INTRODUCING: THE NEW CREALITY CR 10 3D PRINTER

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Other ToysReviews

INTRODUCTION

This big, budget-friendly printer is worth buying over the CR-10 for one reason: A filament sensor. Sure, the sensor is inelegantly added on and is a bit clunky and annoying, but the purpose it serves – especially when printing the large prints this machine is capable of doing – is worth it.

creality cr 10

DESIGN

On appearances alone, we discover the Creality CR-10 3D printer to have quite an appealing figure. There’s a stark simplicity to it, with clean black-coated aluminum rails all over, a plain 300 x 300mm glass print bed, and all of the brains neatly curtailed off to one side in a control box with mounted filament holder. The Creality CR-10 looks slim, prints big, and has mustard color go-faster stripes.

In any case, regardless of its slender frame, the Creality CR-10 is a big 3D printer. And we’re not just talking about its large build volume. This thing takes up more space in the All3DP print room than any other printer.

Zipping back and forth in only one dimension, the print head’s movement is only constrained to the X-axis. A rail held together on both ends (unlike its predecessor mentioned above) is driven by a single lead screw on the left-hand side. The other end is stabilized on the opposite frame by fixed V wheels and pulley secured in a track.

creality cr 10

This is scattered before long once you see the Creality CR-10 in action and start popping quality prints off the bed. Yet, it’s a part of the printer’s design that lingers in mind as something that could degrade in time.

SOFTWARE

The Creality CR-10 is more a blunt tool than a whole 3D printing package. The software you use is totally up to you, which is arguably one of the greatest strengths of such a “cheap” and open-ended 3D printer.

For the duration of our testing, we used Cura 2.6.2. Since the vanilla Cura does not feature a preloaded print profile for the Creality CR-10, you’ll need to dig the settings up somewhere online.

Saving your g-code to the provided microSD card (via the thoughtfully included USB adapter) is just a case of swapping it from the computer to the printer. Easy.

PRINTING

We use a lot of different 3D printers. And making the jump between them often highlights the quirks and foibles of each one. In the case of the Creality CR-10, one pitfall is that you must auto-home the 3D printer before each print job. Forgetting to do so mostly results in the print head trying to rip the print bed off.

Starting prints on the Creality CR-10 showed ringing and some very noticeable layer skipping. Nothing too troubling for a semi-assembled kit since such printers are usually a work-in-process — you should expect to be making tweaks to the Creality CR 10 as you put more prints under the machine’s belt. For our first few Benchy prints, a once over with hex wrench to tighten screws helped. As did removing some of the comically excessive lubricants on the lead screw.

creality cr 10

Pros

Standard build volume that dwarfs most printers

Easy assembly

Large prints make for impressive fun

Comfortable with fine detail

Removable glass print bed

Go-faster stripes

A lot of bang for your budget buck

Intuitive control box

Cons

Awkward extruder placement

Filament holder seems prone to tangling

Print preparation can sometimes be tedious

Feet inadequate to mitigate print bed inertia

The bed takes a long time to heat up

CONCLUSION

The Tornado’s print volume is the same as our tested Creality CR-10. No surprise then that the Creality CR-10 is also a heavily imitated by others. This means that there are a host of Creality CR-10-like machines out there that will offer similar a similar experience. Here’s the lowdown on these machines and their differences.

The Creality 3D Technology CR-10, to give it its awkwardly full title, is a decent 3D printer. Actually, at the cost, it’s a strong proposal —especially so when its resellers are frequently fire-selling the pants off it. Few other printers offer such a large print volume. And soaring around the $400 mark, the Creality CR-10 is an extraordinarily functional 3D printer capable of super-sizing your average 3D printing needs. But there are a couple of caveats. The design, while neat, has an unnecessarily large footprint. And out-of-the-box 3D printing of materials that are prone to warping or overly sensitive to temperature is off-limits.

Note that we haven’t necessarily tested these machines, so take all differences as “on paper” only. It is available on banggood.com for US$389.99

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