3D Printers/Creality K1

Creality K1

Status

• The printer works fine - this wiki is a work in progress
• Only printed with PETG so far.... will test other settings soon.
• Printer is currently perma-loaded with white Elegoo Rapid PETG; use glue stick on the bed!!!
• It should "just work" using the electronics bench computer and Creality Slicer 5.0, will be able to use the "LAN printing" (printing over wifi) too

• Print monitoring page (must be on the hacklab wifi): http://192.168.133.60/#/home
• The printer moves so fast, you may have to bump up nozzle temperature to get strong layer adhesion. I found printing PETG at 250C would look nice but with very weak layer adhesion, at 275C got strong adhesion
• If printing organic models and the quality is less than you want, easiest way to increase quality is to slow down print speed
  • go to the monitoring page, see the panel at middle left ("Control" with the XY home buttons), set print speed there
  • Can do it on the printer's touchscreen -> settings [looks like 3 sliders] -> icon that looks like a car speedometer, but only option is 50%
  • The real way but also easy is to lower the max volumetric speed in the slicer, it is set to 32 mm^3/s, people print at 15 or 20 mm^3/s (Creality slicer 5.0 -> Material panel on right side -> at top of it there is the material name, click on the down arrow, a temperature input should come up, click the pencil icon beside the bed temperature -> toggle advanced to on then type in "volume")(this slicer is such hot garbage lol but meh)
  • The real real way is to adjust all the settings. Try searching reddit for new Orca slicer profiles (should be easy to download and then import into orca slicer). The thing is those profiles may just be <2x as fast as the prusa mini's, not 3.5x

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Last Known Good Settings

Date	Filament type, colour, brand	First layer	Other layers	Notes
May 25th, 2024	PETG, gold, overture	noz: 275, bed 85	noz: 275: bed 85
May 28th, 2024	PETG, white, polymaker	noz: 275, bed 85	noz: 275: bed 85	prob can print at like 270 or 265. but test first cuz was getting weak layer adhesion with other PETG at 250C

Usage

• Power switch is on lower left side corner on the back
• Has a built in remote printer control over wifi, you can go to this webpage to view it if you're connected to the hacklab wifi. http://192.168.133.60/#/home

Usage - Load Filament

• Remove the lid
• The direct-drive extruder (above the nozzle) has a silver tensioner arm with a knob at the top, there is a lock and unlock symbol beside it.
• There is also a printed add-on that locks the extruder tensioner in place (some people claim that the tensioner slips...). The add-on snaps into place.
• There is a filament sensor on the right side of the case, at the top. Push the filament through. You may need to cut the end of the filament to a point if it's difficult to get through.
• Push the filament through all the way to the hot-end, you should feel resistance when it gets to the extruder. To check you can pull the filament back a little and you should see the tube wiggle a bit at the hot-end top.
• Turn on printer, on the touch screen navigate to the "settings" window (it looks like 3 sliders tuning things, the button below the "Home" icon), a temperature and movement window should open. Go to the second tab, "Extrude/retract". Set the temperature and click "extrude".
• When the temperature is reached, push the filament in and it should get caught by the extruder. You should feel the filament getting pulled in.
• It will extrude a little, then when it's done use tweezers to remove the extruded filament

Usage - Unload Filament

• Turn on printer, on the touch screen navigate to the "settings" window (it looks like 3 sliders tuning things, the button below the "Home" icon), a temperature and movement window should open. Go to the second tab, "Extrude/retract". Set the temperature and click "retract".
• When the temperature is reached, the printer will retract the filament.
• It should retract all the way past the extruder, so can just pull the filament out from the filament sensor without having to touch the printer.
• If not, then have to take the lid off, remove the printed part on top of the hot-end that's over the tensioner arm, and push the tensioner arm to the middle. Pull out the filament and re-lock the tensioner arm.

Printing

• Before each print, a printer calibration ritual will be done.
• VERY IMPORTANT: Wait until the nozzle is hot enough (can see the temperature on the screen), when it at ~150C use tweezers to remove any bit of plastic that has oozed out. This must be done because during the ritual the printer will touch the nozzle to the bed to home the Z-axis. If a bit of plastic is in between the nozzle and the bed then the z-gap will be off and the first layer will fail.
• Use the glue on the smooth PEI sheet (the stock sheet that has writing on it). Don't forget to add glue to the purge line! (left most side of the bed)
• PLA is printed with the lid off!!!! PETG and ABS can be printed with the lid on.

