I’ve been struggling with my K1 since Christmas. I bought it on sale for Black Friday and no matter who I contact at Creality, no one can tell me what replacement parts to order. K1 parts don’t fit my printer. They want pictures to see what ‘buckle’ I have, because my serial number isn’t enough information, but who wants to tear down a printer just to take pictures? Now my thermistor is broken (a leg weld just fell right off while I was fixing a clog), and I can’t order a new one because what do I order? This printer doesn’t take K1 parts. Every time I order something, it has to get shipped back. I’m annoyed and venting, but also trying to help anyone else considering a Creality printer. Don’t do it. Their support is a joke and they take zero accountability.
I’ve added an image for help explaining the problem. These two JST connections are completely different, but both are supposed to be for the K1. And both of these listings are Creality Official:
Unfortunately, creality has always been known for this sort of stuff and the sad part is they have not improved at all. Just last week, I had a friend buy a used ender 3 neo. Mainboard has 4.2.2 version, you’d think that would be a u useful information. But turns out - there is a silent and a non-silent version of 4.2.2. So firmwares are not compatible. But I found out not all 4.2.2 are even with the same mcu - some have stm32 and some gd32 (a clone). So my friend - being inexperienced, upon finding that EEPROM setting saving was not enabled by default, promptly flashed the wrong firmware and bricked the printer. I helped him flash klipper, he’s printing again. But creality has been mixing and matching parts with no tracking or any logic or reason since forever. I thought they will up their game after bambu pressure, but apparently not.
Oh damn. I’m discovering they’re so much worse than I thought.
My only advice is - don’t give up. A good thing is there is a cheap and usually reliable way to fix this. Some combination of parts will work, but you will have to do a lot of research and/or trial and error. You will then be a lot more knowledgeable to fix your printer in the future. This is in contrast to buying a printer like bambulab, where everything works out of the box, but it will cost more upfront. I’ve already worked with a bunch of creality printers and know how to solve most of the problems, so I will choose the more open source and cheaper route every time, but it’s not for everyone, or even most people. You already have a creality printer, so it may make sense to try to fix it. But also, at one point, you may value reliability more than cost.
No, I don’t mind replacing things. But how? Do I just buy a slew of different parts from random sellers? Creality parts don’t fit. I’ve tried.
Well, tbh, I’m not familiar enough about K1, is the hardware open source? If so, can you compare the parts? If you have some vastly different model to the current one, perhaps you have a preproduction or an early rev? It may be that you need to convert a lot of it to the new style. I don’t know where you could ask for help, but some bigger community may help you better. Reluctantly, I suggest trying reddit, perhaps there, someone has gone into similar issues. At the very least, it may attract creality’s attention, and they may help you to avoid bad press.
Oh, my model is the current one. It’s the older ones that everything is tailored to. That’s the whole problem 🤣
Wow, that is somehow even worse. 😯
Yeah, I’m really annoyed. I had bought a bunch of nozzles in advance, so when I needed the replacement, I’d have it. Imagine my shock when my printer spit out a unicorn nozzle on the day before Christmas Eve, after everything had closed. I was in the middle of printing Christmas stuff. I was LIVID.
I purchased a K1 Max directly from Creality in October 2024.
This was well after the K1 Max had recieved the K1C upgrades. People had been getting K1 Max units with the small X/Y pulleys and upgrade hot end for MONTHS.
I bought it directly from Creality expecting to get a current revision.
I received a rev1 unit. It had signs of use. I asked Creality to replace it with the current revision and they decline.
It never really printed right. Using their filament and their slicer about 40% of the prints would fail. They kept dragging me along for weeks. I assume this was to push me out of the return window.
They literally never one entertained my suggestion of returning.
Until I call my credit card company. VISA said to box it up, email them one last time demanding a return label for a full refund, and if they did not give me one, VISA would do a charge back.
Whilst boxing it up I noticed another shipping label from before the K1C was released.
So they had absolutely sold me a unit that was not brand new.
Now I have a Sovol SV08 and if I was looking for a new printer I would be looking at the Snapmaker U1
I was just going to ask what you bought instead. The thing is, I really liked Kevin. Yes. I named it Kevin.
Do they think people won’t talk?? What a garbage company. I’m reporting their bullshit to the consumer affairs people.
