CreatBot F1000 industrial 3D printer

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Creatbot is a well known manufacturer in China and successfully advances to the Russian market of 3D technologies, which is greatly facilitated by the segment of large FDM 3D printers, poorly represented in Russia, the main emphasis of CreatBot is on. In the line of large FDM 3D printers the F1000 model has a special place. At the moment it is the real flagship of the company, fitting perfectly into this role both in terms of scale and technical parameters. In our review, we will tell you what is Creatbot F1000, for whom it is designed and what makes it stand out among its analogues.

General information about the industrial 3D printer Creatbot F1000

Creatbot F1000, 3d printer closer resembles giants from German BigRep. Taking up half a small living room, the 600-kilogram printer is easily confused with a small 5-axis milling machine. The industrial design of this giant is simple and concise, as befits a device of this level.

The main distinctive feature and the key "chip" of the device is the size of the working area. Of course you can hardly print a car bumper on it, but a meter by a meter by a meter of the working area is an impressive size. Its predecessor, Creatbot D600, is half the size and looks like a midget next to this giant.

F1000 takes all the positive moments from the predecessor models and increases their size in the literal sense, even the heaters of the working chamber is twice or even three times larger than its counterparts.

However, let's get acquainted with this device step by step, as far as field conditions will allow us, because the review will be written directly during the commissioning of this giant at the customer in the realities of the boiling production shop.

Creatbot F1000 specifications and equipment

To begin with let's look at the dry numbers and the complete set of the device.

Among the features we can separately mention the size of the working area of 1000x1000x1000 mm that we have already mentioned. For such a gigantic plane are used 4 heating platforms, the maximum temperature of the table heating is 100 - 120 degrees, it reaches this temperature for quite a short time considering the dimensions.

The printing unit is equipped with two nozzles and broaching mechanisms, with heating up to 420 degrees Celsius. It is unified with the main line of devices, but seriously redesigned in contrast to the D600 units, which we will demonstrate later. Nozzle diameters are available from 0.4 to 1.5mm. Also there is a steel nozzle. It is stated that you can use ruby and hardened steel nozzles.

It is also necessary to tell, that in the complete set, as before, there is an additional high temperature and low temperature rod, in total - two rods for each printing mode.

On the whole, the complete set contains all the most necessary things and did not change much comparing to the younger models. Only it contains twice as much plastic spools - 4 kg instead of 2 kg.

The manufacturer also packed the printer with white wide adhesive tape and PVA sticks as a means of increasing adhesion. However, the regular Buildtak copes with most plastics quite confidently and without "doping".

F1000 Appearance and Interface

The exterior of the printer, as we mentioned, is reminiscent of large multi-axis machining centers. A large viewing window, a dash, a door, a control tablet monitor next to it, and an emergency stop button. The design is simple, without unnecessary frills, yet concise and ergonomic.

The windows on all sides are transparent without blackout; inside the camera, of course, there is a light; the view of the interior is simple and unobstructed.

On the right side of the front door there is a control tablet for 3D printer which has a special shelf for small items. The controls here are the touch screen display itself, the emergency stop button, the OEM power button, unit status lights, a USB connector, and the master key locking key.

At the top is another hinged viewing window for easier access to the printing units or kinematics if needed. Of course, a stepladder or small ladder should be available right next to the unit for servicing such a machine. For people of low stature, the Cratebot F1000 will be very difficult to operate without additional tools.

On the left side of the 3D printer you can find the electronics panel (on top) and the compartment for the plastic spools (closer to the bottom). Here are also the buttons for the camera heating modes.

The right side of the device does not contain any elements. A blank wall + a small design element with a rounded corner on the body.

At the back are the information plate with the serial number and certification data, as well as two packet switches that act as switches for the entire system. The rear inspection door, exhaust fans, and power cord are also located here.

The CreatBot F1000 work chamber and print unit

Of course, the most notable element in the Creatbot F1000 is its heating table in particular and the work area in general. A fair one meter by one meter space allows you to print really large items in a single pass, and the table heats up to 120 degrees allows you to use on only PLA plastic like its counterparts. However, with these dimensions, printing from ABS and high shrinkage plastics over the entire chamber volume will still require serious printing skills on the part of the operator.

The surface of the table is covered with a BuildTak-like sticker from the factory. I must say that the adhesion of this surface is wonderful, even without the use of glue, the materials adhere very well. However, you can always find a stick of PVA glue in the package if needed.

It is remarkable that the Creatbot F1000 has a composite table which consists of 4 panes of D600 glass bonded together. That's why the entire surface is covered with a solid adhesive sheet.

The calibration is done with a stylus on the printing unit and manually by tweaking the bosses under the table console.

Of course, the working chamber is equipped with filters on the exhaust fans, as well as heating elements, the same as on all Creatbot industrial models. However, the F1000 uses dual heaters. Both the oven chamber and the coil compartment have full-size versions. You can set the temperature of the heating air inside the chamber to 45 or 60 degrees. Due to thermal inertia, it is not possible to heat such a gigantic volume to a MORE temperature.

There is also a Web-camera with smartphone connection inside the volume of the working zone.

The printing unit has changed a lot comparing to the previous versions, but still equipped with BLTouch sensor which is on the back side of the arm.

 

The printing block is traditionally equipped with two sets of hotends - high-temperature with possibility of heating up to 420 degrees and ordinary - with the maximum heating up to 250 degrees. So, it's possible to use various nozzle diameters from the classical 0.4 to the productive 1.5 mm, however, here F1000 doesn't differ from congeners.

