First it gave me an error for the thermocouple out of range, it kept saying the hot end was 360°, I swapped out the hot tends and hit the new one is at 30° but won’t heat up
Build volume and multi color prints interest me not, I care purely and only about final print quality.
Question is simple: which of these two consistently provide better print quality?
Dimensionally accurate, surface quality, warping, layer adhesion, etc etc etc.
Any and all (helpful) input is welcome! Both printers look friggin awesome, but it's so hard to decide between them!
For context, my last printer was the P1S which worked great but with the recent Bambu nonsense going on...Qidi is my best bet. I'll be printing mainly PLA and PETG with the occasional ASA/ABS and TPU prints thrown in here and there. I don't care much for multi color prints due to the purge waste, but they both offer a 4 color changing option I can buy later so it's whatever.
First off, I am brand-new to 3D printing and recently got a Qidi Q2. It probably has 8 hours of total use on it, mostly from small pieces that I modeled myself. I did run all the auto-calibration and bed-leveling things that I could find in the menu, but I haven't turned any screws or done any physical tweaking on it.
Here's a picture of what I'm trying to print.
If that link doesn't work: direct link to the thingiverse page.
It's a 3+ hour print and about 2:30 into it, the piece toppled over and the machine kept extruding into the air so there was PLA threads everywhere. Because the design is so top-heavy (16cm / 6.5" tall), as printing progresses, it gets more vulnerable to tipping over.
I'm using Qidi studio, printing at 70% sparse infill with the "cubic" pattern (I know that's a lot, but actually lower than what the designer recommended).
Because it takes so long and uses so much material I have been reluctant to try printing it again without having ideas to reduce the chance of tipping.
Questions:
The machine is directly on the floor so there is no shaking in the machine itself as it prints. When I first got it, I put it on a table, but even though it's a sturdy table, the table was shaking with the hot end's movement, so now the machine lives on the floor.
TIA
Hi,
I am looking for a sub 1000cad printer in canada. My objective is to make interior stuff for my miata abd also cosplay stuff like an mandalorian helmet/armor or mini figures. I was looking at the Qidi 4 plus and also the Bambulab p2S but i was unsure of which one i would take. Right now i got an ender 3 max and its slow to print and the glasses are used too much.
Thanks
More than a year ago, I bought a QIDI Plus 4 together with the QIDI Box as my second 3D printer, after my Bambu Lab X1C Combo.
My experience with the Plus 4 was, frankly, exhausting.
In a strange way, the Plus 4 taught me a lot about how a 3D printer works — mostly because I spent so much time troubleshooting it.
I had issues including:
I tried many things to fix these problems: preheating and heat-soaking the bed, modifying the springs supporting the bed, and even bonding parts of the piezo sensor assembly with high-temperature adhesive.
None of these solutions really solved the fundamental problems.
Eventually, I became frustrated and gave up. I didn't think it made much sense to keep modifying a printer that, in my opinion, had too many problems built into its original design.
I had basically decided that my next printer would be a Bambu H2D.
Then QIDI contacted me and asked whether I would be interested in public testing one of their new printers. They offered to send me a QIDI Plus 5 for testing. I could provide feedback directly to them, and if I wanted to, I could also share my experience publicly.
I agreed, although I had some concerns.
As far as I understand, there was no obligation for me to post anything positive — or even to post anything at all. But at the same time, I really didn't want to spend another few months debugging an unfinished printer.
After receiving the Plus 5, however, I started to change my mind.
1. The packaging is better
The packaging feels noticeably improved compared with my Plus 4.
That is a relatively small thing, but it was my first indication that QIDI had paid more attention to the overall product experience this time.
2. Build and assembly quality are significantly better
The build quality of my Plus 5 feels much better than that of my Plus 4.
For example, the sheet-metal parts supporting the heated bed appear noticeably better made.
My Plus 4 also seems to have a pulley or shaft-alignment problem. After running for some time, wrinkles develop on the surface of the belt, and a noticeable amount of black belt debris accumulates around the pulleys. My guess is that one of the pulley shafts is not perfectly perpendicular, causing the belt to rub against the edge of the pulley.
