I have had my Creality Ender 3 Pro for a while now and I have upgraded it quite a lot. Lately I have been thinking about wether I should put in some more money (better hotend, maybe new steppers, maybe enclosure, maybe part cooling fan) or if I should buy a new printer that is a more of complete package. A bit more build volume would be nice as well.
I am intrigued by the Bambu Labs printers but I don’t like their somewhat proprietary approach. So I have been looking around for competitors and I saw that Creality has shown their new K2 Plus with an AMS. I wonder if it’s worth waiting for that. The specs sound good. Is the K1 good now? I heard it had some problems in the beginning.
Honestly, I don’t think there are any creality printers that “just work”.
I know you threw Bambu out as an option, but man, I love my P1P. The thing just prints with no drama, fuss, or headaches.
Print 24/7 for a week? 100% success rate.
Don’t print for 3 months? Printer levels the bed and immediately makes a successful print.
Yes, closed source bad, and propritary bad, and cloud bad, but in terms of pushing a button and a thing gets printed without even thinking about having to fuck with it? Pretty much unbeatable. (Or, at least, light years ahead of any of the other printers I’ve ever had.) It’s so good and reliable I don’t even sit there watching the first layer to make sure it’s going to print successfully because of course it is.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am very impressed by the performance of the Bambu printers. They really kicked gave the established brands a kick in the butt price and performance wise.
Still it makes me uneasy to have a closed source system. I don’t mind butting some effort into my printer if it is more open. I mean my ender 3 is a lot of work. I’d assume it gets better than that.
Oh I fully understand and appreciate your position. I’m pro open-source-everything, but I made the pragmatic choice in this case because, well, years of fiddling with cheap printers made me realize that I really am not into this for the fiddling but more the end product, and if nothing else, the Bambu printers are really good at damn near being appliances.
Hell, my 2d printers are more of a pain to keep working than this thing is, heh.