Creality's Ender 6 corexy 3D Printer REVIEW

I've now had my Ender 6 corexy 3D printer for about two months? I think so. Let me start by saying I'm pleased with the machine. So that's out of the way, you could leave if you just wanted to see if I liked it or not. Or you could read on to see the troubles I've had with it, things I wish they had done, and what I know for future 3D purchases. I've had great prints and failed prints, and I've used PLA and ABS so far. So, I'm by no means an expert, this is an Artist who decided to print his art, not the smartest guy, but I get by. I guess I'm speaking to the people on the fence about buying a 3D printer because they feel like tech is out of their league.

One thing I learned right away, when you start, stick with PLA, and I'll tell you why. Cause fuck ABS, that's why. And I'm the idiot here, so bear with me. A spool of PLA filament came with the machine. PLA is easy to work with, you don't need to go too hot, the Ender 6 supposedly goes much hotter on the extruder than it needs to for other filament types. Great.

I'm about to finish the PLA filament that came with it, so I go on Amazon, look up PLA filament, found one, saw a color I liked in recommended and ordered that one.

It comes, I try it out, it messes up. I read the label on the filament, ABS? WTF, I didn't realize the recommended one was ABS. My bad, oh well, the Ender 6 handles ABS temps. Great, lets learn about ABS, what's the best settings and print. Messes up, peels off the bed, and it seems to be having a harder time extruding. Everyone says enclosed space is needed. Boom, I got that top for my Ender 6 that cost more than it should have (and should've just come with it), but it already has walls and a door. Heat the extruder and bed more. Now I'm overheating the ABS and the bed is still holding but the corners of the object are curling up bad, and the bed can't get any hotter. I do tests until I run out of the ABS filament and not one time did I think, yay.

So, I order PLA, first try was perfect. Yay was back. I did learn a lot about settings during my ABS debacle, but not again, not for the benefits ABS brings to the table, not what I need it for which is art statues and what not.

I've printed quite a bit now, prints as short as ten minutes, to a stressful six-day one. Stressful with a very important lesson. If you're going to do a long print like that, take the extra extra EXTRA time in Ultimaker Cura or whatever software you decide to set up the prints, and check what sort of support structure it's going to build. The reason it was stressful was because like five hours into this print I noticed some of the support structures looked thin, like thin poles, I had turned down the percentage of structure around my statue since taking off these things were kind of a pain in the ass. I should've stopped it right then and there to fix the issue but I thought let's see. For those six and a half days I watched that structure topple, hold on and grow wildly all the way to the top, just to hold up an ear lobe. Also, having to change filament mid-print had my heart racing, no one wants to mess up five days in.

Side note, the Ender 6 comes with a sensor where you run your filament through, and that way when you run out the print stops and doesn't just print into the air, thus giving you time to refill. Well, my damn sensor box stinks, as I try and feed the filament through something halfway stops it, but I'm able to trip the sensor, so I cut a piece of filament and stuck it in there so the sensor thinks the filament is passing through, and I completely bypassed it. That way, if I do run out of filament the printer will just keep going... Not good. So, on the fifth day when it was running out, for hours beforehand I kept walking by and checking because I didn't want to miss it or change too early.

Changing it was not too hard, just stressful, like I said you don't want to mess it up, but I watched some people online do it, just press pause, and change it out with some haste because for some reason the extruder and plate start cooling off. Once you press resume, the temps go back up but you have to wait as it does, then it'll continue. I'm confident for the next time, but I have a feeling my heart rate will still go up.

So I'm deep into the PLA, and I order some metallic ones. Because of my ABS BS I read stuff before I just put it on and I noticed the temps are a little higher for the extruder on this one. Not sure if it's all metallics or just this company. I've noticed to stay on the higher end of the recommended temps on the filaments. Like if it says to use this filament at temps from 195-220 Celsius for the extruder, be around 210 (depending on your ambient temp and humidity, I'm in Arizona, it's dry af), also for my hot bed, I'm usually five degrees warmer and I have no issues with no sticking or curling at the ends (insert ABS flashbacks).

This was a lot about filament, back to the printer.

