Creality Sermoon V1 Pro Review
While not exactly an ideal starting printer, the Sermoon V1 Pro raises the standard for anyone who claims to be a beginner printer in the future. It's a terrific quality, safe, and neat desktop printer that'll serve you well for any small-scale printing needs, with a fully contained design, app connectivity, and even a webcam to examine your prints remotely.
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SPECIFICATIONS
- Brand: Creality
- Build Volume: (w)175 x (d)175 x (h)165mm
- Connectivity: SD card, or Wi-Fi (app / website cloud printing)
- Heated Build Plate: Yes; removable PEI magnetic steel sheet
- Feed Type: "Sprite" Direct drive and tube
- Dimensions: (w) 400 x (d) 380 x (h)430mm
- Dual-Color Printing: No
At the best of times, 3D printers aren't the most user-friendly or safe. They're mechanical devices with no safety stops and a 200°C hot metal tip jerking around, and if left unattended, they can seriously injure young fingers.
The Creality Sermoon V1 Pro is a fully-encosed design with acrylic windows, auto-pause when the door is opened, and even a webcam to monitor your prints remotely via a smartphone app. Is this the 3D printer for beginners you've been looking for? Maybe.
Initial Impression of the Setup and Hardware
The Sermoon V1 Pro is carefully packaged, with little assembly required; simply cut the cable ties that hold the internals together. Peeling the protective film off the acrylic that encloses three sides of the printer is the most time-consuming step. There's also a blob of foam inside shielding the Z-axis that needs to be removed, but it's not evident.
The Sermoon V1 Pro is totally enclosed within a grey, white, and clear acrylic casing measuring 40 x 38 x 43cm, with the exception of the filament spool that sits on a fold out arm to the side. It's roughly the size of a laser printer and will fit on a desk or shelving unit with ease. The drawback of being so small is that the construction volume suffers, with a total printable area of only 175mm square on the X/Y axis and a height of only 165mm.
A very simple to use touchscreen, as well as an SD card port, can be found on the front right.
Not only is the fully enclosed design safer, but it also helps to reduce noise and provide more reliable prints.
The print will cease if the front door of the printer is opened, however the hotend will remain hot. While it may still be dangerous, the risk is reduced because the hot end will not be moved jerkily.
While not completely silent, I am able to work in the same area without the noise becoming too distracting. It won't be necessary to store it in a workshop.
But how does a design that is enclosed print more consistently? By reducing airflow. Even the tiniest draughts can cause temperature swings, lowering quality and, more significantly, causing prints to deform and fall off the print bed. This is why many individuals make their own printer enclosures (typically out of an IKEA LACK table) or simply cover their printer with a large cardboard box.
Wi-Fi, a Webcam, and a Magnetic Print Bed
To boost adhesion, the Sermoon V1 Pro has a heated print bed with a magnetic PEI-coated steel sheet. Once your print has cooled, it's simplest to peel and snap off, and I've had no problems with adherence thus far, so it clearly works.
You'll get Wi-Fi connectivity so you can print from your Creality Cloud smartphone app or website, as well as a built-in webcam on the Pro model. This allows you to view your current print from your smartphone app, but not on the internet, which is strange. When viewing the camera stream, internal lighting is turned on automatically, but you can turn it off at any time via the printer's touchscreen.
While viewing the built-in camera feed directly functioned perfectly—even when I was outside of my house—I discovered that earlier recordings were unavailable to view. Every print is supposed to be automatically recorded and saved to the SD card, with previous recordings being overwritten when the card is full (like a dashcam). Unfortunately, while I was able to see a list of recordings from the app, I was unable to play any of them, nor was there any data on the SD card. As a result, I can't tell you whether these are timelapse or full video because they didn't work.
Not Auto-Leveling, but Zero-Leveling
The Sermoon V1 Pro requires manual leveling, despite the confusingly called menu option for "auto-leveling" and several instances of the printer being sold as auto-leveling on Amazon and elsewhere. It should, however, come pre-leveled, so you won't have to do so for your first few prints and can get started right away. This was correct in my case, but it's easy to see how some severe handling while shipment could throw this off.
Raising or lowering each point and using a piece of calibration card until you can feel it being slightly scratched is how you level the Sermoon V1 Pro. The process, on the other hand, was irregular for me. For example, I'd elevate the bed until it grasped too tightly at -1mm, then lower it until it let go, only to raise it back up past the point where it grabbed before. This could be because I couldn't find the calibration card (together with the SD card that held some software and sample data) in our shipment and had to make do with a sheet of paper instead.
The lack of auto-leveling is a major flaw for a printer aimed at beginners, and it's especially strange given all of the other useful features. Auto-leveling is neither difficult nor novel.
Nonetheless, I had no problems with adherence, so even if the leveling procedure was erratic, it didn't appear to matter.
