Help to choose the 1st 3D printer - Tronxy X5SA Pro or Creality CR-10 V2

I've never owned a 3d printer in the past, and I've never seen any 3d printer in person. I just bought the Tronxy X5SA Pro.Here's my thoughts...

Off the top of my head, and without any experience with the Creality, if someone were to ask me which they should get, especially as someone new to 3d printing, I'm going to suggest the Creality. The reasons are simple.

The Tronxy is a mess. It's a true DIY kit, but a bit worse. The instructions are terrible, you get all kinds of extra hardware. Not just additional hardware you need, but you get stuff that's not needed. You also end up missing hardware you need. I was missing washers and a L bracket.

The assembly is a mess, and you better have patience and a machinist's square. The reason I say it's a mess isn't because of the hardware. It's because it's hard as heck to get square and the parts... pulleys and such aren't to spec. I'm talking I had to adjust the rollers or whatever they're called just to fit the linear rail. There's no instructions on how to even adjust them. I was lucky to find one video as to how it was done.

The holes in the injection molded parts I had to drill though because they were clogged. some of the threaded holes weren't threaded properly, meaning I had to re-thread them. I'm lucky I had the tools because of tinkering with other stuff.

Now here's another problem.. it's in the actual printing. I've come to find out that it uses a Chitu board and the firmware is closed source. To send commands, you have to program some into the firmware. For example, if you set retracting using Cura, it means nothing because it's preset in the firmware. This mean you have to remember to send gcode to update the firmware first, if you want to change retraction. There's other things slicers can't do because of this.

There's also the lack of support. I'm not just talking about support from Tronxy, I'm talking community support. I'm guessing there isn't much support because these printers just aren't that popular. This means when you open up a Slicer like Cura or even Prusa Slicer, you can't pick the printer's profile. You have to either create your own or tweak something else. I'm using the Creality CR10 profile with tweaks. This means it's not going to be optimal. It's a royal pain because hunting this stuff down because there's a lack of community.

I can't say much from experience to the Creality, but I will say this, based on build videos and reviews, the Creality has it all over Tonxy. Not only does it show them being way easier to build, but their printers look to be pre-supported in available software and the firmware looks to be open source Marlin. Community support looks outstanding too. I can't google 3d printer without Creality popping up.

The Tronxy X5SA Pro might be a better build platform and in theory is a better printer, but in reality the Creality is going to be a better package out of the box with better support.

If I were to do it again, I would go with Creality, if I didn't, I'd probably get some other brand of printer. Tronxy's QC is just bad...

Regardless of price, there's no reason that a DIY kit should have such bad QC. Because if I hadn't had the tools, for example, to drill and re-thread stuff, I'd still be looking at parts on the floor...

BTW, once I got everything put together, it seems to print well... BUT it's a huge learning curve, not just in learning how to slice, but to figure out these little quirks of this printer. So far, I've come to find that the bed goes out of leave really easily because the prints stick like they're super glued. Yes, I do remove the print surface, to remove the print, but I'm pulling and twisting on it so hard to remove the print, I think it's warping the print surface. It's causing me to relevel manually every time. It's out of the .5 variance allowed with auto leveling. I'm hoping, eventually, I'll figure out an easier way to remove prints. For now, I've got a flex plat on order.

the xy-2 is simply an ender 3 clone.
My opinions on this should be clear - don't buy one :-)

However if you are looking at the x5sa pro - then in the same price range is the prusa mini.
smaller print volume but top of the range electronics and mechanics.
Worth considering.
From reports and looking at the specifications the NEW model of the tronxy x5sa pro is a decent machine.
The original model - not so much.
most plastic parts have been replaced with metal, the extuder and hot end has been upgraded - as has an awful lot of other things.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by curious aardvark

the xy-2 is simply an ender 3 clone.
My opinions on this should be clear - don't buy one :-)

However if you are looking at the x5sa pro - then in the same price range is the prusa mini.
smaller print volume but top of the range electronics and mechanics.
Worth considering.
From reports and looking at the specifications the NEW model of the tronxy x5sa pro is a decent machine.
The original model - not so much.
most plastic parts have been replaced with metal, the extuder and hot end has been upgraded - as has an awful lot of other things.

