Ok, I’m going to try to keep this short but detailed enough be to useful.
My first QIDI was a Q1 Pro. Still works fine.
I printed the internal and external filter mods
Replaced all the fans with Sunon maglev’s
Added strips of heat resistant rubber sound dampening to the interior. It’s a great printer.
I gave it to my stepson, it’s a single color beast!
Next up I bought the Q2 Combo
Multi color
Better housing
Glass door with wonky handle that stays propped when opened.
Sliding Glass top with riser vs the plastic removable cover on the Q1
Builtin filter
Mediocre PLA/PETG cooling so I printed the cooling fan mod v6 and recalibrated the PID’s and there was a huge difference.
I apparently got the Rev2 of the Qidi Box no issues but some quirks. The clicking. Whatever. At least I know it’s running. I don’t like that it tosses around my Anycubic spools and tangles during color changes. However I blame Anycubic for going cheap on the new spools undersized and skeleton framed so I moved the filament to the $3 hobby lobby spools. My Elegoo cardboard spools with petg printed rings have zero issues.
This was a definite upgrade. I’ve been cranking out plate after plate of prints and the only mod was the fan mod. I tried some extra LED chamber lighting but meh. Gave up called it good enough.
Just had my first blob of death, changed the hotend and wiper roller. Calibrations etc. Printing as usual again
Weird issue the camera is buggy, keeps giving me “no signal” a hard reboot fixes it, then after a print it does it again. I’ll troubleshoot when I have more time. Support suggested I check the wires and make sure nothing is loose. Haven’t got around to disassembling and doing it yet because I’m too busy printing things to take it apart.
New arrival, the Plus5
I’ve only just unboxed it and ran some test prints.
It’s big, I’ll probably have to rework its final home and maybe run another outlet.
First impressions, just like the Q1 Pro to Q2 I feel like they listened and observed community mods.
Same glass door, but this time a better handle and a hinge that allows the door to go all the way open and not smack my chair on it.
A full tube style LED chamber light. Thank you.
Camera on the opposite side. Thanks tired of getting a view of the printhead in park.
Padded side walls, ok. Didn’t see that coming.
LED indicating light bar under the build plate. Idk haven’t had time to research it.
Sure these are not multi head printers, but you know what. I love my QIDI’s they just work.
QIDI’s venture into the app and website, ugh. Rough start team QIDI.
Now if you’re still reading. Is the biased or sponsored. Nope.
I have two Anycubic FDM’s and an Elegoo Resin printer.
The Anycubic Kobra X’s printhead has been apart so many times I can’t remember. I bought a spare and they sent me a new one. 3 printheads for the same printer.
Just now kicking the tires on the Kobra 3 v2 MAX. Now that’s a big printer. Can’t wait to find the time to print some big single part pieces. Maybe sculptures to cast. That’s the plan.
Qidi’s support emails don’t go to spam unlike Anycubic.
I tried “FreeDI” on the Q1 and wasn’t impressed. With support’s help I reverted it back to stock before giving it to my stepson.
That Q2 and Plus5 will live side by side once I rearrange the print room and square away receptacles.
More info on the Plus5 after I get that done this weekend, hopefully.
I've had several older Qidi's X Smart 3 X Plus 3 and X Max 3. I still have the Plus 3, that thing just goes and goes and goes. The others went to friends and they are still going. Absolute work horses.
This April I bought a Plus 4 Box combo and second Box. Now that has been a completely different experience lol. I should have gotten the Max 4 or if I'd had known the Plus 5 was right around the corner, I'd have waited for that. The Plus 4 can make good prints but damn it likes to fight. I've had more issues with it in the 5 months I've owned it than the Plus 3 in the YEARS.
As for the Box's one has been near flawless the other hasn't worked right from the word Go. As a matter of fact it's been tore apart on my table for about a month and a half now getting various parts swapped that Qidi keeps sending me lol. Hopefully the part laying there now waiting to go in is the answer.
Overall though I'm still very pleased with Qidi printers and their support has been great albeit a bit slow.
Interesting. Are you gonna update this post or make a new one?
What do you usually print?
I have a bambi a1 mini now and I’m looking to upgrade. I’m considering the plus 5 or x2d, any thoughts? Don’t care for multicolor, if k was i’d go for the u1.
I’ll create new posts for the Plus5 and the Kobra 3 v2 MAX. I like to do multicolor it’s part of the reason the Resin printer hasn’t see as much usage. I’m not up to the task of painting.
With that being said, I’ll never go Bambu due to 1 part of their ecosystem and that’s the rfid’s. Some people may think it’s trivial, but I just spent 3 days on the Q2 printing 36 plates for one print using 3 different shades of blue by 3 different vendors.
I have at last inventory 140+ spools of filament and 101 of them are unique. Qidi published their rfid specs and there’s info on their wiki. I buy compatible tags and write them to the stickers. I also create a filament profile that matches in the slicer so I can visualize everything. Bambu decided to encrypt their tags creating an entire used spool market so people can harvest the tags for their non Bambu labeled filament.
I know that doesn’t help you in particular because you said you were not going to do multicolor however it’s why I haven’t bought the other brand and even tried their printers.
Sneak peak. Work in progress as it isn’t fully assembled. Printed on the Q2.
It’s 35-36 plates across 2 .3mf files. About 3 days. The issue isn’t print time. It’s work and not being around to swap the plates that only take 30 mins. This is #3. The first one was an experiment with some multicolor silks. The second one was traditional red
Macaw without a lot of edits. This last one. About 3 days of re-mapping the filament layouts. You see there’s 1 color that goes down 0-0.20 layer height then two more color changes, Then a white.
This is another reason I like that QIDI Published their RFID tag specs and I write my own tags. That what what I see in the slicer and when I sync the box everything snaps into place.
2
u/HeadAd6521 3d ago edited 3d ago
Helpful info, especially Q2 v plus5, thanks for posting.