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or this one
or maybe this one will work 4 u
Now, when I comment on someone, I only do it on the official site. Otherwise I will remain silent.
Thumbs up and whatich the video at the end is enough. Just one video that consistently delivered like this, day after day since it was uplodet 10 years ago.
Followers are good - delivering quality, to stay true to yourself, to keep your feet on the ground, to act sustainably and being listed is somehow a littel better.
And if they think they can trick on YouTube - go ahead, the old rules still apply. Don’t just watch until the end, may also whoever does it counts may as well and I watch a ■■■■ of a lot of 3D printing videos. Also Reviewers have there reviewers and may more than one…
I always do. It’s ingrained in my DNA… 
Obviously you knew ..after all, I did got you, haven’t I? 
The factory test benchy on my Max3 was something like 18 minutes long, but it consistently came out really well. I used the supplied Qidi PLA though. You probably have to re-slice if you want to use paht-cf.
I would love to see an ‘other manufacturer hardware’ section here. It seems to be a great group of people here always helping out. And I’m sure most here have multiple brands.
I installed Qidi studio, it specifically acknowledges Bambu among others. It appears to be a little more feature rich than orca-flashforge. It even offers dark mode, something the FF version does not offer.
I typically use orca for my 5M Pro, but if I’m out of network, I have to use orca-flashforge.
There’s not really anything to Qidi’s personal profile other than user name, no avatar.
Looking forward to reports and pictures of the plus 4
For sure the Bambu forum is one of the selling points for Bambu printers. I do think Qidi is missing an important opportunity by not having one. That said, though, creality has a forum, and it’s a veritable desert, despite having a huge user base, so just putting one up by itself doesn’t seem to be good enough. You need the early adopters to sign on, because they understand the need to share information for the good of everyone, including themselves. Prusa has/had a good forum also, and I think a lot of the early buyers of Bambu came from there and brought that experience with them as a kind of transplant culture to the Bambu forum. A lot of the early discussion of Bambu actually happened on the Prusa forum, believe it or not, as a kind of bridge before there was critical mass on the Bambu forum.
Just curious, being relatively new to 3D printing.
What makes the Plus 4 more appealing than the X-MAX 3? I see they are currently the same price, yet the build volume is larger on the X-Max. Other than a 370° nozzle vs 350° nozzle, specs look similar.
My take on that: the Plus4 is more polished and has more quality of life improvements. e.g. it has automatic z-height adjustment, the Max3 does not. The Plus4 has a more powerful chamber heater with a complementary fan to help stir up the chamber air for a more uniform temperature. The Max3 has a weak chamber heater, and that’s all. The Plus4 includes a filament cutter. The Max3 is more stoneage, where you have to do the cutting yourself. The Plus4 has an 80 watt nozzle, which, IIRC, is more than the Max3. So, the Plus4 should get better flow. I hope this isn’t too pointed a comparison, but the X1C has a 40 watt hotend, no chamber heater, and a smaller build volume, and no ethernet (though the X1E has that and a chamber heater too), and the X1C has visible print artifacts that reportedly don’t show up on Plus4 prints. I like the X1C’s automatic filament cutter though, which the Max3 doesn’t have and the Plus4 kinda/sorta has? I guess we’ll know better when @StreetSports reports back from Havana. The Plus4 has a built-in camera, whereas for the Max3 it’s a $39 add-on, requiring you to do the work of installing it.
So, for the price, you can see why this is a compelling offer for the people who want those things, regardless of brand.
Thank you, yes, I didn’t realize all those differences. Qidi in general seems to get good reviews from what I can tell.
Filament cutter… Never really thought about that, but realizing I have to manually cut the filament on the 5M Pro, I just guess I thought my Bambu’s were magical 
Yes. Too good really. IMHO, I think there’s some manipulation of some kind going on in respect to that, especially on the amazon reviews. Which I thought was a bit of turn-off, because why would it be needed if the printers are good. The product should speak for itself. But that’s me. I’m not motivated to build the proof case for it, so you can read them for yourself, look at the reviewers one by one, and form your own opinion as to whether or not they’re plants. For a lot of them, I think it will be obvious, based on how they have reviewed other products, but draw your own conclusions and see whether or not you agree.