Slicer - Creality Print 5.0

This program is installed on the soldering workbench computer and is set up for printing over wifi.

Initial Set Up

Download the Creality Slicer 5.0, its a knock-off of bambu slicer lol https://www.creality.com/pages/download-software

Set up for the K1 with 0.4mm nozzle.

For printing over wifi, connect to the hacklab wifi, go to "Device" tab (select it from top middle), "+ scan add" (top right), the printer should show up.

Slicer Settings

The slicer settings are on the a right-side panel. The material is selected at the top of that panel. To edit the material, click the 'down chevron' beside the material name and a one-line menu should appear to change the nozzle and bed temperature. Beside that is a pencil icon, click it to edit more settings.

I suggest checking the volumetric speed for the filament, so click the pencil icon and in the window that pops up, enable "Advanced" toggle switch at top right corner. The in the search bar type "volume" and this should appear "Filament: Volumetric speed limitation", click that. According to creality the official max volumetric speed is 32 mm^3/s, so that's what I put in there.

(For reference, the Moon city print, was printed with Gold PETG, 275 nozzle, 85 bed, 32 mm^3/s volumetric flow, everything else stock creality settings).

Once the settings are to your liking, click "Slice Plate" at lower left corner. Once it is sliced, the button under "Slice plate" will be "LAN printing" or "Export to local". For LAN printing, click it, then select the K1 from the drop down menu (middle of window). Then click "Once click printing" and it should upload and start printing. Don't forget to wipe the nozzle of any plastic that as oozed out!

If using USB stick, change the "LAN printing" to "Export to local", and save the gcode file to a usb drive.

Slicer - Orca Slicer

NOTE: these are community made profiles and settings. They may need some tweaking.

Set up

As of writing this, the newest version was 2.0.0. To download, go here and scroll down to the "assets" section (under the "contributors" section). The windows installer .exe worked for Rana.

https://github.com/SoftFever/OrcaSlicer/releases/tag/v2.0.0

When installing, can set-up with their Creality K1 profile.

After that, download the custom Orca Slicer profiles.

File:K1 Configs-from Reddit may 2024.zip

(Found these settings from this link, as you all should, I trust random people on the internet for everything. https://www.reddit.com/r/crealityk1/comments/17885dk/k1_custom_profile_for_orca/ )

In orca slicer go to File -> Import -> Import Configs ; then select all the .json files and the one .zip file and click "open". The zip file is a custom profile for the K1 from the reddit link, it supposedly has a "speed boost" lol.

Changing to different profiles happens via drop-down menu's on the left-side panel. Click on the printer name / filament name / slicing name, a drop-down menu should show up. The reddit profile is "Creality K1 (0.4mm nozzle) Custom".

These print settings may require some tweaking to get perfect prints...

Printing

Once your model is in the slicer and you have the settings you want, click "Slice" button at top right corner. When slicing is finish the program should which to the "Preview" tab ("Preview" button is now highlighted above the left-side panel). You should see the model in layers now.

Beside the "slice" button there is a "print" button, this sends the gcode file to the printer. Click the down arrow that's to the left of the slice button and there will be an "export g-code file" option, select that. Then click it to export the gcode file.

Can put the gcode file on a USB drive and plug that into the front of the printer. Or go to http://192.168.133.60/#/home and you'll see files stored on the device at the lower right corner. Click "+ Import" button and select your gcode file. Once it's uploaded right click the file and click "start printing"

Hardware

• 0.4 nozzle (creality's official volcano knock-off)
• Core-xy movement system going super duper fast
• Smooth PEI flexible build plate, textured one is ordered and in the mail
• Remote print monitoring built-in (knock-off octoprint)
• Filament runout sensor
• Extra part cooling fan

Direct control of printer

To use pronterface to control the printer, first power up the printer, then connect the usb cable to your computer. On win10 it should auto-detect and possibly install 'maple' (wtf that is lol). Baud 115200

Maintenance Resources

put stuff here lol

Maintenance Log

Most recent entries at the top.

Date	Notes	Entry By
May, 2024	Setting up the printer. Removed the reverse-bowden tube from the cable chain because the tight bends cause under-extrusion. Added a snap-on extruder lock.	Rana