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Review on πŸ–¨οΈ Carborundum 3D Printers - High-Quality Printing at 300X300X400mm by Paul Williams

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Not the best entry-level option, but a good printer for the price

I urgently needed an extra 300x300 desktop printer for a project and decided to take a chance and buy it - it had all the features I was looking for (build size, dual Z, filament sensor, and top filament holder) at a suspiciously low price. I already have 7 printers from several different manufacturers so I decided to give Creasee a try. First of all, there are almost no assembly instructions in the package - there was a folded instruction card in the package, which is in Chinese on one side and English on the other side - but it really wasn't an assembly instruction, more like telling you how to use the hot -End, being able to check the frame etc for wobbles and fix it is all you need to look for, but it won't help you put the thing together. There is an image file instruction on the included memory card, which is also pretty useless. You can pretty much take a look at the build images here in the product listing and it's basically the same as what they give you to set up. This guide completely overlooks the fact that the hotend was not attached to the X-Gantry's sled, leaving one wondering which of the included screws are for that. Beyond that, if you've built printers in the past, you shouldn't have too much trouble with them. Once I got everything together I turned it on and found the hot end cover vibrated horribly so I took it off. and indeed the hot-end fan was defective - two of the blades were deformed - not even broken, just oddly shaped and throwing the whole thing off balance. So the fan had to be replaced immediately. The hot end build is very different from any other machine I have as it has a small circuit board inside with connections for fans and other parts. In a way, that's good, as I was able to fit a new fan in without soldering, but it's still frustrating to have to replace a broken part right out of the box, and again - there will be additional difficulties for a novice typist ( and probably waiting for a spare part) in their hands. When it was finally up and running, with a little more effort I was able to align it and get it to print, and it produced a good print on the first try. The touchscreen interface is identical to one of my other printers, so I was already familiar with it. It has an alignment assist feature with pre-programmed alignment points above the 4 springs and in the middle, although I did notice that the images associated with point 2 and point 4 were swapped and didn't show the correct position. I've been typing non-stop for about 48 hours and have had stable prints, although it happened to throw back a thermal runaway error a bit, so I'm now wondering if the thermistor is defective. The time will show. For added fun - it has a resume printing feature. So when I restarted the computer after it got out of control I tried to continue and tried to continue. However, it will continue at the beginning of the layer it was on when the error occurred, so you end up with a weird flattened overextrusion in the part of that layer that was already printed. You can dance around it with creative flow and small step adjustments, but it was annoying. To make matters worse, the printer was a bit out of balance and sped up the print speed both while driving and when filling after I resumed printing - it ran insanely fast. I don't know why or if it's something that can be fixed with firmware, but I tested it after a couple of temperature errors and it happened every time I started working again. You definitely get a lot of nice features for this price on this machine. Day if you know your way around 3D printers and don't mind tinkering around a bit - the question is how many things do you need to replace right away and how will the printer perform over time. I wouldn't recommend it at all for those new to printing, but if you're looking for an inexpensive machine to deal with the time pressure like I did - it got the job done, albeit with a bit of persuasion.

Pros
  • Easy to read control panel
Cons
  • There are new competitors