creality has been a supporter of Open Source
    Not true. Creality has been a major beneficiary of the open source community, but has only contributed back to the community when it has had no other choice.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    Yup. When they had Naomi Wu working with them they had an open source advocate regularly and loudly and publicly yelling at them directly to do the right thing (why Creality ever released any of their Marlin code changes at all). With that no longer the case, any source releases are occasional at best. For example, the K1: it technically runs Klipper, but with a locked down interface and a bunch of proprietary bits (e.g. to support their load cell implementation) and no source code available.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    Really wish bambu labs would release a bigger printer
    edzieba said:
    For example, the K1: it technically runs Klipper, but with a locked down interface and a bunch of proprietary bits (e.g. to support their load cell implementation) and no source code available.
    Its easily rootable and upgradeable to klipper, that's crealitys only gift to the community.
    Reply
  • dmitche31958
    I love the idea of multiple filament printing, what I don't like is the waste that occurs with each change of filament. From what I've read that amounts to a lot of time and wasted material. I hope that I'm wrong about that and someone can tell me just how much is spent with a change. I would imagine that it wouldn't be more than 50mm but it appears to be even more.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    dmitche31958 said:
    I love the idea of multiple filament printing, what I don't like is the waste that occurs with each change of filament. From what I've read that amounts to a lot of time and wasted material. I hope that I'm wrong about that and someone can tell me just how much is spent with a change. I would imagine that it wouldn't be more than 50mm but it appears to be even more.
    You're not wrong, there are ways to reduce it but waste is still there. Only other option is the prusa xl which almost has no waste but that's thing is still in beta imo.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    dmitche31958 said:
    I love the idea of multiple filament printing, what I don't like is the waste that occurs with each change of filament. From what I've read that amounts to a lot of time and wasted material. I hope that I'm wrong about that and someone can tell me just how much is spent with a change. I would imagine that it wouldn't be more than 50mm but it appears to be even more.
    No, that IS a large issue.

    This, from my X1-Carbon w/ AMS.
    Model that finished a couple of days ago.
    About 80mm tall.

    4 color, in ABS.
    610 color changes. Many layers changed between all 4 colors.
    Model weight - 46.37g
    Flushed - 216.49g
    Purge tower - 38.28

    So the actual model was about 20% of the total consumed filament.
    80% wastage.





    The finished dragon:
    https://i.imgur.com/qQvmd7m.jpg
    Reply
  • edzieba
    USAFRet said:
    No, that IS a large issue.

    This, from my X1-Carbon w/ AMS.
    Model that finished a couple of days ago.
    About 80mm tall.

    4 color, in ABS.
    610 color changes. Many layers changed between all 4 colors.
    Model weight - 46.37g
    Flushed - 216.49g
    Purge tower - 38.28

    So the actual model was about 20% of the total consumed filament.
    80% wastage.





    The finished dragon:
    https://i.imgur.com/qQvmd7m.jpg
    The most recent update (as of a yesterday) significantly cuts down on purge volumes by lifting the melt-zone before filament changes (so there is no cold length of filament left in the nozzle that needs to be purged, just the melt plug). This reduces purge volumes and filament change times.
    In addition: since multiplexer-type material changers only perform changes as per-layer operations, the absolute filament purge penalty remains fixed regardless of the number of objects on the build plate: by printing multiple at the same time, the percentage purge volume starts to become pretty tiny compared to printed volume. That's less help when you only want one part, though.

    IDEX and other multi-head machines may avoid filament purge waste, but they still require re-priming (hence why the Prusa XL still prints a prime tower) so waste is just reduced rather than eliminated. A solution for standing-start static nozzle priming would need to be found to eliminate that, and I have not seen anything that even attempts to tackle that problem yet.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    edzieba said:
    The most recent update (as of a yesterday) significantly cuts down on purge volumes by lifting the melt-zone before filament changes (so there is no cold length of filament left in the nozzle that needs to be purged, just the melt plug). This reduces purge volumes and filament change times.
    I just updated mine last night, so we shall see.I'll have to go get the 1.9.xxx

    edzieba said:
    In addition: since multiplexer-type material changers only perform changes as per-layer operations, the absolute filament purge penalty remains fixed regardless of the number of objects on the build plate: by printing multiple at the same time, the percentage purge volume starts to become pretty tiny compared to printed volume. That's less help when you only want one part, though.
    Indeed.
    Printing 1 or 10...purge vol is pretty much the same.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    Sadly no indication of price.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    thisisaname said:
    Sadly no indication of price.
    This says $1000 - $1200, "expected".
    The larger one (350mm) $100 more.

    And then extras...

    https://www.antonmansson.com/3d-printing-blog/creality-k2-plus-3d-printer-with-multi-material-printing
    Reply