On the Plus 5, when I manually move the toolhead, the motion feels very smooth. I also don't see the belt rubbing against the pulley flanges.
Of course, this is something that really needs longer-term testing before I can draw a final conclusion.
Another improvement is the front door.
My Plus 4 had a very obvious gap along the left side of the chamber door. When printing materials such as ABS, I ended up needing an additional printed door-seal part to improve chamber sealing.
On the Plus 5, QIDI has clearly redesigned this area, and the door seals much better. For ABS and similar materials, I no longer feel that I need to print an additional door-seal modification.
3. The GUI and mobile app have been redesigned
QIDI has reworked both the printer GUI and the mobile app.
The new printer interface looks much more polished and responds quickly.
If I describe the Plus 4 GUI as something that felt like a prototype, the Plus 5 GUI feels much closer to a production-ready consumer product.
It now feels much more comparable to the interface experience on my Bambu X1C.
4. The new QIDI Box is a much better design
QIDI also redesigned the QIDI Box.
One of my biggest complaints about the original QIDI Box for the Plus 4 was maintainability.
If filament broke somewhere inside the Box, servicing it could become a very unpleasant job because you might need to disassemble a large part of the unit just to reach the filament path.
The new QIDI Box has an access panel on the bottom secured with screws.
I haven't needed to open it yet, but just from looking at the design, it should make maintenance significantly easier.
The filament-feeding mechanism also works differently.
On the Plus 4, the QIDI Box actively drives the filament, and its motion is not perfectly synchronized with the printer's extruder. During long prints, I found that this could put stress on the PTFE path and eventually cause failures at some of the tube connections.
The stepper motors inside the old Box also became extremely hot because they were running so frequently.
The Plus 5 Box appears to use a mechanism more similar in principle to Bambu's AMS: filament movement is largely driven according to demand from the printer rather than having the Box continuously push filament.
Most of the time, the motors inside the new Box are idle.
That seems like a much more sensible design to me.
5. The piezo sensor / first-layer problem appears to be greatly improved
This was one of the biggest problems I had with my Plus 4.
In practice, I could reliably use that machine mainly for PLA and PETG.
When I increased the bed and chamber temperatures for materials such as ABS or PA6-CF, I sometimes experienced the print head crashing into the bed.
The bed also didn't behave consistently as it heated up. A first layer might look fine during the first quarter or third of the print, then gradually become worse as the thermal state of the machine changed.
So one of the first things I did with the Plus 5 was deliberately stress-test its first-layer stability.
I ran a full 315 mm × 315 mm first-layer test three times consecutively without allowing the machine to cool down, using:
The results were quite good.
This kind of test was basically impossible for me to complete reliably on my Plus 4.
Test model:
https://www.qidimaker.com/zh/models/detail/2088527090723897345?profile_id=2088527091306905601
6. PA6-CF with ABS supports also worked
I also tested the QIDI Box by printing PA6-CF with ABS as the support material.
This was another scenario where my Plus 4 frequently failed.
At high chamber temperatures, when repeatedly switching between PA6-CF and ABS, I sometimes experienced lost steps on the X/Y motion system.
So I deliberately tested a model on the Plus 5 that requires many filament changes during the print.
This time, the Plus 5 + QIDI Box handled it quite well.
Test model:
https://www.qidimaker.com/zh/models/detail/2089880627127595009
7. The electronics don't appear radically different
I haven't disassembled the Plus 5 to inspect the mainboard and individual components.
However, based on printer.cfg, the motor-driver configuration looks quite similar to the Plus 4.
Both appear to use:
Personally, I don't think the motor drivers themselves were ever the limiting factor in building a modern, reliable 3D printer.
The more important differences seem to be in the mechanical design, assembly quality, calibration, firmware/software integration, thermal behavior, and overall system engineering.
8. The Plus 5 is still not perfect
There are still things I don't like.
