| Models | Creality K1 MAX | QIDI X-MAX 3 | Bambu Lab X1 |
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| Release Date | Released July 2023 | Released May 2023 | Released 2022 |
| Price | €919 – €1049 | €999 – €1049 | € 1,099 |
| Build Volume | 300x300x300mm | 325x325x315mm | 256x256x256mm |
| Enclosure | Yes – front glass, sides acrylic, metal frame &lots of air gaps, not well insulated | Yes, mostly plastic (better insulator than glass), and designed to be a heated enclosure, so likely fewer gaps overall | Yes |
| Heated Enclosure | No | Yes. YouTuber Urban Tech Nerd reported a“small fire” in the Meanwell power supply for the heated enclosure but later deleted the video. In the video, it looked like a capacitor blew but no other damage was visible to the PSU case of plastic printer enclosure. | no |
| Enclosure air filter | Yes, the Carbon fitter included | Yes, the Carbon filter included | Yes, the Carbon fitter included |
| Extruder | Clone of LGX, 1:3.5 gear ratio. Extruder gears supported on only one side, putting bending load on the screws, possibly meaning they will loosen over time. v2 extruder launched with k1 max has a stronger steel parts and loclite to prevent extruder gears from getting loose. TBD how effective this will be long-term, but NathanBuildsRobots’s initial review leads him to believe it will be fine long term. |
Clone of LGX but 1:9.5 gear ratio (larger gears than k1) and extruder gears are supported on both sides (no bending load, no risk of gears coming loose). German reviewer AlFrank at forum drucklipps3d.de reviewing X Plus 3 (same extruder) indicated gears are molded not machined, suggesting a worse grip than the original LGX. | Hardened Steel Extruder Unit |
| HotEnd & nozzle | All metal with a ceramic heater. Works with standard volcano length nozzles, which stick out 2mm longer than k1 stock nozzles. The heat sink fan is 3010 and the heat sync is sized to match. A heat sink fan is used to cool the CAN boards, which may affect airflow & cooling capacity. |
All metal with a ceramic heater. Works with standard volcano nozzles, which are 2mm longer than Qidi nozzles, because the BLTouch position has enough clearance to accommodate a 2mm longer nozzle. Qidi support told me they are planning to release a “high flow nozzle” in the next two months. Potentially heat creep issues as a fan is poorly positioned and the heat sink looks too small (2510 fan). | Nozzle integrated into the hot end. Can buy a third-party hot end that allows volcano nozzles. |
| Part cooling | 4010 fan on the extruder, wall-mounted part cooling fan. | 5015 fan on the extruder, wall-mounted part cooling fan. The 3dprintingbeginner review suggests the fan is poorly mounted and doesn’t cover the full-built plate well. | 5015 fan on the extruder, wall-mounted part cooling fan |
| Firmware | Creaity OS is built on Kipper and Creaity said they will open up full Kiipper in Sept, similar to how they eventually released full access to Kipper on sonic pad). K1 max full Kipper & fluidd exploit already released by u/destinal. | Can access Kipper fluid Ul out of the box using port 10088. | Bambu custom OS is locked down. |
| Input Shaping with Accelerometer | Yes, but to fine-tune you need to hack it to get access to full Kipper settings until full Kipper access in Sept. | Yes through fluidd UI | Yes |
| Claimed Max Velocity | 600mm/s | 600mm/s | 500mm/s |
| Claimed Max Acceleration | 20,000mm/s^2 | 20,000mm/s^2 | 20,000mm/s^2 |
| Claimed max mm3 flow rate | 32mm^s | 35mm^s | No marketing claims (this is the most reasonable |
| Corexy XY | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| X-axis gantry material | Steel | Steel with hollow tubes | Carbon Fiber |
| Webcam | Yes – good resolution and frame rate. | No, but open USB port & access to Kipper means easy to add. | Yes – good resolution and frame rate. |
| Lidar | Yes | No | Yes |
| Auto bed leveling | Great – Strain gauges in heat bed along with lidar. Makes it easy to add different length nozzles/hot ends | Ok – Optical sensor determines when the heat bed is at minimum height. BL touch is used to measure bed warping. BL touch has enough clearance to allow standard volcano nozzles to be used. | Strain gauges in heat bed along with Lidar. |
| Bed material | PEI sheet | PEI sheet, 6mm thick bed. | Custom Bambu plates |
| Customer support | Average | Excellent | Average |
| Community support | TriangleLabs has already launched a drop-in hot-end replacement, copper-plated nozzles, and PE spring steel sheets. Printables has many models including top risers, 270-degree hinges, and more. Large, active communities on Facebook and Reddit. | Bad. Couldn’t find any reasonably active communities on Reddit or Facebook. | Lots of active groups on Reddit and Facebook, but the machine is so locked down that there are fewer upgrades. possible. |
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