If you wait for sales you can often buy them on discount. I got my Max3 brand new for $650, and right now the Plus3 is going for $450 (even less than the Q1 Pro), now that’s it has been obsoleted by the Plus4. There’s a ripple effect, such that M5 Pro can now be found for $359. The bigger the splash, the more the competitors discount their offerings. So far Bambu is and has been by far the biggest splash of all, which I think has driven a lot of the competitor discounts. They haven’t been able to compete on features, so the only lever they had left to pull was to drop their price. (I could put it more graphically, but I’ll spare you that).
seeing good things so far. Took a minute to get all the software/app connected. Probably my fault. Its definitely not as easy as bambus connection, but theres the klipper fluid experience in the end. which is very open and has tons of shiny data to look at but also opens up the possibility for noobs to delete the wrong printer files.
I’ll add to this as I find stuff and try not to cover the obvious things.
The good
- No A.I. bs
- Bed plate is the perfect texture and stickiness right out of the box.
- Bed plate stops are designed well.
- Probably the flattest bed ive had.
- The size and quality of the belts, rails and z screws are impressive. I cant see any wobble at all in the screws. The movements remind me of high end industrial machinery.
- The sound it gives off is very dull. To me, this means everything is really solid.
- The nozzle heats up extremely fast but the bed heats at a normal rate.
- The bed moves very fast compared to other printers.
- The interface is beautiful and snappy.
- They stole alot from bambu but doesnt seem to have messed any of it up in the process.
- The app is in english but I cant get it to connect. It wants a QR code but I cant seem to find the correct one. Edit: Found it. Also found that the app works remotely.
- The Qidi studio is close to bambu studio but also has all the fluidd stuff.
- Large hotend cooling fan so hopefully I can always print with the door closed and the top on.
- Loading and unloading filament is pleasant. The filament path is so smooth.
- The chamber heats up within a couple minutes.
- There is a removable section of the filament path that makes removing jams super easy. Pic below.
- I like that it does a small purge line really close to ghe model instead of in a far corner.
The Bad
- No A.I bs
- At end of print, it parks the head at the front left. This leaves the xy axis rail blocking the camera.
- No more warped parts or bad bed and layer adhesion from abs, asa or nylon
- Running the chamber heater stinks your house up the first couple times.
- When using the chamber heater, the prjnter heats the bed and chamber first, then shuts the chamber heater off while bed leveling, allowingvthe temp to drop from 65c to 60c…
- The bed has 2 small exlusion areas at the front right(camera) and back left of plate(wipe area), so if you are printing a rectangle, the max size will be 305x290x290
- The charcoal filter is a bag that allows the air to travel around it instead of through it.
- They put the aux fan directly behind the screw mount.
- Ive already found a stripped bed nut. I noticed because it was backed off more than the other 3.
- The initial bed leveling is slow.
- The USB stick came dead.
- Its not the fastest printer @ 21 minutes start to finish on the preloaded benchy. But its fast.
- The first update has to be done offline for the first wave of machines.
- The chamber heater is noisy until the chamber is up to temp and then auto adjusts rpm’s down.
- Running the chamber at 55c I notice the whole enclosure is pretty warm. Could probably overheat a small room pretty fast. It is insulated but not good enough.
- There is a bug that after you run the PA test in qidislicer, it modifies the end g-code in a way that causes the bed to raise instead of lowering after print. Been dealing with that the last few hours.
- After using TPU, you cant use the cutter to swap filaments. You have to retract it or else the next filament jams behind the leftover TPU. Means that the future ams wont be able to handle TPU.
- The aux fan is annoying at most speeds but at 60% , its near silent. Gives off weird sounds otherwise.
- File names cat be large or the printer wont accept them. Had to rename some bambu files I had.
Bambu matte charcoal PLA with no real tuningbyet. Just set flow to .98 and pa to .024
Not seeing VFA
The pics
I like that the nozzle is protected from impacts.