The printing unit itself is greatly lightened in comparison with the first iterations of this unit on the previous models of the brand. It has motorized lifting/lowering motifs as well as a redesigned cooling system which makes it more stable when printing with low temp plastics and more productive with larger nozzle diameters.

The material is fed from a special compartment on the side of the printer. It can hold two three-kilogram spools of material each. It is equipped with a heater and an additional plastic pulling mechanism, because with such a gigantic volume, one printing unit could not pull the entire volume of plastic through the feeder.

By the way, the printing unit is equipped with a thread sensor, if there is no plastic in the mechanism, the printing will pause.

On the upper part of the compartment for coils, there is also a temperature sensor.

Mechanics and kinematics of the F1000.

As on all Creatbot industrial models - the F1000 has block modules on the X/Y axes. Such a module is built on the basis of a structural profile and immediately contains broaching rollers, a belt and a carriage on a rail.

The kinematic scheme of the printer is classical, 1 motor per axis. The X-axis guides are connected by a solid coupling rod and rest on a heavy welded base.

The Z-axis guides are cylindrical, one per side. They are moved by 4 twisted pins driven by one stepper motor per pair.

The Y-axis is controlled by a single motor via a rod.

On the X axis the torque is transmitted by a stepper motor with additional cooling and a gearbox.

The belt is about 2 centimeters wide. The same wide and the Z axis schwp is about 3 centimeters wide.

Overall the kinematics are very similar to that of the D600, but much larger in size and power.

Let's move on to the electronics.

F1000 electronics and electrics.

The electronics compartment is full of stuffing. At first glance you can see two power supplies, industrial stepper motor drivers, a number of relays and a motherboard. First things first.

On the left you can see the display compartment of the device through the case. You can tell from the markings that it is a unit made by Beijing DWIN Technology Co., Ltd.

Quite an interesting display module with its own P.O., which seems to be the interface of all Creatbots.  The only difference is that the diagonal of this display is 12 inches, much larger than other models. Backlight life is ≥30,000 hours, a decent and reliable element.

The motherboard is unified throughout the platform of the devices, here we will not find anything new. The only thing that has changed is the drivers, they have become quieter.

Next are two more industrial Z-axis drivers, two power supplies and packet switches on the back wall (right corner).

Below that is a whole battery of solid state relays and step-down boards. These are mostly needed to connect the table heaters and the extruder.

At the bottom is a capacitor with a charge indicator as an emergency shutdown system.

The printer uses mechanical limit switches. Why exactly these are used is not quite clear. Optical limit switches are already common on other models by the manufacturer. Apparently they considered this approach to be more reliable.

The display and slicer Creatbot F1000.

The visual design of the interface and its logic did not change. As on the previous models, we see the screen displaying the temperatures of the printing unit, heating table and camera.

The menus Preheat Filament Move and Settings did not change and correspond to those on the Creatbot PEEK 300 for example, you can find a detailed review of it HERE.

The display of the printing process has changed slightly. We can now adjust settings or open print settings by pressing the Adjust button in the upper right corner of the display.

Here we can see the print speed, the plastic feed factor and the blowing material setting.

Clicking on the settings menu takes us to calibrate the stepper movement, fan speed, preheat setting, and starting autoleveling with BLTouch.

To control the webcam, you need to install an application on your smartphone, the other way - from the display or from the slicer program, alas, it is impossible to connect to it. We hope the manufacturer will correct this unfortunate misunderstanding in the future.

Nothing has changed about the slicer. The Creatbot F1000 uses classic Creatware based on Cura 1.5.6. However, if you want, you can use any other, such as Simplify3D.

The printer settings are immediately available when you install the program. You don't need to set anything separately provided you are using the original version of the program.

Let's calculate some object for the test and summarize the results.

Example print and output.

Unfortunately, the report was made during the commissioning at the client's place and there was no other plastic except the white PLA material in the kit at hand. You can almost not see the object on the light scotch we put on it to avoid leaving traces on the adhesive surface.

After a while, the test lettering is printed. The commissioning is done and our review is just as near to completion.

What can we say about this device?

The Creatbot F1000 is the culmination of the "taller, bigger, stronger" paradigm at Henan Technology Company. The previous models in the line - the F430, D600, D600 Pro, Peek 300 - made a name for themselves in the market and firmly established themselves in the industrial 3D printing segment. This heritage has formed a solid and reliable platform on the basis of which Creatbot produces industrial FDM 3D printers in different price and size categories.

Creatbot F1000 3D printer clearly aims to compete with big players in the segment such as BigRep and offers convenient and consistent printing solution for PLA and ABS plastic as well as PetG and SBS in the large scale printing segment. Purely theoretically it can print with high temperature materials as well, but the large volume of the chamber does not allow to do it efficiently, so we leave it to peek300 to print with polyetheretherketan and polysulfone.

At the moment there is only one such giant in Russia, we have not yet received long-term feedback from users about this device. But it is noteworthy that it was purchased by an organization that already had experience with Creatbot D600 for several years. And we wholeheartedly support this decision. The F1000 is a great base for expanding any production. And with a few printers in this series, you can do really high-volume tasks.

Who is this 3D printer good for? Especially industrial companies who find it easier to print cases, tooling or other technological products with lots of small changes than to make them out of fiberglass or with castings.

Thanks to the powerful extruders and the heating table, combined with a large nozzle diameter, serious productivity can be achieved. And if necessary, set a small nozzle diameter and print small products with almost no loss in quality.

The presence of material control systems, emergency shutdown and user-friendly, uncluttered interface make the device user friendly for novice operators, and reliable components guarantee longevity of the device.

Creatbot F1000 can be confidently called the flagship of the manufacturer today.