Here’s the quick story…
I ordered my printer Jan 19, 2025 and got it 3 days later. After assembling it, and going thru all the startup procedures, I put the printer to work.
I printed for 9 days 5 hours and some minutes (221 print hours). Then one morning on Monday Feb 3, I had a print failure. I thought nothing of it so I ran the calibration, and this is where my nightmare began.
At first it just failed the cutter calibration but as it started the calibration, the print head JUMPED with a loud thud with the accompanying Y-axis resistance error message. On subsequent attempts I noticed the extruder head moving in a diagonal during the cutter calibration (as I understand Core-XY, if only one motor moves, then the head moves in a diagonal). Every time it started the cutter calibration, it started out with a loud thud with the head jumping.
I opened a ticket on that same Monday morning with Creality, to which they replied requesting S/N, pictures, videos, etc., which I provided. Tuesday, I went on their website and used their support chat and asked for “human service”, and explained everything to the kind support person on the other side. He said to upload more videos, which I did, then he said my case was with the “handler” and being reviewed.
Fine.
With nothing in my email, I contacted them again on Wednesday, and spoke to another person with basically the same results, except this time the tech on the line said my case was going to be elevated and the handler would contact me ASAP. While testing the printer on this Wednesday call with the tech on the line, the printer head tried to calibrate the cutter (always with a loud thump accompanied by a head jump), but this time there was no movement during the cutter calibration, nor the subsequent input calibration. When the input calibration finished my entire upper gantry slammed back into the back of the cabinet followed by some error saying that the extruder coordinates were not where they were expected to be.
Thursday came and I contacted them again. This third guy wasn’t as patient or attentive as the others, and told me to wait for my handler to contact me.
Friday – nothing (Saturday morning in China)
Here is is Saturday morning (in the U.S) and I’m getting ready to tear open the back of the printer and start inspecting everything myself – yup without Creality ever giving me any support.
BTW, I watched a ton of YT videos where people are complaining about screws popping up above the surface of the X axis rail…I checked all my screws and they are tight and well below the surface. If the printer axis is catching on something, its not these screws in the top rail.
Let me also clarify something…I love this printer! If it didn’t have these problems, I would be buying 3 more for my mini print-farm. I’m not saying that I expected to have zero problems, but having a dead printer after only 221 print hours within 12 days of receiving it - I would expect a little more responsive technical support. I’m looking at Bambu X1C now, but it’s not quite up to the K2, so I’m a little disappointed that I’m even having issues with my K2 - to say the least.
If I don’t get technical support soon, this $1500 brick is going back to Creality.
Anyone wanting to buy one now, I urge you to wait until they fix the issues everyone seems to be having with these motors and/or drivers. Consider yourself warned.
P.S. I have a friend who also bought one of these about a week earlier than I did; he’s now having X and Y axis problems where the printer loses track of where the extruder is.