Comment by therouwboat
6 months ago
I have Creality Ender3 v3 and Prusa mk4s and they are not the same, you can get them to produce same quality, but ender requires more tinkering and I have had more failed prints.
Creality software is awful, you get no firmware updates for a year and then you get 4 on same day, like do they even test before release? Slicer is also buggy and default settings seem to be max everything, so its loud and fast and has print quality issues.
When I was building the prusa kit, I kept thinking that this is how you should make a product, the machine feels well thought out and documentation is great. Of course prusa is 3x the cost of ender.
Bambu is who's winning this space and largely took 3d printing from a hobby for its own sake to "it's another tool in your shop".
My bambu was FAR cheaper than a comparable prusa, and I took it out of the box, put filament in it, and it started producing effectively perfect prints immediately.
I just got a Creality K1 Max and I'm over the moon with it. Granted, my only frame of reference was a Prusa i3 knockoff kit I bought almost 10 years ago, upgraded with 3d printed parts, replaced the power supply with one from an old server, and added dual extruders. Basically If I wanted to use it, I'd have to tinker for hours to get a print started, and printing anything too large would almost definitely fail, or warp off the bed.
I've done multiple prints on the K1 Max where I started it, went to bed, and it was there, finished for me in the morning.
Since I'm familiar with the process, I just jumped straight to using OrcaSlicer and never touched creality's software. It definitely feels like Chinese hardware is progressing much quicker than their software.
I need an enclosed design and wanted to go coreXY, and Prusa's offering in that category was out of my budget, but they seem like a fabulous company.