The Fastest 3D Printer I’ve Seen – Creality CR-10 SE Review
Summary:
Positive Points:
- Exceptional print speeds of up to 600 millimeters per second, providing fast print times without sacrificing quality.
- Advanced features such as input shaping and power-loss detection enhance print quality and reliability.
- Smooth assembly process with intuitive touch screen controls and comprehensive software options, including Creality Cloud connectivity.
Negative Points:
- Extremely loud print cooling fan, reaching up to 60 decibels, which may be disruptive in shared environments.
- Occasional minor inconveniences with wifi connectivity issues, though they do not impact printing functionality.
- Limited build volume compared to other printers in its class, with a size of 220mm x 220mm x 265mm.
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Video Transcript:
Hey everyone and welcome back to Hoffman Engineering. Today we are taking a look at the Creality CR-10 SE, an advanced, high speed 3D printer boasting 600 mm per second print speeds, hardened steel nozzle with a ceramic heater, automatic calibration, and runs Klipper with all the advanced features that firmware provides. But does this printer meet those high-speed claims? Lets find out.
[Disclaimer]
Before we begin, this CR-10 SE was provided for me to review by SainSmart, a leading retailer of cnc, 3d printing, scanning, and other Maker-related tools and electronics. They aren’t paying me for this review, and everything I say is my own honest opinion after using the printer for the last month. My videos do have affiliate links in the description, which you can use to help support my channel at no additional cost. Lets get into it.
[Specs]
The CR-10 SE is the latest in the long line of Creality’s CR series of printers. It is a filament based 3D printer with a build volume of 220 millimeters by 220 millimeters by 265 millimeters. It’s a modest print volume, but print size isn’t its main selling point, speed is. This printer prints _fast_, at speeds up to 600 millimeters per second. The sample 3D Benchy included with the printer prints in 22 minutes, at 0.25 millimeter layer height. This blew my mind the first time I saw it, as I normally expect benchy’s to take an hour and a half to 2 hours to print. But I was consistently printing with infill of 400 millimeters per second and walls at 300 millimeters per second and the CR-10 SE was hardly sweating.
Every feature of this printer is designed to support these print speeds. Starting with the hotend. The CR-10 SE has a cylindrical 60 watt ceramic heater that fully wraps around the volcano-style nozzle. This heats up quickly, from room temp to 200 celsius in under 45 seconds, and the long melt zone allows the filament to completely melt even at extremely fast print speeds. The nozzle is a 0.4 millimeter hardened steel nozzle, which allows printing of abrasive materials like glow-in-the-dark, metal filled, or glass fiber filaments. And the hotend is rated up to 300 degrees celsius, so you can use high-temperature materials like nylon or polycarbonate.
To feed the filament at high speeds, you need a strong extruder. The CR-10 SE uses the Sprite extruder, a direct drive extruder with dual gears for 1.75 millimeter filament. It does an excellent job at gripping the filament, and I never had any skipping or slipping even at the highest speeds.
At the front of the hotend is a powerful 12,000 rpm cooling fan, which blows through a u-shaped duct that wraps entirely around the nozzle. This provides effective cooling, which is necessary for high-speed printing. The fan is extremely loud when running at full speed, peaking around 60 decibels. It is unpleasant to be in the same room while the printer is running, you would not want this in an office or shared environment. Even at lower fan speeds like 10 to 20 percent, the fan is still very noticeable. The fan does a great job though, quickly cooling the print providing clean overhangs and preventing blobbing on very small layers.
The hotend also has both a CR-touch probe and a strain sensor. The CR-touch probe allows for auto bed leveling, and the strain sensor on the hotend automatically detects the z offset for the nozzle. This means the nozzle is always the perfect distance from the bed, giving a perfect first layer every time.
Both the x and y axis use linear rails for smooth motion that should last a long time. I found the rails to be very sturdy, even at the extremely fast print speeds. There are no physical endstops on the CR-10 SE, the stepper drivers can detect when they bump against the end of the rails and use that for homing. Both axis are belt-driven, with easy tension adjustments at the end.