In particular, the bed mesh on my unit does not look very good, especially when I run my high-temperature ABS first-layer stress tests with both the bed and chamber hot.
I'm not yet sure whether this happened during shipping, or whether the printer simply wasn't mechanically calibrated very well at the factory.
Interestingly, I have intentionally not manually adjusted the bed yet.
I'm pretending that I know nothing about bed leveling and using the printer the way a normal customer might use it out of the box — basically the same way I approached my Plus 4 when I first bought it.
Despite the imperfect bed mesh, the Plus 5's software compensation seems to work surprisingly well. The first-layer results are much better than I would expect from the measured bed flatness.
I will probably mechanically level the bed later, but for now I wanted to see how well the machine could compensate on its own.
Conclusion
So far, my answer to the QIDI Plus 5 is yes.
For the first time, I feel that this is a QIDI printer that may actually deliver what its specifications promise while also being reliable enough to use as a tool rather than as an ongoing engineering project.
That is a significant change in opinion for me, because after my experience with the Plus 4, I had more or less decided to leave the QIDI ecosystem.
I still want to put many more hours on the Plus 5 before making any conclusions about long-term reliability. There are also areas — such as the bed flatness on my unit — that I think could still be improved.
But my experience so far has been very different from my experience with the Plus 4.
And that's something I honestly didn't expect.
Disclosure: QIDI provided this Plus 5 to me for public testing at no cost. I was not required to post a review or say anything positive about it. The opinions above are based entirely on my own experience with the machine.
Also, English is my second language. I wrote the original version of this post myself and then used ChatGPT to help revise it into clearer and more natural English. I reviewed all of the edited text afterward to make sure it accurately reflects my own opinions and experience.
So I followed the short 2-3 minute long videos from Qidi, but nothing seems to happen with my Qidi Box. It just sits there...like isn't it suppose to load or feed in filament?
Does the mobile app actually work? I'm in the middle of a print and it shows as idle.
Also, getting the box to work with Qidi Studio on my laptop seems impossible so I'm switching to Orca tomorrow.
Hi
i´ve been trying to dry TPU and PA on the Qidi Box, but it doesn´t seem to be effective.
What´s your experience with drying those filaments on the Qidi Box and what other alternatives do you have?
Hi,
I am looking for a sub 1000cad printer in canada. My objective is to make interior stuff for my miata abd also cosplay stuff like an mandalorian helmet/armor or mini figures. I was looking at the Qidi 4 plus and also the Bambulab p2S but i was unsure of which one i would take. Right now i got an ender 3 max and its slow to print and the glasses are used too much.
Thanks
My main printer before this purchase was a modded Plus 4. (Conch, Reman, Beacon, etc...) It prints fantastic, especially with Engineering Materials. (PPS, PPA, PA612, etc...) I decided to jump to a newer Qidi machine to test if they fixed a lot of the issues this machine had on newer/different models.
Got my Plus 5 set up and unfortunately the bed is a hill. 0.3mm across the entire plate and it is definitely raised in the center. My stock plus 4 came with a 0.19-0.2mm variance and was very uniform. Will most likely invest in a Reman Graphite bed when it comes out.
My X & Y Drivers are reading over 105C on a Heated Chamber print. It appears Qidi learned nothing with the Plus 4s shortcomings and will need mods to make the printer a little less harsh on it's components.
(Also with a bed this large would it kill them to use an EDDY probe? Probing this whole thing takes 10+ minutes. It would take 2 with an Eddy and would extract more accurate data. All it takes is for some stray material to get on the nozzle and mess up the Z offset. Another mod I will likely be looking forward to.)
Also, why are we still using ceramic for the heatbreaks? This is a major design flaw that causes so many issues when it inevitably breaks. There is a reason nobody else is stealing this idea from Qidi. I would genuinely love the option to go for a titanium heatbreak nozzle if Qidi offered it.
Perhaps as time goes on I will change my mind on this printer, but so far it seem to be a very miniscule upgrade compared to the base plus 4.