That’s a serious shame to hear about. Creality has been a staple of the community since the reprap days. I don’t think I can count the number of people I know who had an ender as their first 3d printer.
It kind of sounds like they’re struggling with the transition from hobbiest products to appliances and are losing some of their soul along the way.
Sorry you’re going through that, but thank you for sharing.
I’ve had a K1 for a couple of years now, and I’ve never had issues getting parts for it. I recently replaced the hot end and hot end breakout board because of my own personal stupidity, and I was able to just buy the parts. And they fit.
Is something different about your or my K1?
Evidently? Everything I order for it is for the original K1, and Creality quietly made changes midway through production so nothing labeled K1 will fit. The connections for a new hotend, for example, would not fit my board. The nozzles labeled K1 are short, like nozzles my Ender took, but then I found out my K1 takes unicorns. I literally can’t buy parts.
Something that I’ve learned over the years is that a lot of times what separates cheaper or more expensive brands or higher prestige brands from lower prestige brands is quality control.
In the world of guitars, for example, you can get some amazing deals if you’re willing to deal with buying a guitar that might need a lot of work to be set up properly after you bring it home. Or maybe you’ll be lucky and the one you get will be totally fine and require zero setup.
Nowadays for most products I just assume if I’m spending half the money I’m probably not getting half the value. Instead the lower price means I’m accepting the risk of a 70% chance of proper QC’d unit rather than 95% for the more expensive one.
The problem is it’s basically impossible to know the real rates for these things unless you’re a dealer who sees a high volume and can analyze return rates and stuff so it’s kind of a crapshoot. If I’m buying something I feel confident I can fix or upgrade myself (guitar) I’ll happily save a bunch of money and deal with the risk. A lot of people have that level of experience with 3d printers, and it sounds like you do.
A lot of other people in this thread are clearly expecting an out of the box experience that is perfect. Which is totally fine, not everyone who prints needs to be an expert. But buying a creality machine as someone who isn’t prepared to do some of their own work fixing issues out of the box is probably a bad idea
My printer before this was an Ender 3 v2, I’m not useless. But when I can’t even find parts that fit, that’s a problem.
Yeah honestly I went back and read your OP and it sounds like maybe you straight up got a counterfeit unit or something? That’s wild. If genuine replacement parts don’t fit that’s super whack
It’s not counterfeit. Creality literally admitted the problem. It’s super whack, I agree.
Yea, none of what he says makes sense.
I have a K1 that doesn’t take early K1 parts. I think they changed things mid-production to use the unicorn nozzles that they evidently designed for another printer. During that time, the hotend was changed twice as well. This means if I order a hotend kit, I have a very low chance of actually getting the part I need. I’m not sure how to shop, because everything just says K1.
Creality made good printers in the beginning, i.e. original Ender and Ender Pro. They used high quality components and offered good value for money compared to what else what available at that time. However, when they had cornered a large part of the market and got known as the brand that made the best beginner printers, things started going downhill. They switched from Meanwell power supplies etc. to cheap noname components, quality control seemingly became non-existent, and they released several poorly designed overpriced printers (E.g. the E3v2 - my first printer - and everything with “max” in the name).
I think there’s a combination of different reasons for why there always have been so many people who believe that Creality make good printers:
- People who have bought their Ender 3/Pro before 2020 actually have good printers, and give them honest praise on forums.
- Fake reviews on the internet, which hype up the product since their only goal is for you to click their amazon affiliate link and buy it.
- Creality paying content creators for positive reviews, including several well known and otherwise respected within the community.
- Buyers who got lucky with the QC and don’t own any other printers to compare with, might think their printers are the best.
- Buyers who are now happy with their Ender after having spent €100+ on “upgrades” and/or days of troubleshooting the printer. I’ve even seen a guy insist that an Ender is a better first printer than a cheaper more reliable alternative, because the 20 hours he spent on his Ender to get a decent print out of it gave him “an invaluable learning experience”.
- And I’ve also seen people who haven’t yet bought any printer claim that Enders are the best beginner printers, just because they’ve read that statement so many times they’ve come to accept it as a fact, and now they’re “helping” others looking for a first printer by answering their questions.