Wiping area with a larger version of the a1 pad to the left and a pei coated section to the right that can wobble as the nozzle moves around it.
Poor Duct placement/design. They would have been better off closing the center part of the duct and angling the outer 2 halves toward the center of the bed.
Pretty pictures for the setup right on the interface.
Removable section of the filament path for removing jams.
Pretty prints
Its 2 screws and a plug to remove the hotend. Another 2 screws and 1 plug to remove the entire extruder.
Shot of the part cooling fan below and the hotend fan on the side.
The comparisons below were printed at preset bambu speeds/flows/settings and with the same rolls of filament. All bambu filaments. I wanted to be as fair as possible for the Bambu since we are on a Bambu forum. I printed them fast so that we could see some flaws. I could have made them all perfect.
Qidi plus 4 left, X1c right. .2mm layers in TPU. Im going to redo the left one. I think I had a partial clog from paht-cf
Qidi plus4 on left, x1c on right. .2mm layers in matte PLA.
Qidi plus4 on left, X1c on right. .2mm layers in PAHT-CF. The qidi crashed at the end and smashed the smoke stack.(known glitch that i have solved.) and the X1c required a brim to stick.
Same as above photo. Paht-cf
The VFA test
Ok, final test and then I quit. Finally got the settings identical and turned off resonance avoidance.
Top one is the Qidi plus 4. Bottom is Bambu X1c.
Fillament is some old, generic, hasnt been dried in a year silk filament to really get the average end user experience.
Im guessing the weirdness of the first part of each print has to do with heat from the beds. I dont have a cold plate for the qidi.
The conclusion
As of right now, If I was printing anything that didnt require a heated chamber, a bed this big or high nozzle temp, I would still use my x1c. Because I already paid the money so that wouldnt be a deciding factor and its slightly faster.(this could change) If I had to choose only 1 to keep, it would be the qidi. I have a feeling that the next Bambu will be even better though and I cant wait. If youre on the fence, Id say wait until some bambu teasers pop up.
As for quality, they are basically equal. The qidi did better with paht-cf and slightly better with pla, but the x1c did drastically better with TPU. This is with identical settings. Im sure they can both be tuned even better.
I think the perfect setup may be an x1c, plus4 and bambu xl. All sizes and most materials covered (assuming the bambu will be 350mm)
Yeah, that was my experience as well. Rather than a red carpet rolled out to you there is instead a small hump to climb over without really any instructions on what to do, but once you do then you’re past that and you’re in the groove. I swear, if Qidi would hire one of us for even one day to straighten them out, for them the payback on the consulting fee would be huge. It must be a cultural thing or something, but they (and all the rest except for bambu) just don’t seem to grok the western mind.
Aurora Tech reported that it was the best one-layer print she had ever done. Considering how many printers she has reviewed, that says a lot.
Perhaps more important to some, she also reported that the surface quality on her robot alpaca test print was among the best she’s ever tested, equalling even the Prusa Mk4 on print quality while beating it on speed. This may be the most important datum she reported, because at the end of the day what people want more than anything else is “the best” print quality, almost regardless of price. It’s a big part of what drew me to the X1C in the first place, and I presume others as well.
I can neither confirm nor deny on this point because on my Max3 my factory issued bag of charcoal was so over filled that I couldn’t stuff it in, so I left it out entirely. I guess nothing changes unless it gets hammered in reviews, and so far the reviews have all been silent on this point.
On my X1C I’ve been tempted to remove the charcoal filter entirely because it seems to dampen the exhaust considerably.
So, I’d call this one a draw.
Its a huge point for me. I would pay an extra $50 for forced air hepa/charcoal filtration. Being able to route the air to internal or external would be amazing too.
Agreed. It certainly isn’t HEPA, and you’re right, even if it were, a HEPA filter without the right gasket isn’t really HEPA filtration. That’s a ruse used by a lot of cheap vacuum cleaners.
@StreetSports Some of your pictures may need a sentence or two of narration so that we are on the same page as to what you want us to see in them.
Does it allow access to the printer when outside the printer network? As BL does with the cloud.
