this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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Creality Ender-5 Max (piefed.social)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by esc@piefed.social to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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After hearing from an acquaintance that creality is good now (he specifically said that this model prints flawlessly, and he bought 10 of them), I've obtained one as well. It's shit, like, actually bad, no other words. Print quality is average at best; it can't heat the bed evenly. I needed to level it manually, and it still prints worse than an average bedslinger from 3 years ago. Print bed coating is very sensitive to dirt and dust and already breaks off. Even when it prints (and every second print fails), I can't leave it alone because it's just that unreliable. I don't think that I had such a frustrating experience with a printer after anet a8. Sadly I can't give it back. Should have gone with Sovol.

// Person that recommended it to me finally showed how it 'flawlessly' prints yesterday, essentially it's no different.

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[–] finalarbiter@piefed.social 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Creality machines are inexpensive for a reason- they use cheap components and have next to no quality control. As far as I'm aware, that's no better now than it was when they were peddling the first Ender 3s. It's entirely possible that your friend got lucky and you didn't in the quality lottery, it's just the way it goes sometimes.

Older Creality designs were great if you wanted a machine to tinker with. I would never recommend that brand for people who want a printer that just works, though.

I bought a CR6-SE from Creality several years ago for similar reasons to you. It had all the upgrades one would typically do to an Ender 3 and was supposed to be basically bulletproof. I don't think I ever got a successful print from it, and it's been relegated to paperweight duty until I finally get around to taking it apart for components.

[–] esc@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Other cheap chinese printers are often great, both value and quality. It's creality problem, I've had ender 3 before and it was a nighmare to make work but after that it printed alright as long as you didn't change anything. Here it will print okay one day and won't be able to finish first layer next day with same gcode

[–] finalarbiter@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Costs can be cut in a variety of ways and each manufacturer has different approaches that affect their end product differently. The main areas that are affected by cost-cutting measures first would typically be quality control (QC), research & development (R&D), and customer support.

In contrast to Creality, some budget manufacturers skimp on R&D instead of QC. They do this by taking existing designs developed by the open-source community (e.g. RepRap, Voron, etc.) and finding cheaper ways to produce them, rather than designing new machines in-house. For example, the Sovol SV08 is pretty obviously a Voron v2 with some custom parts to make it visually distinct.

[–] esc@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So Creality doesn't skimp on R&D? I couldn't tell tbh, it uses some kind of klipper pretty old-school technology overall and can't print.

[–] finalarbiter@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with Creality's R&D program and cannot really speak to their efforts in that department. They could very well not be pursuing much R&D in addition to cutting QC and having nonexistent customer support, but I didn't want to make claims in an area I'm uninformed.

[–] esc@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, it wasn't an attack on you or anyone in particular, I just feel dumb about buying a big pile of alluminium.

[–] finalarbiter@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago

You're good, I didn't take it as an attack. I totally understand where you're coming from, I used to manage a fleet of 12 ender 3 printers with varying degrees of modifications from the previous lab manager and hated every minute of it.

[–] haywire7@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are you using the creality software or orca? (Or something else)

We've had better luck with Orca with our Ender V3 but does still seem frustratingly hit and miss for some prints.

[–] esc@piefed.social -1 points 2 months ago

Orca, but tried creality fork as well no difference at all.

[–] esc@piefed.social -2 points 2 months ago

altr One of the first problems. Z-axis connectors were loose (as in they would partially fall out of their socket during normal working) so it was fixed with glue.

altr

First layer of one of the good prints.