This Creality Clone Is NOT A Plug And Play Printer

EXPLANATION OF QUALITY. VALUE, AND RECOMMENDATION RATINGS: At half the price of a Creality CR-10S I expected some corners cut, but... As it came out of the box, mechanically it would not have worked. Workmanship and attention to detail was very bad - no deburring of drilled holes, a lack of adjustment cams for the rail wheels (apparent cost-cutting), and mis-drilled holes on the X-axis bridge and/or roller trucks (causing alignment problems) were the major issues. Many of the assembly screws, NOT including the extruded v-rail mounting screws, but mainly related to the vertical jack screws, were loose - in an attempt to make the printer function mechanically. This would also make the printer very inaccurate. The biggest problem was with the vertical jack screw and vertical frame alignment. It took most of one day and some minor machining to put the printer together where it was aligned correctly and square, and would function properly at all. Luckily I am also a hobby machinist or I would not have been able to repair it. After the repair, mechanically it worked perfectly. Next I had bed leveling problems. Eventually using a surface plate and gauges, I determined the glass plate was bowed about 0.004". (Only a couple of thousandths of an inch make a big difference when laying down filament. Nozzle clearance in bed leveling is about 0.003" to 0.004") After orienting the glass correctly to compensate, the 4 spring clips pulled out the bow and now the bed is usable. The control unit seems to be running correctly so far. The encoder knob is a little flaky, but usable. The hot end suffers badly from heat creep and jammed the filament in the Bowden tube repeatedly. I am in the process of replacing it with an e3D hot end. (which I probably would have done to the Creality anyway) (UPDATE: The e3D all metal hot end fixed the heat creep!) I do not recommend this printer to the faint of heart. If you are one who likes modifying and upgrading your 3D printer, this might be the one for you. With the money you save on this unit, you can get the upgrades to make it into a fine printer. If you are a consumer user, this is NOT the printer for you as it is definitely NOT a plug and play printer - go for the genuine Creality printer instead. This printer might be considered a good value if you are looking for a starting platform for modifications and customization. For the average consumer, probably not such a good value. All of the individual parts in this printer seem to be identical to the Creality CR-10S (Except the firmware, of course) and are very serviceable. The workmanship of manufacture is NOT of very good quality and is where the printer's problems are centered. There is always the possibility that I got a fluke - the one that got past quality control, but for the price, maybe not. I only have this example to compare with. I hope this helps you determine if this printer at this price is the right one for you.Read full review

Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New