Creality is pumping out all kinds of different models of printers (I have never used acrylic printers, they look great but I have no frame of reference for those printers). I guess the tech is the same in all filament extruder types, all with XYZ axis motors. It's the hot beds they change most of the time. Like does the hotbed move or is it the extruder, at the end of the day, XYZ. The 3D Printmill model looks really cool, I saw someone print out a whole sword since you could essentially print on this conveyer belt indefinitely. The bed size is 220x170xinfinity mm.

I picked this model over another that had more plate space to print bigger objects (by 10mm...) because the Ender 6 core xy model has, not only updated motors from the regular Ender 6, but it prints faster than any other model they have. While everyone's machines including Creality's list usually do 40-80mm per second the Ender 6 does 150mm! Like that alone was a huge selling point since these prints take FOREVER. Now it's not recommended to print everything at 150mm, but I found a good spot at 90 for intricate stuff and I go balls to the wall 150 for bigger prototypes I'm testing. And honestly the only thing it kind of messes up when it does is the thinner support structures.

So far the only mechanical failures I've had and I think I figured out why is, I'd set my print, it would start, layers looking good, I'd come back an hour later, it's printing in mid-air, the extruder is cold, the temps are shut off and the feeding motor is grinding into the filament it can't push through the cold extruder. I had this happen three times, one of the times I had to take the filament line out and work for an hour to get the filament out mm by mm.

What I found was, and this was a habit I had picked up from ABS trying to get my printer as hot as possible to not have the filament curl. I would PRE-HEAT my 3d printer. I'd set the temps manually, let the box heat up for a good 15-20 min, finish up in CURA, put my memory card into the Ender 6, find the file, and press print (on their nifty touch screen). It would set up and start pretty quickly since it didn't need to heat up. Looked good, I walk away, at some point the temps get set to ZERO. I come back, shit sucks. Well in some forum I read that someone had issues setting the temp manually then initiating a print, he'd get some other error, but I decided, let's just set the temps through Cura, and on the Ender printer, just press print and let it preheat itself. So far, no more issues. Let's hope it stays this way because stuff like that makes me nervous to let it print through the night. Don't want the printer to catch fire.

Once I got the printer down, it all became about software and its use. Cura has been great, and easy to use. The real CON with it is the estimated time it gives you for your print. It can be off by days. Oh, and equally with the Ender 6, it gives you a timer, and if it's over a few hours you just get some random numbers that don't mean anything, so you just go by the percentage done. But you definitely have to understand Cura to have better prints, I've found (so far) my best settings so I'm not struggling too hard with removing support structures and also I had issues with bottom surfaces, for example, if I print a woman and she's holding a dish out, the bottom of that dish would never have a perfectly stitched underside. There are settings to say, I want 2-3-or 4 layers underneath to make it solid (I do 3 undersides now and 2 on top) You can spend hours playing with settings in Cura and it'll tell you how many grams of filament it would use and time (approximate). Getting these settings down has saved me time and filament.

I'm at the point now where I'm learning to sand down and use wood filler and more sanding to smooth out some bigger prints. Been priming them and next, I'm trying to figure out what would be a good epoxy seal type thing so the paint won't chip off if scratched.

Quick tip, if you print is really stuck on your plate, I have a glass plate, se 70% alcohol or dilute some 90% with a little water and spray the base. Give it a minute and it should be a lot easier, once up, clean your plate. You plate will always be clean this way too.

Another tip, when reloading your spool, don't let the filament unravel or get loose, you will induce a knot, like, 8 layers down, and it will pop its ugly head in the middle of a print and mess everything up. Keep the filament tight, let the unraveling unfold as the machine pulls it.

So in conclusion, I like my Ender 6 Core XY by Creality, this is a great starter printer, it doesn't have auto leveling, but from what I see out there, you want to be able to level your table and get good at it, I can level in less than a couple minutes. So, don't let that be your selling point. You will have to buy some tools to measure thickness or spatulas to get your print off the plate. Would I recommend this to a friend? Yes. Would I buy another? I might try another bigger model, just so that could print for big pieces while I use the Ender 6 speed for prototypes. It would be nice if they had a way for it to know when the filament is going haywire, but whatever. This tech is definitly not 100%. You still have to tinker, but I love it. Really happy with my purchase.

Here are some prints I have done. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.