I’ve used creality printers for quite a while now. The latest one I’ve been using is the HI. It works great, but it’s very unreliable. I’m as careful as I know how to be and I still run into problems. Most of the problems are clogged which I can unplug fairly easily but then it’s hard to get it back together because some of the plugs don’t fit and I’m getting tired of taking this thing apart and fighting with getting it back together. Is it time for me just to move on from creality or just from the hi prioter. I love this printer when it’s working but in the last 3 months it’s been down at least a month of that. I’ve looked at my processes and try to figure out if I might be doing something to antagonize it but I can’t figure out what. This is really frustrating cuz I love the printer and I really don’t want to move on but I’m afraid I’m going to have to.
I find it strange that you are having such trouble with your Hi. I got mine in February this year and besides one severe issue (which was determined to be a problem I created) I have had over 800 hours of trouble free prints from this unit. Apart from the odd issues introduced via the new firmware upgrades recently tied to the camera I haven’t noticed any issues or changes in quality from all of my prints.
One issue I do have was having to print a new spool holder as the original one broke and should have been designed with fewer weak points for the plastic to crack.
It would seem that most of your issues are related to filament feeding or clogging, so that makes me ask questions like filament differences i.e. type differences between swaps. Do you have clogging issues when using the CFS only or direct feed? Do you change filament types regularly i.e. petg vs pla? Is the clog in the extruder or a nozzle clog?
One thing I can say is not to screw the nozzle in as tight as you can before testing the cutter arm for smooth pushing and return movement. If the nozzle is too far up the blade jams and the arm doesn’t return to position which could cause feeding issues.
I was a bit skeptical at first before I bought my Hi as I read lots of comments people said to avoid Creality as it’s a repairers headache from hell. What I can say is that I have never needed to refer to support for anything that I couldn’t fix myself by going through the video guides. It appears that alot of effort was made to help people with issues that would otherwise take hours if not days to resolve due to timezone and language barrier differences.
If you have needed to contact support and they were unhelpful I would bring that information here for assistance.
I landed on a Creality Hi with CFS a while ago now coming from the much earlier Ender 3 Pro. I agree that the printer is fantastic when it’s up and running, and that the tiny parts are a pain to work with. My only problems were associated with filament softening and distorting due to heat build-up before it was fed into the hot nozzle. I determined that this was due to zipping up the soft enclosure as I did with my old Ender printer which had a relatively weak heat bed. Hope this helps.