1/ I didn’t realise that you can’t run TPU through the CFS. OK, if you look hard you can see that before you purchase.
2/ Using the CFS is a pain- too many failure to retract issues.
3/ When clearing the print feed, refitting the spring is a real pain.
4/ Having lost the spring, I decided to upgrade to a DX2 extruder. You then need to raise the lid of the printer or it presses down on the filament feed tube.
5/ Printing with more than 1 filament is really slow.
6/ Hyper PETG is no quicker that PETG if you have lots of overhangs.
I am happy with the printer, I just wish I new about the CFS issues.
I don’t want to rain on your parade, but if that’s all you’ve found wrong with the printer in the first few hours, just wait because if you print with anything other than PLA and a 0.4 nozzle, you’re in for a litany of design failures and near zero quality control. Here’s a small list of things I’ve personally run into with Creality’s so-called “flagship” printer:
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Did you know that if you run any nozzle other than 0.4, the Creality Print profiles show no evidence of having been properly calibrated? They appear to be little more than best guesses. I have yet to see the 0.2, 0.6, or 0.8 profiles work properly without having to calibrate them by hand. So much for set-and-forget or plug-and-play.
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Did you know that if you print multicolor with a 0.2 nozzle, the purge chute is too steep, too long, and poorly engineered enough that it can repeatedly clog with purge waste? Apparently nobody thought to validate the “multicolor” system across the nozzle sizes the printer supposedly supports.
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Did you know that using build plates other than the stock textured PEI can cause the printer’s diagnostics to become so unreliable that you eventually end up disabling some of the AI detection just to get the machine to print?
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One example is TE2761. Creality’s documentation points you toward the strain-gauge cable. I’ve had that error more than 20 times using a Garolite plate with hairspray. Every single time, simply retrying works. Put the stock textured PEI plate back on and the problem disappears. Apparently the diagnostic system is perfectly capable of diagnosing hardware that isn’t actually broken.
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If you don’t have another contemporary printer to compare it to, you also wouldn’t know that Creality’s time to first print after purge is absurdly long. Mine can spend at least five minutes going through multiple purge operations even when there has been no filament change. My nearly four-year-old Bambu P1 manages to accomplish the same basic task with one purge cycle.
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Did you know that pressing “Stop Print” doesn’t necessarily mean stop? It means the printer begins another routine while you wait for it to eventually become usable again. I’ve actually analyzed the log files and have proof that it can take up to 17 minutes from pressing Stop until the printer is ready to respond normally to new commands. I no longer use stop, I simply power cycle the printer if the filament hasn’t reached the nozzle yet, it’s quicker than waiting for the “Flagship” to recover from a stop print button press.
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I’ve also had the printer get stuck in “Printing Stopping,” where the UI says the print is stopping but the printer doesn’t actually finish stopping and won’t respond properly to subsequent commands. For a machine with this much computing hardware in it, apparently reliably executing STOP was too ambitious.
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The printer can also decide it needs to run leveling again when it doesn’t need to. There is a forced_leveling configuration setting buried underneath this behavior, yet Creality still manages to make something as basic as “use the calibration I already performed” unnecessarily unpredictable.
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I’ve had pressure-advance calibration towers print with essentially no visible change from bottom to top, leaving you wondering whether the changing PA values were actually being applied at all. Nothing like running a calibration procedure and then having to diagnose whether the calibration procedure itself worked.
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Network integration isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring either. I’ve had Orca unable to discover the K2 automatically while the printer was sitting there perfectly reachable on the network. Direct communication to the printer worked and manually entering the IP worked. Discovery didn’t. Another feature that works just well enough to make you troubleshoot the feature instead of using the printer.
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Camera access is another example of the same half-finished engineering. The camera exists, the stream exists, and the printer can serve it, but getting third-party software to use it means figuring out Creality’s non-obvious network implementation rather than simply having a properly documented and standardized interface.
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Then there is the infamous hotend “Blob of Death.” Creality has an official procedure for removing a giant mass of plastic that can engulf the hotend. Think about that for a moment. The failure is common enough that the manufacturer needs a published recovery procedure for excavating the hotend from a ball of molten filament.
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First-layer calibration can also send you down a rabbit hole because there are enough interacting automatic systems that a visibly bad first layer doesn’t immediately tell you whether you’re looking at flow, Z offset, mesh, nozzle contact detection, plate behavior, or some combination of them. Automation is great when it removes variables. Creality managed to use automation to add variables.
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The machine is loaded with sensors, cameras, AI detection, automatic calibration, strain gauges, CFS integration, and enough processing power to look impressive on a specification sheet. The problem is that every one of those systems is another opportunity for poorly validated firmware to tell you something is wrong when it isn’t, fail to recognize something that is wrong, or force you to troubleshoot the automation that was supposedly included so you wouldn’t have to troubleshoot the printer.
That’s what bothers me most about the K2. These aren’t the kinds of limitations you expect from a mature flagship product. They are exactly what you expect from a product that was rushed through validation and handed to customers to finish testing.
The hardware has enormous potential. Creality’s quality control, firmware validation, software integration, and willingness to actually finish debugging what they shipped are what hold it back. After enough time with the machine, you stop asking, “Why is my printer doing this?” and start asking, “Which unfinished Creality feature do I need to work around this time?”
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