If the 3DPrintMill’s appearance alone didn’t make it clear, this printer is decidedly different from anything Creality has released in the past. An infinite-Z build volume printer, the 3DPrint Mill is distinctive not only for its conveyor-belt style print bed but also the angled gantry that the print head travels around. It’s a very specific design that introduces a couple of desirable traits in a 3D printer: continuous printing, and the ability to print unsupported overhangs.

Background

Belt style printers are not new. Colorfabb-backed startup BlackBelt commercialized its eponymous (and pricey) model some years ago, PrintrBot came close before folding, and independent outfit White Knight has stolen a march on the market with its affordable DIY version. The latter two examples are noteworthy as open-source designs, which opens the door for them to serve as a jumping-off point for others to iterate, develop, and build upon.

As such, Creality’s effort, spearheaded by Shenzhen-based engineer Wu, does just that. Building on some of these past belt printers – with the blessing of those involved – Wu even enlisted Karl Brown of Nak 3D Design, maker of the White Knight belt 3D printer, to join the 3DPrintMill project as a consultant, continuing the development while also not stepping on the toes of efforts to commercialize the White Knight itself.

As such, Wu plans to keep the belt printer ball rolling by open sourcing the 3DPrintMill.

So, it’s no leap to say that this new belt printer has pedigree. It’s certainly unique among Creality’s offerings, and is the product of something of a “skunkworks” at the company, admits Wu in the sneak peek video. It’s unusual for a company such as Creality, that specializes in driving costs down and producing reliable products at scale, to develop a new, arguably niche machine from scratch.

But 2020 is 2020, the year the status quo went AWOL. There’s no reason Creality shouldn’t pioneer something new and make it mass marketable. The company is arguably the first name in budget 3D printing, so if not them, then who?

Design

The 3DPrintMill, as explained above, is unusual in design and has a few distinguishing features that allow it to achieve continuous printing. While not one hundred percent complete, and not expected to launch until close to the end of the year, here’s what’s been stated, and what we can divine from the various videos and interviews bouncing around the web about the 3DPrintMill, in addition to the printer’s recently-surfaced product page on Creality’s website.

The 3DPrintMill is CoreXY at its, well, core. The key difference over the traditional interpretation of that style of printer is that the XY gantry and motion system is canted: Instead of a flat fixed-area bed that moves perpendicularly away from the print head in the Z-axis, you have a rolling Z-axis that draws the print away. By nature of being a loop, provided what has already been printed can be evacuated from the belt, the machine can theoretically print endlessly on this rolling Z-axis.

The makeup of the printer appears to be typical Creality fare, with aluminum extrusions and powder-coated metal for the frame, and the axes rolling on V-slot wheels in the extrusions’ tracks.

The power supply, mainboard and user interface have been integrated into the printer’s base, with a full-size SD card slot on the machine’s front.

Print Volume

We now know that the 3DPrintMill runs a little smaller than we initially guessed, with a build area (in the XY-axes – the diagonal bit) of 200 x 17o mm, paired to the infinite Z provided by the belt. We originally mused it might be close to the Ender 3 for possible build size, but the reality is much closer to the Original Prusa Mini.

Continuous Belt

A key component of any belt printer is, of course, the belt on which it prints.

The belt material was previously stated as “wear-resistant carbon fiber”, which has since changed instead to “wear-resistant Nylon”. A preview of the machine by YouTuber Joel Telling (3DPrintingNerd) shows close up detail on the belt, including its stitched design and coarse texture. It looks like prints adhere well, if not too well. Being a preview unit though, we’d be surprised if there weren’t further changes between what we’ve seen, and what actually ships.

Additionally, it would seem that the belt, by design, can be easily replaced by the user, boosting its longevity providing Creality offers replacement belts (or give enough detail for users to source their own elsewhere.)

The 3DPrintMill’s belt could be seen as pretty short when held against other belt printer designs. For the sake of batch production in a workshop setting though, this could be a space-saving masterstroke.

For those looking to take advantage of the ability to print into an infinite-Z-axis (printing in the direction of the belt), there will be optional roller attachments that serve as print support to prevent drooping on long prints.

Factory Leveled

It’s not apparent how you would go about leveling the bed (or belt, in this case), but the new website listing indicated that the 3DPrintMill will be factory leveled.

Motion

The kinematics for the print head is provided by a CoreXY motion system which should translate to quick and precise movement.

“Ultra-Silent” Mainboard

Though no specifics are given about the board used, Creality specifies that the 3DPrintMill uses an “ultra-silent motherboard” with a “silent chipset.” The leads us to believe that the 3DPrintMill will use one of Creality’s newer 4.2.x 32-bit boards. Possibly one with TMC2208 stepper motor drivers, if ultra-silence really is silent.

Print Head

We can see dual hot-end cooling fans in action on the 3DPrintMill, so there should be the potential there for tidy prints – even fine detail. The printer uses a 0.4 mm nozzle as standard.

Print Modes

Printing long objects should be no different to setting up a standard print in your slicer. It would appear that Creality has developed an exclusive slicing solution for the 3DPrintMill, called CrealityBelt. We’ve seen and heard nothing else about it, so can’t really say anything more than that.

Prototypes of the machine were seen to use a modified version of Blackbelt’s fork of Cura.

The 3DPrintMill’s ability to batch print is something that, early on, could only be set in the slicer. This would be pretty prohibitive in practice, depending on your computer hardware and the complexity of the parts to be printed. The ideal solution, Wu says, would be to slice just the one model and then select the volume of prints directly on the machine, but as of the machine’s state in the sneak peek video, this was not possible.

We’d go one further and say a software solution that could allow for mixed model batches, queueing, and the ability to manage things would be a great way to enhance the tech. Perhaps a little beyond the sub-$1,000 price point Wu is aiming for, but no doubt such an ability is just an Octoprint plugin away.

Other Features

• Filament out detection
• Power out recovery
• Auto-switching power supply