*Don't mind the build plate, using a Plus 4 Garolite bed for a PPS test print*
Há pouco tempo adquiri uma QiDi Q2 com QiDi Box, sendo essa a minha entrada no mundo da impressão 3D. A impressora sempre funcionou muito bem desde o primeiro momento. Hoje, entretanto, tive um percalço ao tentar realizar uma impressão. Ontem comecei a impressão de um projeto e logo de início apresentou alguns problemas. Segundo diagnóstico a placa PEI poderia estar contaminada, o bico apresentava um pouco de filamento grudado na parte externa e pelo resultado da impressão o filamento poderia estar com humidade. Realizei a limpeza da placa e do bico e ativei a secagem do filamento por 8 horas na QiDi Box. Todo o processo ocorreu sem interrupção e finalizou normalmente. Hoje pela manhã ao tentar enviar o projeto para impressão pelo QiDi Studio não aparecia nenhum filamento instalado na caixa, pelo aplicativo QiDi Maker a situação era a mesma, fechei e reabri diversas vezes os programas. No painel da impressora tudo estava correto, mesmo assim reiniciei os equipamentos algumas vezes e nada mudou. Acessando diretamente pelo IP da impressora estando na mesma rede todas as informações estavam corretas conforme o painel. Então parti para reiniciar o Klipper e também o firmware, reinstalei o QiDi Studio no notebook, sem sucesso novamente. Fui para outro prédio com outro computador através de outro link e tentei acessar remotamente pela internet e alguns dados melhoraram, consegui fatiar o projeto e enviar para a impressora pois apareciam os filamentos carregados. Após isso o QiDi Studio ainda me mostrava a impressora como ociosa e com as temperaturas no mesmo estado de standby. Pela câmera via ela imprimindo "normalmente" e em pouco tempo desconectava com a mensagem de "não estar imprimindo nada no momento". Embora ainda apresentando muita lentidão para sincronizar os dados de telemetria, o problema só foi resolvido após reiniciar os computadores e também o smartphone. Parece que os softwares da QiDi deixam algum valor/dado que não é mais válido na memória do sistema operacional mesmo após encerrar o Studio/Maker e não descarta essa informação ao reabrir o mesmo. Por sorte, não tentei executar ações diversas enquanto ela estava executando a impressão com as falhas na telemetria.
Existe a execução de algum comando para evitar esse tipo de situação ou sempre será necessário reiniciar o sistema operacional? Minhas conclusões estão corretas ou foi mera coincidência a solução? Alguém mais teve esse tipo de problema ou algo parecido?
Cheguei a pensar na rede/roteador mas por tudo ter voltado quase ao normal não realizei nenhum teste para verificar.
Obs: todos os firmwares e softwares estão na versão atualizada.
So I have a QIDI Q2 Combo and a QIDI MAX 4 Combo. The Polar Cooler came with the Max 4 Combo. My question is do I install it on the Max 4 or Q2? Another option is if it's really not needed should I just sell it?
Thanks!
I am about to throw this thing outside.
Yesterday after printing with PET-CF I powered the machine off and did a thorough cleaning. After cleaning and maintaining the machine (grease, belts, tightening up various bolts), I turned the machine on to do homing calibration and it moves all the way down to the blocks and goes up, then down, then up, then DOWN. The last attempt it just keeps going downward. Almost seems like the homing is going backwards? G-Code is clean, printer has been factory reset, I AM AT A LOSS.
“No trigger on probe after full movement” is the error that reads on the screen. This is happening right out of the box during initial setup of the printer. I’ve already tried turning the power off, unplugging and then manually turning the z axis screws until the bed is level. When i start the auto leveling process again, one screw starts to turn while the other is delayed, causing the bed to become unlevel again! Extremely frustrating since i just paid $650 for this and received it today!
Qidi Max4 W/ Qidi Box update.
850+hrs on printer, 450+hrs on box...Has worked flawless for me, to the point I forget about it. Just walk in to finished prints is an amazing feeling.
I won't post my affiliate link on this post as I'm keeping this 💯 as possible with you all.
