How to tune a Creatbot DX - The first thing you should do

[Nightram]

Prelude

Despite the sales talk a Creatbot DX is definatly not ready out of the box. I dont know if it is a slack company or someone is just always at smoko. Thse steps need to be done ASAP or you are just wasting your time. Like the two weeks I have just wasted before writing this. I want to thank Mark Langlais who quite literally lives on the other side of the world to me who helped me get mine printing effectivly.

Sales Jargon

It is not a Creatbot printer, it is a RepRap. Which is good and bad. The good part is that you can adjust it as such.

Nightrams defaults (aka what it should be from factory):

• Extruder 607.13 s/mm (factory is 650 s/mm)
• X/Y leave as is (can be tweeked if required, mine was only 0.3mm out over 100mm)
• Z 808.00 s/mm (factory is 800)
• X Acceleration MAX 1000mm/s (factory is 9000mm/s)
• Y Acceleration MAX 1000mm/s (factory is 9000mm/s)
• Acceleration 800
• Maximum X/Y Jerk 10.00 mm/s
• Maximum Z Jerk 20.00 mm/s

Basic Extrusion calibrate and so forth

Start at the extruder then work your way around. I disconnected the hose at the top of the bowden, fed in some filament and chopped it off exactly 120mm from the bottom. Becasue lets face it you wont re-use it.

How to calibrate extruder

Keeping the link above in mind it is a similar process to do X/Y/Z

How do I stop the acceleration greater than a jet plane?

Someone in the company thought it would be a good ide to have the accelerations maxed out, Quite literally faster than a supersonic jet plane. To fix this you need a program called matter control. It is one of the few programs that can adjust the firmware in the printer without destroying it.

Put the settings in as such:

What software to use?

You probably have realised it by now that the Creatware is just a sucky version of Cura.even then it is second best to Simplify3D. You have saved a few pennies on the printer so I urge you to buy the software. Here is a basic FFF file for the Creatbot DX03. With the settings within I have been able to reliably get down to 0.04mm successfully. Just lower the speed to 1800mm/m.

Link updated 19/10/2017

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlPeUy6ZHLEO0Qg4Ssqd0z180t20

[gabriela3d]

Both helpful and informative! Thanks for sharing it with the community, @Nightram

[3dprintingguy]

Thanks for sharing

[Nightram]

Here is an example of a print from the Creatbot DX 03. Never mind the background, it has better lighting.

[gabriela3d]

That’s one ridiculously good looking Marvin, thanks for sharing! What settings did you use?

[neildarlow]

@Nightram Thank you for the insight. I have just ordered the dual-extruder version of the DX.

You can be cynical about these Chinese products being “knock-offs” to make easy money for the manufacturer. OK the mechanics are inspired from Ultimaker and the hotends from E3D but there does seem to be some design thought put into these machines e.g.:

• They could have gone with a basic gear pair on the extruder but elected to use a stepper with integrated gearbox.
• The hot-ends are capable of achieving temperatures of 400C and use a Type K Thermocouple for sensing temperature.
• The printer has an auto-shut down feature.
• The printer has a resume after power failure feature.

The first two on this list are not typical of a company that wants to maximise profit. They bring benefit to the user at higher cost.

The last two on the list are somewhat unusual. I know of printers that support shut down of the power supply but the inactivity timeout method is something I have not seen commonly offered. The resume after power failure feature hints that the power supply has sufficient spare capacity to perform the required actions at power fail time.

I have been using a kit-built Mendel90 for the last 2+ years and this will be my first complete printer purchase. I am particularly interested to hear how people are finding this brand in day-to-day usage.

[aDSK]

Hi All,

I’m an user of CreatBotDX 02 - and I have new firmware ( 4.2 ) and also older ( 4.1 ) direct from manufacturer.

If you need some test - let me know, will share file with you.

BTW:
Attached Marvin to check the quality (100microns, 20%, ABS Light Blue).