Extruder for Sprites
Creality's "Sprite" direct-drive dual-gear extruder is used in the Sermoon V1 Pro, which feeds filament more reliably and with less slippage. It does, however, have a Bowden tube and a small hole through which the filament is fed from the external spool holder. It's a unique hybrid design that eliminates snagging on the top mechanisms while maintaining the advantages of a direct-drive extruder system.
The extruder can be heated to 250°C, making it appropriate for various filaments such as ABS or PETG, though I only tested it with PLA because it was designed for beginners. The filament is fed and retracted using a single button on the interface, which heats to 240°C and then retracts or pulls a bit. The rest of the process is done by hand, with the filament being manually pushed or pulled through the tube from the machine's side.
It's performed nicely in my testing so far, with smooth filament feeding and changing. The one oddity I've discovered is that the handbook encourages you to remove the feed tube when inserting filament, but this does not appear to be necessary, and it appears that doing so frequently will wear down the push-fit.
App for Creativity on the Cloud
I really enjoy the Sermoon V1 Pro in terms of hardware. It has a sleek, pleasant appearance, is enclosed, and is secure. It doesn't appear to have been pieced together from other 3D printed parts, as most printers currently do. That's excellent work.
Unfortunately, initial impressions of the software were not favorable. An SD card with some test prints and software was supposed to be included in our box, but there wasn't, so I began looking for download links. To download the app, I scanned the QR code provided in the handbook, only to be told it wasn't accessible in my area. To discover Creality Cloud on the app store, I had to do a manual search.
Meanwhile, I discovered that my Wi-Fi doesn't allow 5GHz networks, so I had to create a new 2.4GHz-only network. I finally got it to connect, and I upgraded the firmware. However, I doubt that someone with a less technical mindset would have persevered.
The Creality Cloud software gives you access to a wide collection of free models, but it doesn't distinguish between those built for resin printers and those designed for FDM filament printers. If you try to print one of the highly detailed figures on the Sermoon V1 Pro, you could be disappointed. Unfortunately, the app is also gamified. You get Cuva coins every time you open it, and there's no way to make it stop talking. You can acquire them for almost every type of engagement.
Slicing on a Desktop (Mac)
Next I wanted to see if I could slice from my Mac. The first download link I discovered on the Creality website wouldn't even open; it just crashed again. After contacting support, I was sent a Google Drive link with the contents of the supplied SD card, which included a functional copy of Creality Slicer (albeit an older version). It's a branded Cura, which is nice—but a profile that could be imported into a vanilla Cura would have been even better.
The advantage of utilizing the Creality version of Cura is that it comes with built-in cloud integration, allowing you to upload your slice immediately to your free cloud account without ever touching an SD card. However, you can't transmit the sliced file directly to a printer for some reason. Instead, log in to the Creality Cloud website and send your print from there, or use the smartphone app. It's still easier than manually inserting an SD card and selecting the print file, but it's an odd choice given that it's clearly able to transfer it via Wi-Fi. If I were a cynic, I'd assume it's trying to drum up business for more cloud storage alternatives.
Quality of Printing
I started with a flexible dinosaur and a whistle that would have been included on the SD card as pre-sliced Gcode files. Both of these had a raft for adherence, which was utterly unnecessary and gave the underside a horrible texture. Other than that, both are nicely printed: the whistle, well, whistles, and the flexible dinosaur, well, flexes.
I also used the smartphone app to search the Creality Cloud library, get a small version of a printer test, slice it, and send it wirelessly to the printer. At no point did I need to click any buttons on the printer—everything was done through the app. In terms of print quality, it passed with flying colors. Overhangs printed beautifully, bridging was excellent, and there was just minor stringing, resulting in highly accurate output.
The Creality Sermoon V1 Pro: The Ideal Device for Beginners?
The print quality is excellent right out of the box. It's far from flawless, but it provides a good basis from which to build as you learn. Many beginners will stutter on their first print, leaving them irritated and perplexed as to whether the problem is with them or with the hardware. 3D printing is a huge learning curve, and having a trustworthy printer like the Sermoon V1 Pro by your side will be invaluable.
Creality could certainly improve in a number of ways. The smartphone app is packed with obnoxious features and notifications that you should turn off right away. However, the ability to grab a model, slice it, and print it all from within the software is incredible and far superior to anything offered by competitors at this price point. It simply requires some simplification.
The lack of autoleveling and limited text volume, as well as the reduced touchscreen UI, will certainly frustrate experienced users. They're also more likely to use a desktop slicer, which requires an intermediate step of uploading to the cloud if the wireless printing feature is to be used.
While the Sermoon V1 Pro isn't quite a perfect starting printer, it does set a high standard for anyone claiming to be a beginner printer in the future. It's a high-quality, secure, and attractive desktop printer that will meet your small-scale printing demands.