Six months after joining – and winning — the race for the fastest consumer 3D printer, Creality is back with an updated flagship. The new K1C improves the Ender sized Core XY printer with a superior hotend, beefed up extrusion system and added AI camera.
The K1C will launch on Jan 25th with a starting price of $559. Customers can snag a 5% Early Bird discount on Jan. 24th. It is a fully enclosed Core XY 3D printer with a build volume of 220 x 220 x 250mm and a maximum print speed of 600mm/s.
The K1 line has been Creality’s answer to Bambu Lab’s 2022 disruption of the 3D printing market, which introduced consumers to faster, more reliable machines that require little set up. Though we’re sad to report the C in the K1C does not stand for Color, we did find out it stands for Carbon.
During CES 2024 Creality gave Tom’s Hardware a sneak peek of the new machine. We learned the printer’s ability to handle carbon fiber filaments is due to a harden steel tipped nozzle. Carbon fiber filled PETG and PLA have great mechanic strength and dimensional stability, and are widely used in industrial printing.
Creality is continuing to appeal to the Open Source community by making its new printer and software an open book. The Creality OS, based on Klipper, enables advanced functions like linear advance and allows anyone to customize it. The machines can also communicate over LAN and transfer files with a USB stick for those who wish to avoid cloud printing.
K1C has an all-metal extruder kit and a new “Unicorn” nozzle with an integrated heat break. The nozzle is an obvious nod to E3D’s revolutionary Revo and Prusa’s one piece MK4 nozzle. All three nozzles promise to prevent heat creep and nasty leaks, while being easily changed without tools.
Like the K1, the K1C will come pre-assembled for a plug and play experience. Its auto leveling includes the ability to set its own Z height for a perfect first layer, and auto-calibration will handle all the tuning. The K1C will also come standard with an A1 camera to watch for errors and provide real-time monitoring and time-lapse filming.
Creality is addressing complaints that the K1 and K1 Max have exceptionally loud fans during high speed printing. To counter that, the K1C will have a “silent mode” that will reduce noise to less than 45dB, making it quieter than an Ender 3 with traditional fans. The K1C will also have a built-in active carbon filter, similar to the K1 Max.
Best of its potential, the K1C was our choice for best 3D printer of CES. However, we're eager to see how it performs when we get one in review.
