Hello,
I am planning to buy K1 however I really don’t want to spend extra bucks to replace defective extruder & hot end so the printer would work properly. Is there a way to identify from serial/batch numbers or by any other means of codes from outside the box that the unit is upgraded from the factory?
p.s. I have already sent e-mail to support about this but they seem to be very busy at the moment.
Hello @Ozzy_K
Welcome to the Creality Forum,
The Creality team has been moving forward taking care of many issues and they will get back to you as soon as possible. 
You also might want to post your question on the Creality FB Page. Lots of knowledgeable people there also… 
Hi,
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I do not use FB. In mean time I will be waiting for your reply about this.
Are you going to a physical store to look at a box for this number…?
If you are I would ask them to open it to check the extruder…
No I will order from internet. The only thing I can do is confirm by serial/batch number or production date.
For example
Which batch number & firmware are good and which need to avoid.
There is no real way to tell and to be honest its not something you should overly concern yourself about. Too many people are getting hung up on what hotend or extruder they may have and yet there are numerous people using the original supposedly “broken” hotends/extruders and yet their printers work fine.
If you do however run into an issue at any point with the printer then support will be more than happy to replace those parts for you.
On a side note… it is very unlikely that support will be able to advise you on what printer you will receive as the printers are shipped from whichever warehouse is closest to you and therefore would not know which ones are being shipped where.
Every one that I have seen have an issue has received replacement parts within around 5 to 10 days from support 
