Hello,
after ten years into 3d printing and mainly using Prusa MK3s with MMU2 along with some chinese printers that never lived up to their expectations (Anet A8, Anycubic i3 Mega, Anycubic Chiron, Geetech Delta) i was in need of a new printer.
After some research i found the Bambu Labs really appeaing until i found out that they try to lock their user in their ecosystem i found the Creality K2 Pro Combo with a second CFS being a good deal.
It was delivered friday.
Yesterday i set everything up. Made a firmware update and printed two very nice benchies (single and mulitcolor) from the printers storage. They looked really good. First impression is really good. Packaging and the unboxing experience was good. Ease of use too.
I installed CrealityPrint hoping that it has the best integration with the printer and of course to profit from manufacturer tuned printsettings.
First single color print is fine, though i see some “errors” i did not see in the benchy.
First multicolor print (4 wolves) showed a lot of stringing particularly in the area where the sidefan blows. But more afwul is the colorbleed in white. Even with the highest flushing setting it has massive bleed over all 4 objects printed. I did not see this on my prusas once setting it up right.
Some questions arise: For flushing i set an individual value for each filamentchange and can set a general factor? What is the factor needed for? Why does it recommend to rise it in general, when it would only be needed for black/red to white changes?
This thread will be updated regularly to show my experience with the K2 Pro.
Update 1:
Here are the picture of the wolves i printed. Upon detailed inspection i can see some inconsitencies in all 4 of them.
For the stringing it seems like the strong blowing sidefan make “cottoncandy” out of small filamentdrops.
And: I am curios to find out what the “printer with an M” Icon in the settings tab means. Its the one under Speed.
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Now i see that it is a motor! Thanks
100 hours of print time crossed. Printed a riser for the top glass in ABS. The print was very good though i printed it with 125% speed. Now it is part of my print farm and prints orders for customers.
Coming from a rather “stupid” Prusa MMU2 i really like the “sync" filaments” feature in crealityslicer.
This and the multiple buildplate feature are really a game changer, when it comes to planning prints. Just open multiple plates with different materials and fill them with orders until full. Send to printer. It is really a step up from prusa (which still are workhorses that i know every screw of).
I just wait for another sale and grab two more cfs to completethe setup. It would be nice if buildplate and nozzles would be available in the webstore.
Kind of afraid that i wont be able to fix anything when it breaks because i did not build the printer. So we will see how this continues.
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New week new experience report.
Every print this week went through fine. As i still need reliable and reproducable results i still stick to “Silent” printing mode. I am still impressed on how it just works through spools of abs without any issues.
One print did not stick to the buildplate BUT this was an error by me, i did not use a brim for abs.
Other than that i still would like to see buildplates and nozzles in the shop. I need to keep spares at hand.
Workflow with Creality Slicer is still an impressive upgrade to the rather manual one for my prusa mk3/mk3s printfarm.
Both CFS work without any issues too.
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Another week another report.
This week the K2 Pro printed orders for 70 billed hours and some household items for personal use.
Still the workflow change due to wifi connection (opposed to the prusas) is a huge bonus.
Yesterday a new firmware update came in. After about 12 minutes in total the printer was ready to print again. Thats really nice - and again thanks to wireless connectivity no need to plug cables in the printer and so on.
Printing speed now increased to “Stable 50%” because it gives reproducable and reliable prints.
Still kind of bothered of maybe upcoming hardware issues that i most probably would not know how to fix because i did not build the printer. Other than that i am still positively surprised how well all works.
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Damn! I forgot to post a weekly update. This week the K2 Pro printed ABS parts without any issue. 101 hours in total (10 days) Writing this there was a preset update which added a Setting for 0.08mm Layers and one for 0.08 mm Hueforge.
Impressed that it just works after not hearing the best about creality and having bad experience with chinese 3d printers in the past.
Still waiting on spare parts to be available in the german shop.
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Next week is over.
The K2 Pro and both CFS still stand up to high volume printing in my printfarm.
Still waiting for spareparts to be available in german store…
