Creality K3 Review: It’s a Tool Changer, not a game changer

Creality has finally caught up with the tool changer fad, presenting us with a speedy, four-nozzle system named “KliTek” mounted on a Creality K3. Tool changers are the way to go, since they do not compromise speed for color and eliminate the need to waste your filament in the form of “printer poop.” The K3 is still programmed to create a purge tower on multicolor prints, but this is a small fraction of the filament wasted using any type of AMS-style color system.

The new KliTek nozzle system supports printing with different-sized nozzles in the same print, which sounds more useful than I actually found practical. Users will also be able to blend colors in Creality Print, a trick picked up from Snapmaker’s open-source Full Spectrum. This method creates the optical illusion of new colors by stacking very thin layers of filament.

The tool-changing system works very well and never dropped or misplaced a tool during the review. Creality has tucked 37 sensors inside the printer, with 12 dedicated to the nozzle swapping process alone. No, I’m not going to name all of them, but they do work. I didn’t get a single bad print during the review, even when running at higher speeds.

However, the K3 looks suspiciously like a Snapmaker U1 clone, departing from the black and grey aesthetic of the K1 and K2 3D printers. It has conveniently placed, side-mounted spool holders that are a tad too large for many 3rd party brands of filament. We’re not sure if they’re trying to herd us towards a walled garden of Creality plastics, or if they simply didn’t check out all the options.

Unfortunately, the Creality K3 needs a lid for printing high-temperature filaments, and this “tophat” was not ready at the time of the review. Creality says the top hat will be packaged with a TPU Kit to enable the printing of super soft materials.

The K3 is currently on preorder with a price tag of $849. The competition for affordable tool changers is pretty stiff, and Creality hasn’t brought anything new to the table, which is keeping the K3 off our list of the very best 3D printers you can buy. But if you’re a fan of the Creality ecosystem, it’s a welcome addition to the fleet.

Specifications: Creality K3

Creality K3: Included in the Box

The Creality K3 comes with everything you need to assemble and maintain your printer. The included tool kit has hex keys, side cutters, grease, and a nice nozzle cleaner. There is also a paper copy of the quick installation guide and a 200g spool of white Creality filament.

Design of the Creality K3

The Creality K3 has four tools, each with a built-in ceramic heater, nozzle with a hardened steel insert, and filament path. The KliTek system supports printing with different nozzle sizes and different materials in the same print. Like the Prusa/Bondtech INDX, the extruder and cooling fan are mounted on a single toolhead.

The rest of the Creality K3 shares its design with the K2. The printer has a solid metal frame clad in white plastic and a glass door with dampened hinges. The motion system is Core XY, with a linear rail for the X axis and linear rods for the Y axis. The bed rides on four linear rods driven by 2 lead screws belted to a single stepper motor on the bottom of the printer. Parts cooling is provided by a blower fan in the toolhead and a large side-mounted blower fan mounted on the left side of the case. The stock Creality K3 comes with an open top, so chamber cooling is not an issue. Unfortunately, this makes the printer rather loud.

The Creality K3 has a 720p camera located at the top right of the printer, which does a great job providing print monitoring from the device tab in the slicer and the Creality Cloud app. There is also an AI camera that monitors for build plate detection, foreign object detection, and spaghetti detection. There were no false positives during the test.

Creality’s most annoying design choice is the overly large spool holders. These things are so big, they catch the rim when loading most cardboard spools and simply do not work with spools I had on hand from Prusa, Cookiecad, and Ambrosia. Polymaker and Bambu spools did work, but there’s no reason for this other than to limit the use of other filament brands, which is not good.

We did not get to review the special TPU kit, which will allow the machine to run super soft TPU, which is becoming quite trendy for those interested in printing shoes. The kit will replace the CFS Nano material handler with a CFS Flex and add dry boxes for the filament and a special high-flow nozzle. The kit will be bundled with a lid/ tophat with ventilation and air filtration.

Assembling the Creality K3

The Creality K3 arrives with some assembly required. After removing the packing material, you need to remove the four screws securing the bed for shipping, and there is a nice reminder to do this when first firing up the printer.

The spool holders twist into the printer’s side panels and are numbered to match the filament slots. Two PTFE guide brackets, also numbered, need to be secured to the rear of the printer with M4x6 screws, as does the bracket for the CFS Nano. There is a communication cable that runs from the rear of the printer to the CFS Nano as well.

The tool cables attach to the top of the printer with 2 M4x12 screws each, with the PTFE tubes running to the CFS Nano. The toolhead communication cable is attached with M3x5 screws on the toolhead and M4x8 screws on the right side of the printer. Attaching PTFE guide tubes from the side brackets up to the CFS Nano completes the assembly.