Thank,

Adam

[Adamsmith]

Nightram are you able to email me the fff file?

[TypeR]

Came across this thread more or less by accident.

Very informative post, thank you for doing all the work.

I purchased a Creatbot DE Plus about four months ago. mainly because I wanted a bigger build platform. Now I have a 400x300x520 mm build size.

For comparision, that’s about 4 time the size of a Ultimaker 2+ Extended, or about 6x a standard UM2 printer.

So far I am pretty happy with it. Had read some really bad reviews on the internet but mainly about the smaller DX models which uses a very different printhead configuration. Contacted Creatbot directly about this, and after some deliberation I took the jump.

So far, in four months, the printer has been print 1150 hours, with a longest print of 102 hours straight without issues.

Am actually thinking about geting a second one.

I am not actually using the Creatbot Creatware 4.4 software, but I noticed that Creatware creates G-Code with can directly set your acceleration and jerk settings.

So, basically, it is not necessary to set the firmware by hand, you can basically use you GCode-file to adjust your settings as needed.

[Akriggm]

Hi Guys

Does anyone out there happen to still have the NightRam settings file at all. I have a DX03 and Simpify3D and am having issues with under extrusion

[User_4365]

Hi, I bought the same printer. But i cannot use the creatbot software. it is terrible. Do you have a setup/profile for cura or simplyfi you could send me? I have been trying to get a good print for 3 weeks with no luck! It would help me out a great deal!!? My email is nicholas@stoere.no

Kind regards Nicholas

[TypeR]

Hi Nicholas,

Well, I have used the Creatware software only a couple of times.

But for simple thing it will do the trick.

In S3D I use the profile of the Creatbot DX software and that seems to work all right. I am not sure if it cannot be bettered, but I am simply not experienced enough to edit the GCode manually and at the moment, I am simply too busy to take the time to figure that out.

I did actually got me a second DE Plus 29 days ago at it has already been printing 490 hours. The first one is now already over 2000 hours of printing (average almost 13h/day, the new one averages out at 16h/day so far).

[Akriggm]

Hi Guys. I have a DX03. And I need a good filament supplier. Esun doesn’t get good prints. What do you all use in with the Creatbot s and the Bowden extruder? The genuine Creatbot filament is great but is hard to buy that’s all. Cheers Mal

[TypeR]

I don’t have the DX03, but do have two DE PLus printers. The first I now have for 162 days and has 2088 hours, the second one is now 30 days old and has been printing 513 hours.

Must say the first one is very quiet but the second one definately makes more noise.

I use cheap REAL PLA filament, but also Innofil (PLA, PET, ABS) , Colorfabb (NGEN) and Formfutura Filament (Flexifill, Carbonfill, Easyfil PLA and TitanX).

With all these filaments I get good results.

[TypeR]

Old post, I know, but just read it.

Not mentioned is the filament-failure-resume function. When you have a filament error or simply run out of filament, the printer will detect it, pause, and wait for you to solve the problem.

I have used this feature now several times (brittle stonefill filament), and except once, it worked perfectly.

[Akriggm]

Thanks mate your a champion for telling me this. You don’t want to tell me where you buy it do you. Cheers Mal Creatbot simply don’t want to sell me their stuff I have emailed them 3 times and get no reply. I have 14 rolls of Esun that print but fails on high retraction jobs.

[TypeR]

Hi,

Well, I am located in the Netherlands, so I just buy it from Dutch suppliers.

But Innofil, Colorfabb and Formfutura are available everywhere and at least with the last two companies, you order directly from them as well.

[Akriggm]

Cheers mate. Thanks heaps. I have been on Google and looking for some samples. You don’t the the nightram. Settings file do you? I run simplify3D and have a few profiles setup but just don’t seem to get consistent top quality prints. Have you ever printed any of the 3dlabprints RC planes? Ps my email address is pocketmojo@bigpond.com