Creality K1C Review: C is not for Colour

If you recently bought a Creality K1, then I’d advise you to stop reading this review now as it will only make you sad.

The K1 is only about six months old, but is already being replaced by the K1C. It’s no secret that the K1 had some teething problems and Creality ended up redesigning the hot end, fixing some software issues and open sourcing the software that should have been open source all along.

But instead of just continuing to sell the ‘fixed’ K1, Creality decided to do a complete overhaul and release a completely new model, the K1C.

It might look the same, but beneath the skin there are a raft of upgrades and improvements that make it a better printer. So, apologies to anyone who’s just bought a K1.

Features & design

• New extruder
• New easy-swap hardened nozzle
• AI camera as standard

Let’s start with the C. When rumours of the printer started appearing, some thought it stood for Colour. Would Creality follow Bambu Lab and release a printer like the P1S Combo that can print with up to four colours?

Sadly not. The C actually stands for Carbon, and means there’s an upgraded, hardened steel nozzle that’s designed to maintain a temperature of 300°C.

The C actually stands for Carbon, and means there’s an upgraded, hardened steel nozzle that’s designed to maintain a temperature of 300°C

This is one of the K1C’s big differentiators: it can reliably print abrasive carbon-fibre-infused filaments such as PLA-CF and PETG-CF as well as those that require higher temperatures such as ASA and PC.

Alongside the ‘unicorn’ nozzle, as Creality is calling it, the all-metal direct-drive extruder is stronger than the original K1’s, allowing it to more reliably feed filament into the hotend.

The company says the nozzle is supposed to be quick to swap out, but unless I’m doing it wrong, it’s still much more laborious than the Bambu A1, for example. The hot end is mounted at the rear of the print head, and the cover (containing the fan) isn’t held in place by magnets: you have to undo two screws. You need to remove this in order to remove the silicone shroud that sits over the nozzle. Then you need to unscrew the nozzle using the supplied spanner – hardly the one-handed swap Creality advertises.

The fact is, you’re not likely to want or need to change the nozzle very often anyway, making this all rather moot for most people.

The all-metal direct-drive extruder is stronger than the original K1’s, allowing it to more reliably feed filament into the hotend

The K1 doesn’t have a camera, but it’s standard on the K1C. It allows you to check on print progress remotely and record timelapses of prints for posterity. It’s called an AI camera because it can detect foreign objects on the build plate or if a print fails part way through and the filament begins to form a load of ‘spaghetti’.

As far as I can tell it’s the same camera from the K1 Max so quality is reasonably decent. It isn’t perfect at the AI stuff, though, and doesn’t always notice and alert you of failed prints. It is pretty good at spotting when you’ve left the previous model on the build plate, forgotten about it and started another print though.

Beyond this, you’d be hard-pushed to spot the changes and improvements. But they are there. Creality says the frame “adopts bigger parts made by integrated die casting. With fewer seams, it looks neat and becomes utterly sturdy”.

It certainly feels sturdy, and there’s now a metal plate on the front edge of the bed, presumably to add further strength. However, the cynic in me sees it as a copy of what Bambu has done with its build plates, even down to slapping the build volume on it: 220x220x250mm. (Pedants will spot – and be irked by – the erroneous ³ at the end.)

Elsewhere, there’s a carbon filter (as the K1 Max has) which helps to keep nasty particles from being blown into your room, large rubber feet which come already attached (to dampen vibrations) and a Bambu-style silicone strip stuck to the rear of the build plate for wiping the nozzle clean.

In terms of assembly, there’s virtually none to do

In terms of assembly, there’s virtually none to do: you get it out of the box, remove a few shipping screws and foam packing, then attach the screen and spool holder, plug in and away you go.

Quite obviously, the K1C is an enclosed printer. The advantage of this design is that high ambient temperatures can be maintained to help keep warping to a minimum when printing with ASA, PC and other materials that warp all too readily.

Despite what Creality says about them being glass, the side panels are still plastic, with only the front door being glass. The lid is plastic too, and needs to be clicked firmly into place to stop it from shifting or even falling off entirely when the chain (which houses the PTFE tube for the filament and wiring for the print head) moves to the far left side.

As with the K1, the PTFE tube is bent at a tight angle into the extruder which can make it difficult or impossible to load filament into the hot end. Filament can also catch in the run-out sensor mounted on the rear of the printer (along with the spool holder).

This means filament changes can be frustrating. If the filament catches on the end of the hot end, the only way to fix it is to remove the lid, pull out the PTFE tube from the extruder and push the filament in manually as straight as possible until it goes in.

Compare this to Bambu’s AMS which automatically loads and unloads filament and it does become a big annoyance when you want to print in a different colour or with a different type of filament.

The 4.3in touchscreen remains the same as on the K1 and K1 Max. Creality has made various improvements in the interface, with one of the most significant being the ability to adjust print speed on the fly. This was a bizarre absence before, but it’s there now (and it works, I’m happy to say).