Leveling the Creality K3

The Creality K3 does an excellent job calibrating and bed leveling as part of its initial self-check. Bed leveling can be repeated at the start of each print.

Loading Filament on the Creality K3

Loading filament into the Creality K3 is pretty simple. Filament is inserted into a port on the side bracket, which guides it up to the CFS Nano, which does the rest. The filament waits in the tube until called for by a print job. It is then loaded into the tool.

To unload, the tool is selected from the printer’s screen. The printer then cuts the filament and retracts it out of the tool, and it can be manually pulled out of the CFS Nano the rest of the way.

All four filament slots can read RFID tags in the spools to load information for Creality-branded filament. For other filament brands, the printer will beep to remind you to manually enter the filament type and color.

Preparing Files / Software for Creality K3

The latest version of Creality Print 7.3 is available from Creality.com. It is based on the Orca Slicer and Ultimaker Cura Engine. The default settings worked well, and there is a new AI assistant mode, which is still labeled as beta. At the time of the review, the only thing missing for the K3 was a button to map the filaments into the slicer. The button is still there for the earlier K-series printers in the slicer. The slicer does have filament mixing for more color combinations.

A link at the top of the page will take you to Creality’s AI Creation tools and Creality Cloud, Creality’s online file-sharing service. If you don’t like the Cloud, you can export files from the slicer and either move them to the printer with a USB stick or move them over your home network by accessing the printer’s FLUIDD interface. To access FLUIDD, you need to find the IP address of your printer and type that into a browser window, followed by:4408 with no spaces.

Printing on the Creality K3

The Creality K3 comes with a 200g spool of white Hyper PLA. If you want more colors and materials, you should check out our guide to the best filaments for 3D printing for suggestions.

For the first print, I was going to run a pumpkin fidget toy, so I grabbed a spool of Prusa orange and was really quite cross when it didn’t fit on the preposterously large spool holders. I decided right then to mod the spool holder with the Creality Pika scanner. I took the scan into Tinkercad and reduced the diameter of the spool holder, then ran the new spool holders in Inland basic white using a .2 layer height and an average print speed of 170mm/s. The print took 8 hours and 34 minutes to complete. I do not usually mod printers while reviewing them, but Prusa Orange is perfect for pumpkins.

Below is the original spool holder (left) and the modded version (right).

For my second print, I did a pumpkin fidget toy I found on MakerWorld using Prusa orange PLA, Elegoo green PLA Pro, and Polymaker black HT-PLA Pro. I used a .2 mm layer height and printed with an average speed of 160mm/s; the print took a little over six hours. It came out nice without a hint of overextrusion. I liked it so much I decided to print it again scaled up to 200%. Using the same settings, the larger print took 16 hours and 28 minutes and is also very nice with a good fidget action.

For PETG, I printed a plate of 3 flexy geckos I found on Creality Cloud using Prusa Carmine Red, Prusa Sky Blue, and Bambu Lab basic white PETG. Using a .2mm layer height and running at 180mm/s, the print took 5 hours 45 minutes to complete. The geckos are smooth and clean, plus all of the links work perfectly with no stringing or overextrusion present.

The Creality K3 did not have its special “flex” CFS at the time of review, but I decided to try TPU anyway. I printed some omni wheels for a Death Racer we’re working on in both hard TPU for MFS from Inland and some 95A Inland rainbow TPU. The stock CFS Nano had no trouble pushing these, and the toolhead extruder had no problem with it. It did well. Trouble came when I tried some 90A TPU from Bambu Lab. I’d stick to the harder stuff until the TPU kit is ready.

I did get good prints with the black TPU for AMS and the rainbow 95A filaments. The prints are omni-wheel rollers from the Deathracer project of Michael Baddeley. Both sets of eight rollers were printed at a .2mm layer height at an average speed of 50mm/s and each took a little over 4 hours to print. There was a tiny bit of stringing, but otherwise the rollers are perfect.

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Michael Baddeley’s omni wheels in hard TPU for MFS. (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Michael Baddeley’s omni wheels in normal 95A TPU. (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Bottom Line

The Creality K3 is a terrific printer that should become more capable with accessories like the tophat and TPU kit in the future. The oversized spools are a little annoying, but easily fixed. The only thing I worry about is Creality’s track record of releasing a printer, then introducing a better “pro” or “max” model within four months. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a six- or eight-color K3 variant before next spring.

At its prelaunch price of $849, it’s $100 more than a similarly equipped, slightly larger Snapmaker U1, which is a tough place to be. It is also the same price as the fully enclosed Flashforge Creator 5 Pro, which we didn’t review, but we did check out the budget model Flashforge Creator 5, which is currently available for $699.

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