---

I not sure what you mean but the original being no so much. From what I've learned, there's no difference between the original X5SA Pro that was released last year to the one that's currently being sold. I have a feeling you're comparing the "Pro" model to the non Pro model, which is still being made and sold by Tronxy.

With that said, what's on paper is just what it should be. The parts might be metal, but the QC is crap. I had threaded holes that weren't threaded properly. Parts that were pre-assembled and were told didn't need any adjustment (Because of this, there's no instructions on how to make the adjustment), had to be adjusted just to get it to fit. Missing hardware and just bags of unnecessary hardware. It's as if they just grabbed a handful of hardware and threw them in the bad. It's bad.

The Tronxy X5SA Pro isn't just a DIY kit. It's a DIY kit with some you better have an understanding of how to fix the parts we provide or you're not going to be able to put this together kind of kit.

This youtube video has been the most accurate representation on this kit I found. The best part is that I had slightly different issues, so your experience might vary depending on how put the parts in the box or built the individual parts for the package.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiJg7f9ib4M

Now what one doesn't know, especially when they're new to 3d printing in general, is the Chitu board they uses is closed.. This adds an additional layer of complexity to get printing, even after you've setup the hardware. Come on.. it won't even take many g code setting commands from the slicer. You have to update the firmware just to change them. A print that should have take 2h and 50mins took almost 5 hours because I didn't know I couldn't change some settings in the slicer. I now have to lean Chitu G Code to make things happen.

Yeah quality control on cheap printers is always going to be an issue.

When people say: 'here's two cheap machines, which one is best'.
We invariably try to encourage them to buy a more expensive machine.
As this rarely works the best we can do is to suggest machines that have better reviews round here.

I would also suggest that this is not a good time to buy a cheap machine from china.
Many factories have closed down or been running on light workforces.
So, yeah, quality control is going to be an issue for the forseeable future, and a lot of the printer supply companies are going to be using stuff they would probably usually send back or scrap.

I do apologise as this aspect of the current global situation has ONLY JUST occurred to me :-(

Sounds like you lucked out, so commiserations.

I have seen a lot of videos about X5SA Pro and various Creality models.

Many had problems with X5SA, but those who seemed to have more DIY experience
(or willing to solve them), corrected most of them, as also made simple improvements.
Most of them had to tight the rollers of rails, and there was not any direction in the manual.

The guy in the video link in crabjoe's post, did not make an effort to solve them.
(but is trying a lot harder when testing Creality models.
and if a print fails, the usual excuse is "the slicing was not good", "retraction setting was not proper", etc ...)

Both Creality and Tronxy are in Shenzhen, a city in the border of Hong Kong.
I don't know how much this area was affected by covid19, but the area is not of those that were hit hard.
But such problems are not unknown before the virus, as we can see in various older videos.

Personally I don't care if the printer will come in ... bits and pieces,
because as -I think- I said I am a senior engineer with 45+ years of experience,
in design of electronic systems, electromechanical, plastic parts for molding, and a lot of software.

Prusa mini is not an option, because the factory says deliveries for March orders are shifted at August due to virus.
And it could help in just printing, not testing and exploring CoreXY problems and capabilities.

In my understanding X5SA Pro is a very good relatively cheap base to experiment in CoreXY printing.

creality are very generous to youtube reviewers.
Also quite specific in what you have to do to get a free printer.

At the end of the day I don't blame the reviewers - we're all trying to earn a crust, just learn to be careful of reviews where the reviewer has been given the printer.

Build a HyperCube Evolution!

As a Creality owner, all I can say its not a "Ready to run" out of the box.....And I have had to email Creality without a reply. I found the answers here and other 3D forums are a awesome resource when needing help.

Creality = Experimental 3D printer in my experince.