The x-axis attaches to the z-axis using rubber v-slot wheels, and is driven by dual z-axis motors. The dual leadscrews are connected by a belt at the top which ensures both motors stay in sync. At the top of the printer we find an LED light bar. It gives off plenty of light, and I love the look of it. It can be turned off by a switch on the side if you prefer. Also at the top is the spool holder as well as filament-runout sensor. The sensor will detect when filament is missing and automatically pause the print. It then switched to the extrude/retract menu to let you change filament. You can then resume the print right where it left off.
Moving down to the print bed, the CR-10 SE has a magnetic, flexible PEI build plate. It provided plenty of grip for all of my prints, and gives a matte texture to the bottom layer of the prints. Flexing the bed makes the prints pop right off. The bed can be heated up to 110 degrees celsius.
To the right is the 4.3 inch full color touch screen. This is one of the best control panels that I’ve used on a printer. It is responsive to the touch, and all the controls are intuitively layed out. If your slicer supports a Thumbnail image in the gcode, it’ll show the preview in the file menu. It also has a complete history tab showing print times. It makes it easy to connect to wifi, and link to Creality Cloud, which I’ll talk about more in a bit. The wireless connection also allows for easy and automatic firmware upgrades.
On top of the control panel is the USB input for transferring print files. At the front of the printer is a large storage drawer with enough room for all the tools you could need. The base of the printer is a heavy cast aluminum frame. This frame provides a sturdy base that the z-axis attaches to. I’ve had no issues with vibrations or parts loosening even at various print speeds.
The printer is powered by a 32-bit dual core cpu and uses silent stepper motor drivers. Even at high speeds, the motors are near silent, and are completely drowned out by the loud print cooling fan.
[Input Shaping]
The printer uses the Creality OS firmware, which is Creality’s customized version of the Klipper firmware.
The firmware has some advanced features enabled, such as input shaping. This is a technique to reduce vibrations by teaching the printer how much it would normally vibrate when the hotend or bed moves. Usually this involves a long manual calibration process, however the CR-10 SE will calibrate itself automatically. It has acceleration sensors built in, and during the initial setup process it will run a vibration frequency sweep. By rapidly moving the hotend and bed at a large range of different frequencies, it will learn how the axes respond and can control the motors to compensate for those vibrations.
Without input shaping, you can see “ringing”, “echo”, or “ghosting” artifacts at corners, as the printer continues to vibrate after changing directions. With input shaping enabled, those artifacts are completely removed. This means that prints with hard edges, like these low-poly prints, turn out nice and smooth.
[Power Loss Detection]
The CR-10 SE also has power-loss detection. When power is lost mid-print, when power is restored the printer will ask if you would like to continue. It’ll then heat back up, re-home the x and y axes, and resume printing.
[Software]
The software is also a big selling point. You can use any slicer you want, generate gcode, and print from USB. But the CR-10 SE has another way to boost your productivity. By connecting the printer to Wifi, you can connect the printer to Creality Cloud. This allows you to search and slice files directly online or via their app, send the files wireless to the printer, and even start printing remotely.
You can also use Creality’s own slicer, called Creality Print, available for windows, mac, and linux. Creality Print as a slicer works well, with built-in profiles for almost every Creality printer. The profiles for the CR-10 SE worked great out of the box, I had to do very little tweaking to get it printing the way I wanted. Once you have your models all sliced, you can send the file to the printer wirelessly or upload it to Creality Cloud to print using the App. You can also monitor an entire print farm using Creality Print, watching printer progress, starting and stopping prints, and even monitoring them with Creality’s optional cameras.
I was very impressed with the workflow, and found myself using the one-click printing feature of Creality Print for almost every time. I also love seeing the print history, but that didn’t stop me from also importing those print into 3DPrintLog.com.
[Assembly]
Switching topics, the CR-10 SE was very easy to assemble. Screw on the z-axis to the base, attach the light bar, connect the touch screen, attach the spool holder, and plug in all the cables. I especially like how all the cables have special built-in connectors in the base. It gives a very clean look, and keeps the cables nice and short and out of the way. Overall the assembly took about 30 minutes.
When you first power it on, it displays a privacy policy which you must accept before you continue. It then walks you through connecting to wifi, signing into creality cloud (which you can do later), and runs through the self-test process. This will run the auto-bed leveling, determine the z-offset for the nozzle height, and run through the input shaping calibrations. It takes about 10 minutes to do this initial calibration, and it does it all automatically. Once completed, you are ready to print!
