My reaction to this is:
It looks like a more polished version of my CR-6SE. All of Andy's usual gripes (and mine) about the "not yet ready for prime-time" nature of hobbyist-grade 3DP were answered by the CR-6SE. 4 bolts and a few cables plugged in and I was literally printing 30 minutes after opening the box. It has fixed bed height with a reliable integrated self-initializing head that needs no "first-layer" zeroing and does automatic 16-point auto-leveling. It has great print quality right out of the box and continues to do so even after oodles of all-day prints. I love the printer; and in all honesty,
it already delivered a year and a half ago the "ready for an average non-techy user experience" that the Anker M5 promises now.What I hate about the printer is the same thing Andy hates most about the M5:
KICKSTARTER. And how the company can take advantage of you; because of the terms of the site, they can literally take your money and never deliver jack-shit.
I was an early backer on the CR-6SE, and CREALITY fucked us all.
HARD.They did eventually deliver our printers, but not until
AFTER delivering the first several dozen or so containerloads of printers to their wholesalers, and certainly
not in the timeframe they promised, by at least 2 months. We who bankrolled the production of their "new hawtness" languished for 2-6 months while watching other people show off their printers
in their hot little hands for about $50 more than we paid via the Kickstarter... sometimes, even
less than we paid in cases of "Lightning Sale" customers who got in on a promotion.
In short...
Fuck Kickstarter, and fuck any company releasing a 3DP on Kickstarter. I watched Alex's review on ShortCircuit; I like his generally leery attitude towards new gear and MFR claims, and I know he knows a fair bit about 3DP, but this was a very cursory examination, not a in-depth analysis of the whole ecosystem. Also, as with most of LTT, his idea of what is a "reasonable price" for things tends towards the upscale end of the market.
While I do like direct-drive hotend & strain-gauge leveling, and the
promise of 250mm/S printspeeds (I am highly dubious that it can actually deliver this for any large portion of an average utility-object print) and AI camera print defect detection, this printer is pretty much
made entirely of bespoke parts. I see maintenance potentially being a closed-ecology nightmare, and I would damn sure not just throw money at a company who knows they don't have to deliver as promised, especially to supposedly save $60 over retail.
Wait and buy it retail. After real 3DP gurus like Andy, Thomas and Chuck have a chance to use production models firsthand and pass judgement.
If I had the money to spend and they say it delivers, or even mostly delivers on most of its promises, I'd buy it. Or, if you're in the market for a 3DP right now, or can't justify the $700-800 pricetag, or have a deep abiding dislike/distrust of any closed-ecology tech widget, I'd say buy the CR-6SE. it's about half the price and is
mostly made of easy-to-acquire and cheap standard parts.
Here's Alex's vid; he does take the bottom off and you get to see the insides and the milled casting of the base:
mnem
*inspecting some linear actuators for future... projects* ![Evil >:D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xevil.gif.pagespeed.ic.tdrs7Uj5gu.png)