What’s not to enjoy about a birthday? There’s cake, parties, presents, and, if you happen to be Creality, usually new 3D printers. Such is the company’s party-popper-popping enthusiasm; they just can’t help themselves from dropping new hardware when that number ticks over.
A recent not-so-cryptic e-blast from Creality, followed by an update to the company’s website, hints at fast things to come. A new series of printers with the tagline “Be Fast”, for one, and a second less-revealing teaser is now hinting at new “Light Speed” 3D printing hardware, too.
We don’t have the details just yet, but given that Creality’s anniversary celebrations (including product-teasing showcases) happen every April, it’s a sure thing that we’re only weeks away from finding out.
In the meantime, let’s indulge in a bit of speculation. Here’s what we think is coming:
“Be Fast”
Our first theory, concerning the new “flagship” hardware, seems the safest bet – another crack at CoreXY. Creality has released CoreXY hardware before in its Ender 6 and Ender 7 machines, but the time is probably ripe for it to go again following the Bambu Lab X1 and P1P releases last year. 2023 will be, in our opinion, a year of familiar names in 3D printing playing catchup.
Any new CoreXY speed-oriented machine from Creality will need to distinguish itself from the Ender and CR-series machines. Our second guess is that the Sonic Pad, Creality’s Klipper-based control tablet, or some form of it, will be the new machine’s UI. Klipper firmware, advanced flow and movement features, and a large, colorful tablet to prod at.
Creality Cloud integration could be a thing, too. Despite its early controversies, Creality’s cloud-based ecosystem for its smarter machines is here to stay. Print preparation without a computer, making the printer more-or-less a standalone appliance, would separate it from the Ender and (most) CR-series machines.
Specific hardware for this unknown new printer is trickier to predict. We could see new variants of the Sprite extruder, but that’s also a distinguishing feature of the existing series of machines. Wildcard theory – we’ll see a new extruder and hot end setup. Given Creality’s use of linear rails on the new CR-M4 (that giant “quasi-industrial” printer), we could also see such high-precision hardware here.
“Light Speed”
The second of Creality’s new machine teasers is pointedly different from the “Be Fast” message, with the picture hinting at complete, stacked slices (like the process of LCD printing) and the wording using “light” – a crucial element of resin 3D printing.
Boom. Theory one – there will be a new resin 3D printer, too.
Perhaps new entries in the Halot-One series? The “Light Speed” teaser doesn’t mention a new series or anything like that, so we think it’s a safe assumption that it’ll be a new Halot-series machine.
There’s a lot of latitude in resin 3D printing – it could be laser SLA, as we’ve seen with the apparently in-demand Emake3D Galaxy 1 on Kickstarter. Alternatively, affordable DLP tech is a possibility, as Anycubic has with its Photon D2 (not to mention others, soon, too).
Creality’s resin printer offerings are pretty varied already, but all the machines use monochrome LCD — meaning quick layer cure times. How could it be faster? Speed-optimized settings, perhaps? There are popular “vroom” community-made settings for quicker resin printing out in the wild – maybe we’ll see an aggressive resin 3D printer with faster between-layer movement.
Something wild would be the use of a Vlare Core mainboard and Vlare firmware. That project promises a lot for the future of desktop resin printing, giving manufacturers great flexibility to develop new features for their machines than other commonly used boards and firmware. Also, and this is clutching at straws a little, Creality’s teaser’s color is close to the orange used in Vlare’s branding. Coincidence? Probably. But maybe not. But probably.
What do you think?
There we have it. A few furiously typed out guesses about some new hardware. What do you think? Will we triumphantly look back on our theories at April’s end, or will they age like warm milk?
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