Constantly demanding perfection, Denise Bertacchi is finally pleased with Creality. Well, almost.
The K1C feels like a placeholder from a company that wants to constantly impress customers with shiny new products. Clearly, Creality wanted to show off its improvements to the K1’s design, but wasn’t ready to announce the K2 – a name we now know is being reserved for a four-colour 3D printer.
The C in K1C stands for Carbon, which is a bit of a red herring. You don’t need to redesign an entire printer to tackle abrasive carbon filled materials; all you need is a durable nozzle, which can be purchased for a few pounds on Amazon. Don’t get us wrong, the K1C is a superior printer, and the new steel-tipped Unicorn nozzle is definitely an improvement, but all this could have waited until the colour module was ready for retail.
One of the other improvements to the K1C is an all-metal extruder, an AI-assisted camera that comes as standard, a cabin filter and an improved levelling system. It remains the same size and speed as the K1, making it one of the best 3D printers you can buy.
The Creality K1C comes with everything you need to get your printer set up. You get tools to maintain the printer, side cutters, a plastic scraper and a USB stick. There’s also a sample spool of white Creality Hyper PLA to start your printing journey. You get a PDF copy of the manual, a copy of Creality Slicer and sample models in both pre-sliced GCODE and STL format, too. There’s also a very helpful video to help you operate your machine.
Klippered wings
The build plate is a smooth PEI-coated sheet that requires glue stick – annoying, but it works. It does not have Lidar, which is still reserved for the K1Max. It ships with a limited version of Klipper modded by Creality, but those interested in going full vanilla Klipper can easily root the firmware, as Creality has left the door open.
The biggest change on the K1C is the tri-metal nozzle, which Creality has dubbed a Unicorn style. This is a long, one-piece nozzle made from copper, with a titanium alloy heat break and a steel tip. The nozzle is proprietary, but they’re easily available at Creality’s store and on Amazon.