If I had a smaller 3d printer or was just getting into the hobby...The Max4 is a great option for those looking to do larger projects, take on more challenging materials...and overall want an easy 3d printing experience.
I will also admit Qidi did sent both the printer and box to the channel but honestly it's only been in my lab for under 4.5 months...I have multiple other 3d printers to use by other reputable manufacturers...but when I want quality, successful prints...I've been turning to the MaX4 almost every time.
Take it as you will, It's earned it's spot in my shop..if that means anything to y'all 🤷
Burnstation3D
Hello, I have a Q1 pro that I'm finally getting around to using lol. I'm looking to build/install a filtration system for the few rare occasions I print abs/asa/gf etc. I was looking to using Qidi's 3 in 1 filter (either the max4 or the new 5 filter) in conjunction with this stl https://www.printables.com/model/950643-qidi-q1-pro-exhaust-duct-and-fume-extraction-port
after doing some research, it seems not all activated carbon is the same and I'm looking for any information on the quality and efficacy of the Qidi filter https://us.qidi3d.com/products/q2-3-in-1-air-filter
if this filter isn't quality, then what are your guys' best solutions for a filtration system for a q1 pro? maybe installing a nevermore?
thank you for the help!
Hi everyone! I have a qidi q2 combo for almost 2 months. The printer is fantastic but the box is a continue hell! 2/3 prints fails for the box I can't take it anymore I want to throw off a bridge the entire box and printer....
Help me with this problem please.
The first one is about filament wrapping detection that stops my pla and petg prints. I print pla and petg with open chamber and extra ventilation also with the box opened but nothing....
The worst part right now is when I tra to print asa and pet....
I can not load the filaments anymore. The first filament keeps unloading and the other never load in the extruder..... as you can see in the video. Have so much errors on this box. And now can't use the printer because of it and I have treid many ways to fix that...
TL;DR: Original USB is not working, where to get the slicer software? Download of QIDI print slicer, which is the only software on QIDI website listed as compatible with I-Fast, leads to a google drive and the setup.exe file is being blocked by my antivirus. Any experience? Is it trustworthy?
Hello, i have recently purchased a QIDI tech I-fast printer second hand from someone who allegedly just opened it, and never used it.
This does appear to be true as the printer didnt have any of the packaging material removed from inside or arround it, and a red/black USB stick in a little bag was present.
I have gotten the printer running, everything seems nice and functional, i have already inserted filament and done the fast leveling process described, and i wanted to move onto the test print, which should have been present on the provided USB stick.
The printer does not react in any way to the USB stick being connected or disconnected, does not show any files or anything else. Neither does my computer, does not even register it as a connected device or anything.
I therefore not only do not have the test print file, but i mainly do not have the original intended software to download. So i went to the QIDI website, where there are three options - QIDI studio, QIDI slicer and QIDI print slicer. Only QIDI print slicer is listed as compatible with I-Fast.
Unlike the other pieces of SW, which seem to be readily downloadable from the website as one would expect, clicking the dowload link on the print slices leads me to a google drive.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BY65fwwVnyetR039GwgvAHeuEbIr1xfO
where there is a "QIDI setup 6.5.4.exe", which, according to the drive history was added by an account named 售后起迪科技 in 2023.
AVG blocked the download of this file. I could probably get arround it using a different browser, but i would first like to ask if anyone has any experience downloading this software?
I also originaly wanted to use Orca, but as i have found mentioned before, I-Fast is not one of the available profiles. Does maybe someone know if someone has created an available custom profile for it?
Thank you very much for your advice.
I've been using the Q2 for a while now, and it's been really reliable for everyday printing. The new Plus 5 looks interesting, especially with the larger build volume and faster chamber heating. I'm curious to see how it actually performs in real-world use. For those who already have one, how's it been so far?
Looking to extend my PTFE tubing but I'm getting conflicting information about whether the Box depends solely on sensor information for the filament advancement, or if there is some hardcoded data that says "go this far and no farther." What is the consensus on tube extension?
