Transcript:
The Creality CR-10S that I got from my sponsor Gearbest is the upgraded version of the CR-10, a printer that I have reviewed before. Same as its predecessor, the 10S ships almost fully assembled. There are minor scratches on the black anodized aluminum surfaces being visible only when having a very close look, nothing that affects the functionality. After unboxing you must mount the frame of the X and Z axis on the base plate with the Y axis. Wiring is also done quickly since all cables are labled and have plugs with protection against reverse polarity. In the build instruction I cloud not find a drawing of where to place the filament sensor, however there is only one way to mount it near the extruder. There is a tiny board on the plug of the filament sensor that has to be removed to get it connected. The filament holder is mounted on top of the box of the electronics. Finaly you can put the rubber decorations on the aluminum bars of the frame – all in all the assembly is done in half an hour. Same as at the CR-10, the movement of the print bed along the aluminum bar of the y axis is guided by six rolls. Once more I have removed the two center rolls since four points are more easy to adjust than six of them and as you can see, the center roll is a bit loose out of the box. One roll of each pair is on an excentric nut so that the distance between axis and aluminum bar can be varied. With the two wrenches that are part of the package you can adjust the contact pressure. There is wear on the plastics rolls while moving along the rough surface of the anodized aluminum, so a bit grease on the rolls as well as on the notch of the aluminum bar keeps them in good condition. All in all those plastics rolls are in operation for a couple of months now on my CR-10 and they still look fine, so this is nothing to worry about. The inside of the electronics box looks very tidy. The power supply is cooled actively by a fan – the output voltage is 12V at up to 30A. Two more fans keep the temperature in the electronics box low. The power MOSFET switching the heated bed is on an extra board – a perfect solution. The mount of the deflection pulley at the Y axis is now made of metal – you can adjust the correct tension on the belt by moving that clamp. The tension on the belt of the X-axis is also adjusted by moving the deflection pulley. The Y axis with the built plate… …as well as the X axis with the print head move smoothly along the axes – the mechanics is really good. One of the upgrades of the 10S is a second stepper motor on the Z axis, so that both ends of the X axis are now driven through spindles. At the predecessor there was only one spindle drive used, resulting in vertical movement of the X axis at the free end during operation. As you can see, that error is now eliminated – only when having a very close look you can see the indicator move for less than one scale. You can transfer print data using gcode files on a micro SD card. Before turning the device on, I have adjusted the print bed to a low position. After turning the power switch on… …the info screen of the printer menu appears and as you can hear, the fans of the 10S are less noisy than those of its predecessor, which was extremely loud. With the dial switch you can command all axes to their home positions. Adjusting the printer starts with bringing both ends of the X axis to the same height – I am using a distance piece printed from PLA having a height of 82mm. After another homing of the printer you can level the build plate. With the printer menu you can automatically drive the print head to the four mounts of the build plate, which simplifies the leveling procedure clearly. The leveling itself is done as usually by lifting the build plate with the knurled nuts, step by step,… …until nothing but a sheet of paper fits tightly between nozzle and print bed in the final run. The printer ships with a small spool of white PLA. Before inserting the filament, the hotend must be preheated to 185°C. As soon as the target temperature is reached, you can insert the filament at the extruder motor… …until a strand of plastics exits the nozzle. Two sheets of adhesive paper are part of the package to keep the objects sticking on the print bed, however I am printing directly on the surface of the glass plate. To get a good adhesion of the PLA on the glass surface I am using a glue stick. The heated bed of the CR 10S is insulated on the bottom side. The maximum temperature is limited by software to 135°C. with the low environmental temperature of only 13°C in my photo studio, I get 60 degrees after 10 minutes,… …and 90°C after 25 minutes which I would call the maximum temperature the bed can reach. You will get 100°C in a room with higher environmental temperature, but no more than that. Time for a first test run – I am using the file “cat.gcode” that is stored on the micro SD card that came with the printer. The CR-10S starts the job as soon as the target temperatures of print bed and hotend are reached. The layer height of the cat is set to 0.2mm. The inner structures are printed with 55mm/s, the outer perimeters with 35mm/s. The CR-10S has “resume after power outage” – here I pulled the plug to test that functionality. As soon as the electric power is up again, the question whether or not you’d like to resume the print appears on the printer screen. When confirming with “yes”, print bed and hotend are heated up to the target temperatures. As soon as those temperatures are reached, the print head goes up a couple of millimeters… …and X as well as Y axis are driven to their end switches. After that, the print is resumed. A plastics knob is visible on the surface if the power outage happens while the print head is on the outer perimeter. Next I will check how the filament sensor works. As soon as the printer runs out of plastics, the x axis is driven to the end switch… …and after that, the Y axis is homed as well. Unfortunately the firmware turns off the heated bed when running out of filament, which might cause your object to get loose. After feeding in new filament, which should be done promptly to avoid the bed from cooling down,… …you can resume the job through the printer menu. I am using bronze colored filament to visualize where the change in filament appeared. The filament sensor is a very useful upgrade of the printer – you don’t have to use a new spool each time you start a larger project. After approximately two hours the print is finished. After cooling down the heated bed, you can remove the cat from the glass plate. The result is really good – all details on the surface, especially the tiny characters are clearly visible. Besides the plastics knob, you can clear identify the layer where the simulated power outage happened by a ridge running round the surface. Well, power outages occur rarely here at the center of Germany – more important is the transition between the two filament spools and that looks perfect. Next I’d like to check what print quality the 10S delivers when creating something more useful than sculptures: Here I am printing the chassis of a new robot that is currently under development. It is also meant to be a printer test which is why I have implemented needed support structures into the design. The edge width of the bridging posts is only 4mm and they look as straight as they should be. The layer height is set to 0.2mm, the print speed of the outer perimeters is 30mm/s,… …that of the infill 60mm/s. With a length of 195mm, a width of 106mm and a height of 75mm it is the largest part of the robot – 120g of filament are needed for the chassis. After approximately 17 hours the job is done. At the overhangs of the front window you can see… …that the air flow isn’t perfect – the fan blows on the edge of the print head. So I have redesigned that part using OpenSCAD – the layer height of the print is set to 0.2mm. Now, the air hits the tip of the extruder nozzle. Next part of my new robot is a mecanum wheel. It’s composed of a rim having 11 tiny rolls. The diameter of the rolls is 20mm with a thickness of only 2mm. The diameter of the rim is 55mm. All rolls look good and the pieces of 1.75mm filament used as axes fit perfectly into the holes running through the rim at an angle of 45 degrees. Last part printed for this review is the rear undercarriage of the rover, needed to mount two servos. The dimensions of this part are 85x58x23mm and same as all other parts it is printed with a layer height of 0.2mm The results look really good. There are no gaps in the surfaces, the characters on the chassis are clearly readable and there are no strings – the mechanum wheels work fine. All parts fit perfectly and that’s what is needed when doing prototyping with a 3D printer. The CR-10S is a sturdy machine with really good printing results – I definitely like the device. All upgrades make sense and result in an even better printer than its predecessor: The second spindle drive on the Z axis eliminates vertical movement of the X axis and there were slight improvements in the print head design. Leveling the bed is simplified by the new firmware and finally the filament sensor will save one or the other of your prints – The 10S is definitely a printer I recommend to buy. You can have a look at the full resolution snapshots of the prints I made with the 10S and get the 3D files on my pages. Thanks for watching and: “I’ll be back!”