I’ve been struggling with my K1 since Christmas. I bought it on sale for Black Friday and no matter who I contact at Creality, no one can tell me what replacement parts to order. K1 parts don’t fit my printer. They want pictures to see what ‘buckle’ I have, because my serial number isn’t enough information, but who wants to tear down a printer just to take pictures? Now my thermistor is broken (a leg weld just fell right off while I was fixing a clog), and I can’t order a new one because what do I order? This printer doesn’t take K1 parts. Every time I order something, it has to get shipped back. I’m annoyed and venting, but also trying to help anyone else considering a Creality printer. Don’t do it. Their support is a joke and they take zero accountability.
I’ve added an image for help explaining the problem. These two JST connections are completely different, but both are supposed to be for the K1. And both of these listings are Creality Official:
Unfortunately, creality has always been known for this sort of stuff and the sad part is they have not improved at all. Just last week, I had a friend buy a used ender 3 neo. Mainboard has 4.2.2 version, you’d think that would be a u useful information. But turns out - there is a silent and a non-silent version of 4.2.2. So firmwares are not compatible. But I found out not all 4.2.2 are even with the same mcu - some have stm32 and some gd32 (a clone). So my friend - being inexperienced, upon finding that EEPROM setting saving was not enabled by default, promptly flashed the wrong firmware and bricked the printer. I helped him flash klipper, he’s printing again. But creality has been mixing and matching parts with no tracking or any logic or reason since forever. I thought they will up their game after bambu pressure, but apparently not.
Oh damn. I’m discovering they’re so much worse than I thought.
My only advice is - don’t give up. A good thing is there is a cheap and usually reliable way to fix this. Some combination of parts will work, but you will have to do a lot of research and/or trial and error. You will then be a lot more knowledgeable to fix your printer in the future. This is in contrast to buying a printer like bambulab, where everything works out of the box, but it will cost more upfront. I’ve already worked with a bunch of creality printers and know how to solve most of the problems, so I will choose the more open source and cheaper route every time, but it’s not for everyone, or even most people. You already have a creality printer, so it may make sense to try to fix it. But also, at one point, you may value reliability more than cost.
No, I don’t mind replacing things. But how? Do I just buy a slew of different parts from random sellers? Creality parts don’t fit. I’ve tried.
Well, tbh, I’m not familiar enough about K1, is the hardware open source? If so, can you compare the parts? If you have some vastly different model to the current one, perhaps you have a preproduction or an early rev? It may be that you need to convert a lot of it to the new style. I don’t know where you could ask for help, but some bigger community may help you better. Reluctantly, I suggest trying reddit, perhaps there, someone has gone into similar issues. At the very least, it may attract creality’s attention, and they may help you to avoid bad press.
Oh, my model is the current one. It’s the older ones that everything is tailored to. That’s the whole problem 🤣
Wow, that is somehow even worse. 😯
Yeah, I’m really annoyed. I had bought a bunch of nozzles in advance, so when I needed the replacement, I’d have it. Imagine my shock when my printer spit out a unicorn nozzle on the day before Christmas Eve, after everything had closed. I was in the middle of printing Christmas stuff. I was LIVID.