With roots deriving back to MakerBot’s open-source Replicator, the Creator Max is the direct follow-up to the Creator Pro dual extrusion 3D printer, which was released roughly half a decade ago.

Without dissecting its lineage too much, but when comparing the former to the latter, you can’t get around the fact that they look very much alike. If it weren’t for the new colorful touchscreen, you could be forgiven for thinking it is the same machine.

As with the Creator Pro, the main draw of the Flashforge Creator Max is its ability to print dual color and dual material. And as with the looks, it would appear that the print performance is more or less as found with the Pro. A marginal design update, with little noticeable benefit for the user alongside an uptick in price, detracts a bit from what should be a pretty exciting printer.

Let’s break things down.

Design and Features

As with Replicator-style machines past, the Flashforge Creator Max has a sturdy metal skeleton shrouded with plastic panels. We like the convenience given by the carry handles on both sides of the printer.

The front features a large see-through acrylic door. You can choose to fully enclose the printer with its separate acrylic lid (provided), or improve ventilation by printing without.

Furthermore, you find the 3.5-inch color touchscreen on the front, the SD card slot on the right side, and the filament spool holders on the back.

Having the filament stored out of sight on the rear of the printer gives a sleeker look from front-on, but makes changing filament beyond irritating. The only useful way to place the machine would be propped in the middle of the room as if it were part of some kind of exhibition. Make sure to leave enough room on your workspace to rotate the Creator Max in place.

While we are on the topic of spool holders, printing one of the universal spool holders for the Creator Max on Thingiverse should be considered one of your first tasks upon booting the printer. The spool holders that come with the stock printer can only hold Flashforge spools of filament. Having to print larger spool holders is no deal-breaker, but keep in mind that Flashforge has been running this same setup of printer since 2015 – it’s not unreasonable to expect some kind of improvement here.

Speaking of improvements, out of the box, the Creator Max is deficient in one area – print cooling. For reasons unknown to us, the two extruders on the Creator Max have just the one unidirectional fan duct, blowing air from the left side. This means that an essential upgrade for the Creator Max right off the bat is a dual fan duct that directly cools beneath each nozzle.

The dual extrusion setup on the Creator Max consists of a single print head with two direct drive extruders in tandem. Unlike independent dual extrusion (IDEX) systems, where two print heads move independently from each other, or mechanically retracting nozzles (as found on Ultimaker and Raise3D machines), the Creator Max’s tandem hotends allow for comparatively quick dual extrusion prints at the expense of oozing from the inactive printhead, especially as both nozzles are kept at temperature constantly.

Knowing the difficulties that can arise with such a dual hotend print head makes the lack of robust part cooling all the more incomprehensible. Again, printing an alternative is trivial and greatly improved print performance. Without such modification, though, even simple multicolor prints using PLA are invariably messy with poor bridging (at least the parts printed without direct cooling), not to mention multi-material prints with temperature-sensitive material combinations.

Leveling the Creator Max’s bed is, unfortunately, an exercise in frustration, as leveling both hotends perfectly on the plate might take a few trials. The print bed itself on the Creator Max measures 227 x 148 mm, is leveled by a three-point system, and moves up and down a lead screw flanked by two 10 mm guide rails.

Unfortunately, the print bed is non-removable, which at times makes print removal difficult, requiring a lot of brute force with the spatula. While the 6.3 mm aerospace-grade aluminum plate beneath the print adhesion sticker is sturdy enough, the bed suspension puts out a rather flimsy vibe, made all the more apparent when forcefully removing prints. While the print bed surface does provide proper adhesion, it doesn’t release prints when cool as readily as coated glass typically might.

From a technical standpoint, the Creator Max does – cooling notwithstanding – feature all the necessary prerequisites for dual printing. But then so did the Creator Pro back in 2015 – and that machine can be found heavily discounted these days.

Setup & Printing

Setting the Creator Max up for printing is straightforward and easy. Snugly packaged and almost ready-to-run, all you need to do is attach the print head.

In our experience, printing dual-color, let alone dual-material, out of the box is inadvisable. Such is the difference a better cooling fan duct has. Not that you’d be able to anyway, as the unit only shipped with one sample spool of filament.

Skipping the provided sample prints because we could not get the included SD card slot to function (a fix that required us to take the side panel off and adjust the reader in its slot), we fired up the WiFi connectivity instead. Using the provided Flashprint slicer, you can directly prepare and send print jobs from your computer for local storage on the printer’s internal hard drive.

The WiFi accessibility is the second differential from the Creator Pro. However, there’s no way to remotely view prints in progress – a feature found on cheaper Flashforge models. Plus, take note that you can’t run a print from the SD card while using the WiFi – again, something found on the cheaper Adventurer 3 (link above).

We found Flashforge’s Flashprint slicing software has its ups and downs. Dated visuals aside, the majority of necessary functions are easily found, with the rest buried in obscure settings menus.

For example, printing with soluble support material is a little confusing in Flashprint. Even though you are technically printing with two materials, you must set the print to a single nozzle job and then in the slicing menu (only after enabling expert mode, that is) enable the soluble support function.

As with any slicer, Flashprint takes a little getting used to. Once acquainted with the program, though, we found it up to the task. However, one quirk of the software and hardware together is the default print settings’ use of the right-hand extruder by default – the one furthest away from the print cooling fan duct. You have to change it to the left extruder in print preparation for effective print cooling.

There are workarounds to use the likes of Cura and Simplyfy3D, should you so wish.

Using the right – in this case, left – extruder alone results in pleasing single extrusion prints. Both the filament spool holder (PLA) and especially the dual fan duct (using Fusion ABS) are aesthetically fine prints with no apparent issues or inconsistencies.

Printing with dual extrusion is another story. Decent prints come with time and tinkering in the settings, but it’s hardly fire and forget.

It’s necessary to make print adjustments to try to prevent the inactive nozzle from contaminating the print. We found some success using a purge wall around dual color prints, helping to keep nozzles appropriately primed and minimize leakage. Unfortunately, it’s not 100% preventable, which results in unwanted blots on the surface of prints.

Adjusting speeds and retraction settings gave noticeably better results.

Similar experiences were had when trying out soluble support material. Once you are familiar with the unwieldy slicer settings, printing – especially dissolvable soluble support – is an adventure on its own, but the results are mediocre.

It’s clear from the image above that surface finish takes a hit when using soluble supports. It would appear that a tradeoff is to be made between print complexity and surface quality. Nevertheless, dual-material and dual-color prints are undeniably fun and open up a world of possibilities – something few stock printers offer.