[Prints]
So lets talk about the prints. Overall I am extremely happy with both the quality of the prints, and the speed that they print.
[Benchy]
Lets start with the 3D Benchy gcode file included on the printer. This is a 20 minute benchy. Thats right, only 20 minutes. Most of the infill is 400 millimeters per second, with walls at 200 millimeters per second. I was very impressed by it. The bow is perfect, with no deformations at the very base when it starts the overhangs. There is a little curling at the overhanging edge of the roof and smokestack. But I would not be able to tell that this was a 20 minute benchy versus a 2 hour benchy.
[Large Benchy]
And speaking of benchy, how about a 413% benchy? The last time I printed this large of a benchy was in my Ender 7 review, which printed at 250 mm/s at 0.3 millimeter layer height, and took 9 hours to print. I printed the same size and infill on the CR-10 SE, but printed at 400 mm/s and 0.2 millimeter layer height, and it took just under 7 hours to print. And just look at this quality. Not only was it 2 hours faster to print, but it was also at a thinner layer height. There are way fewer defects on the bow, and just look at the difference that input shaping and pressure advance has on the text at the back. Incredible difference.
[Captain America]
These Captain America busts by Eastman were printed at 300 millimeters per second at 0.3 millimeter and 0.1 millimeter layer heights respectively. At 0.3 millimeters, there was a bit of a problem with the initial overhang, but the extruder and hotend did a great job at melting the filament at such a high flow rate. At 0.1 millimeters layer height, the overhangs are perfect. Interestingly, I do see a bit of ringing on one side of the bust. The angle must be just right to where the input shaping isn’t perfect. All the areas where I would normally expect ringing, like the sharp angles of the pillar are non-existent though.
[Vase Mode]
Spiral Vase Mode works great, it had no issues keeping up with the constant z-axis motion. I had to play around with the line width and minimum layer cooling time settings though to get the vase-mode rocket to print. I had a couple of failures where the overhangs were too much. The tip of the antenna is perfect though, and shows the power of the cooling fan.
[Other Samples]
And here’s a few more example prints, all printed around 300 millimeters per second. Layers are consistent, the edges are crisp, and I had a really good experience with the quality of the prints that I was getting.
[Issues]
For as much praise as I gave Creality Print, I did run into a couple of minor inconveniences during my testing. I’d sometimes get into a strange wifi connectivity issue, where it would sometimes get stuck in a disconnect-reconnect loop. It never stopped me from controlling the printer, but it does make the temperature graphs look strange. I didn’t run into any hardware issues with the printer however, it was printing consistently from the moment I finished assembly.
[Conclusion]
In conclusion, the Creality CR-10 SE has fundamentally changed the way I think about 3D printing. I used to be content with print speeds of 60 millimeters per second, and thought 120 millimeters per second was just for travel speeds. But seeing the results that 300, 400, and even 600 millimeters per second can achieve has blown me away. The automatic calibration is very well done, completely removing bed leveling and z-axis offset adjustment. And the input shaping calibration gives incredible results. The hardened steel nozzle and ceramic heater allows for printing almost any material that you can think of. The wifi connectivity and creality cloud app opens the door to easy slicing and print monitoring. And even the appearance of the CR-10 SE is stylish, with the angled coverings nicely illuminated by the included light bar. You’ll want to enjoy that appearance from another room however, with the extremely loud print cooling fan being the only negative that I can find.
I think the best thing about the Creality CR-10 SE is that all of this is available for less than $500 US Dollars. The retail price is $459 US dollars, with sales prices as low as $386 US dollars. Even at full price, this is an absolutely amazing price for the number of features packed into the CR-10 SE. If you have a suitable location for this loud printer, such as a separate room or enclosure, then I highly recommend this printer for almost anyone. Beginners will find all the automatic calibration very helpful, and even long-time enthusiasts like myself might get a new understanding of print speeds. Great job Creality, I am impressed.
[Outro]
Thank you all for watching my review of the CR-10 SE. What was your favorite feature of the CR-10 SE? Let me know in the comments below. And let me know if there is something you think this printer is missing. And if you are still in the market for a new 3D printer, why not check out my review of one of Creality’s most entry-level printers, the Ender-2 Pro. That printer is still going strong after a couple of years. So thank you all for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