I think my E3v2 is good now, but I’ve replaced the hotend, extruder and part cooling fans. I’ve added a second Z lead screw to fix gantry sag, and I found a manufacturing error where the X belt tensioner wasn’t straight because tightening the screw into the aluminium extrusion bent the plastic (difficult to find, but luckily easy to fix with a metal shim). I’ve replaced the firmware with Klipper, controlled by a Raspberry Pi. And I’ve probably spent at least 50 hours just trying to fix and improve the printer, which I didn’t mind btw, but I think most would prefer a printer which just works out of the box.
In retrospect, I wish I had joined some 3d printing discords and talked to experienced users before deciding on which printer to buy, and not relied so much on google, websites and random comments.
Your 5. is not wrong though. My first printer was a used Ender 3 v2 that I modified and tuned quite a bit until I was finally tired of issues with the bowden extruder and got myself an Ender 3 S1 Pro. In hindsight, I should have purchased the S1 Pro in the first place, but the v2 did teach me valuable lessons, even though I quite probably spent more time fixing and tuning the thing than enjoying successful prints.
The S1 Pro ended up accumulating a lot of dust over my two years of ownership and I now own a Qidi Q2. That one has its own set of issues and design flaws, but their support is okay and for what it costs, it can print an astonishing variety of materials with good to great quality.
Yeah, I’m not even sure what to get now. But they’re taking this Frankenstein monstrosity back or I’m going to burn them to the ground. I’m loud, angry, and litigious.
I thought everyone knew the company was crap years ago?
Well I wish you would have told me that 3 months ago.
Anyone have problems with elegoo carbon?
I’m sure there is a lot of problems with creality, but are you sure that you have an original one? Parts not fitting is really strange.
Different revisions. They’ve released K1C (with different parts in some places) after K1, but they didn’t do an official refresh for Max (which got some of the upgrades like new nozzle) silently. And there were at least a few extruder revisions in between.
It sure is! I’ve been going back and forth with them for months. They’ve admitted the problem.
This is sad to hear. I have an Ender 3 Pro that has been nothing short of a workhouse for 6.5 years now. I’ve upgraded a few parts here and there as thats kinda the fun. Dual Z motors 2 yrs after, upgraded the hot end to a direct extrusion one a year or so after that so I could print TPU. Just Got the silent motherboard about a year ago. Solid as a rock. A friend got the CR-10 shortly after, same luck.
With all the issues and sketchy closed source madness Prusa and Bamboo are having, i was tempted to upgrade to a much larger Creality unit, but I guess I’ll rethink or wait on that now.
Don’t buy Creality. I really liked the K1 but their support is insanely user-hostile.
I had a CR-10 vSomething a while back. Never really knew the version because it seemed like amalgamation of all their revisions.
I spent more time calibrating and dialing it in than actually printing. That was the first and last Creality product I owned.
I currently have a P1S but with the anti-consumer show they’ve been putting on if I do have to replace it I think the only printer I’d consider is something Prusa. Even though I’ve never had one, my first printer was a crappy Prusa clone that still was easier than anything else I’ve had aside from the P1S.
I’ve been eyeballing a Snapmaker U1, myself lately. Wanting to upgrade from my Ender 3 V3
So I didn’t buy any new parts for my ender 3 pro but I had to print a few things before I could print with any kind of consistency.
- Bed screw locks. My bed would drift away from where I leveled it. This would cause it to fail on larger prints a lot
- A filament roller with bearings. The rolls always seemed to have trouble pulling filament
- Direct drive (Satansa?) for the extruder so it didn’t need to push and pull through that long tube
- I already had this but a spark plug feeler gauge and moving the zAxis is the what i’ve found to be the best way to level your bed. I like .7mm for this
All of these should probably work with yours, not sure if you still have it. If not make sure you have a caliper and make adjustments in your slicer or tinkercad or just do a lil post processing
Edit: Here are some links https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5020676 Print in place bearings https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6070269 Bed locks I use, recommend doing those first since that’ll make the most difference https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4662728 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4555065 One of these should work, you just would need to remount your extruder that you have You want the bent feeler gauge type like this https://a.co/d/03e9xyxV so it’s easy to hold. Your local auto store should have it
What was the part that didn’t fit?
Nothing fits. I originally ordered regular nozzles because it said they were K1, but I went to replace one and out came a unicorn.
Then I wanted to replace my thermistor, but lo and behold, the connections didn’t match.
I think the only thing I’ve bought that fit was the camera, and that didn’t even fit properly - the head bangs into it all the time.