It’s still more limited than the controls on Creality’s Klipper-based Sonic Pad, giving options of 125%, 75%, and 50%. There’s also Quiet Mode which reduces noise to “as low as” 45dB. The bad news is that “as low as” is the operative phrase: it was never consistently quiet in my testing, with the fans and motors still being louder than you’d want.

At full chat, the K1C is exceptionally noisy – a combination of high-flow fans and high print speeds. It shakes and wobbles like crazy at speeds over 300mm/sec. And while it can technically hit 600mm/sec (Creality even provides a test print to showcase it) it won’t achieve anywhere near this on most prints, and can only do it with tiny layer heights in ‘surface’ mode. The resulting print was mighty impressive considering all the shaking about: the walls looked perfect, with no layers or imperfections visible.

Talking of performance…

Performance

• Fully automatic calibration
• 200-300mm realistic print speeds
• Dimensionally accurate, clean prints

Although different motors are used the K1C offers the same print speeds as the K1. A handy table is included on a sticker inside the printer itself, so you can make the main settings in your slicing software.

What’s weird is that Creality Print doesn’t apply these settings when you tell it what type of filament is loaded. You can select anything, but it always retained the same settings for Creality’s HyperPLA, which is 200mm/sec for walls and 300mm/sec for infill. This could have been because I was given early access to a build of the software that supported the K1C, though.

Surprisingly, even when using these faster speeds for filaments that should be printed slower, the K1C still delivered great results. I printed the speed Benchy (pre-loaded as a test model) in Creality’s silk PLA which was completed in roughly 18 minutes. I repeated the test by slicing a Benchy in Creality Print using the recommended settings, but it was difficult to tell the difference between the two: both were highly impressive.

There’s virtually no stringing, with no wisps of filament hanging between the pillars on the boat, and no noticeable ringing on the hull.

I then printed this tiny hexagon box in PLA, which again showed that retraction is excellent: it was very clean.

To test tolerances, I used the same PLA to print this infinite cube fidget toy. Aside from a couple of slightly stiff hinges, which worked looser over time, it was fully functional right off the build plate.

I also printed a wall mounting bracket for my Ryobi area light using Creality’s wood PLA. The part fitted perfectly, demonstrating that the K1C prints accurately.

I then printed a variety of models using some Bambu PETG-CF and PLA-CF, all of which printed with excellent results.

Bed adhesion was great with all filament types I tried when using the recommended glue stick. You can buy the optional textured PEI plate, but the smooth one worked absolutely fine for me and leaves the bottom of prints similarly smooth.

The only time prints were problematic was when using PC and ASA. As you can see from this hexagon coaster printed in ASA, the corners have warped a little, despite using the recommended temperature settings.

Before each print, calibration takes around 5-6 minutes. This comprises heating the bed to the desired temperature, probing the bed (using strain gauges in the bed) and input shaping, which attempts to counteract vibrations caused when the print head is moving quickly in different directions.

Obviously this adds significantly to the time taken for very small models, but always worth it for large prints that take hours and hours.

Print time and progress are shown on the screen, but you can also see them in Creality Print and the Creality Cloud mobile app. You’re free to use other slicing software, but it’s easiest to use these apps to monitor prints and get alerts if there’s a problem.

It’s a bit annoying that print time doesn’t change when you adjust speed on the fly. When I tried out Quiet Mode, a print that would have taken 2h30 actually took 3h10, but it wasn’t until the print was virtually finished that the time changed. Hopefully Creality can fix this in a firmware update.

Price & availability

The Creality K1C costs $559 / £539 from Creality. That less than the $599 / £579 that the  K1 originally cost.

This is good value considering the upgrades, although it’s worth noting that the K1 is now cheaper at $499 / £479, and that should include the updated hot end mentioned earlier.

It certainly undercuts Bambu’s P1S, which doesn’t have a touchscreen even if it does support multi-colour printing via the company’s AMS.

For alternatives, see our roundup of the best 3D printers.

Should I buy the Creality K1C?

The K1C offers decent value for anyone looking for a versatile 3D printer that can handle a wide range of filament types, reliably with quick printing at high quality.

The 220x220x250 build volume isn’t the largest, though, and there’s no word yet on whether Creality will offer an upgraded version of the K1 Max. In many respects, it doesn’t need to as the K1 Max can – technically – already print with carbon-fibre filaments as well as ASA, PC and nylon. You’ll just wear out the nozzle faster if you do print a lot of carbon fibre filament. It already has a carbon filter and a camera.

You should look at the Bambu A1, though, if you don’t need to print with filaments that need an enclosure. It isn’t any noisier for it, has even more features (such as the ability to detect tangles on the filament spool) and is a good chunk cheaper. Oh, and it’s still cheaper than the K1C even if you opt for the A1 Combo which allows you to print in up to four colours thank to the AMS Mini, which is also very convenient when it comes to auto-changing filaments.

Admittedly, you’d need to buy Bambu’s hardened nozzle to print with carbon fibre, but the A1 can do it just fine, and offers slightly more build volume. It…