I bought my second 3D printer ever

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I have been following along with the Qidi builds for a while now. I was interested in the fact that they used only a lightly modified klipper build that you can still easily edit. The price dropped right while I was researching a new extruder hotend combo for my 3rd MP3DP V5 build…and well it hit me like a ton of bricks.

This printer comes with more features, pre-built and costs less than I can build one of my own printers for. That stung pretty bad at first, I was pretty bitter about that. After a few days I came to realize 3D printers have finally hit “tool” not “project”. That makes me pretty happy, actually. I got to follow along from the very early days to a product that is excellent right out of the box, that makes me smile.

Affiliate link for all Qidi Products.

Okay let me try to run this down to a basic list.

25mm^3 in PLA (~13min perfect benchy)
Large print volume.
Hardened extruder gears
Hardened nozzle
Accelerometer
Runout sensor
Snag sensor
Filament width sensor
Filament cutter
Nozzle cleaner
Camera
Large touchscreen
Double sided bed
Preconfigured
Square in all planes to a very high degree
Preassembled
Heated chamber
Good print cooling
Across bed cooling for even more advanced parts faster
2 point bed leveling, plus mesh level
Inductive probe and piezo sensors
inexpensive replacement parts
Good customer service (had a damaged part they shipped a new one next day)

Hopefully a filament changer solution soon.

The only thing my MP3DP v4-5 can do this can is non-planer printing. Well we all know that is not soon to be on the horizon and so far does not seem like it would be all that useful either, yet.

This is a printer that has more than my custom build, same print speed, far more features, to my door and printing in about 15 minutes, for less than I can build my own.

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Since it is not really worth me spending much time developing another printer I can spend more time working on the CNC’s and Zen. I do love messing with printer designs for some reason but this is the first printer to have everything I want and then some…for less than my bulk parts cost, and I do not need to spend several days building and calibrating it.

I am going to start beating this thing on the print farm before I buy any more but I can say I am fairly certain I will be buying more of these to expand my printed parts offerings.

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oh yeah??? Well, I bet mine is louder… can’t beat me there…

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I guess another way to put this is you can have a top tier 3D printer, assembled, configured, slicer profiles, macros set, with almost no work. To me this is a game changer. To get this level of performance a few months back you needed to be pretty dang skilled in a lot of different things to make it happen.

This QIDI plus 4 is something like a Caddilac, (fast, polished, reliable) the only reason to build a printer yourself now is if you need significantly larger volume (dump truck) or trying to be super fast for the sake of being fast (race car).

It feels very foreign to me to even be posting this sort of thing but I feel like the 3D printing landscape just significantly shifted.

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I am interested to see if this will quiet down my enclosed printers. The plus 4 has thin walls with a 2-3mm thick foam on them, but it is not super load.

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I have been thinking similarly and had my eye on one of those. A friend just got one as well and loves that it just works out of the box.

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I have been slightly tweaking the printing profiles since I changed to a 0.6mm nozzle but yeah, directly out of the box I snipped a few cable ties, did a bed level, and an acceleration tune and was printing a benchy in no time at all.

I will buy the qidi box when/if it is released.

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This was one of the reasons I chose to build a V5 over buying something pre-packaged like a Bambu or whatever at the time. I wanted bigger volume.

However, I can tell you another reason why I wanted to build it…

Recently, I was at a family gathering and my cousin was all excited to tell me that he has a 3D printer to use at work.

I asked him what kind. Bambu, of course.

A family member jumped in to tell him that I also have a 3D printer and print all kinds of stuff.

Him: “What kind of printer do you have?”

Me: “I built a custom one myself”

Him: :astonished:

Then the conversation turned into me explaining that I used a crappy old printer (Ender 3) to build a CNC machine.

Then I used the CNC machine and the crappy printer to build the better printer.

Then I used the Better printer to build a better CNC machine…

Him: :exploding_head:

And you don’t get reactions like that when you say “I bought a < insert off-the-shelf printer here >”

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Amen!

Now you skip all that complicated stuff and just go straight to I used my (off the shelf printer) to build a bad mama jamma full sheet CNC machine, I used that CNC machine to build this Sand table over here… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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That’s not to discount the quality and abilities you can buy in an off-the-shelf printer these days…

If they offered an enclosed one with at least 300x300x300 build volume, I probably would have done the same…

Just wanted to throw a 3rd “reason to build one” into your list :slight_smile:

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I guess really the amount of features 3D printers have now is amazing. It would be on the extremely advanced side to build something like this. The macro list alone is nuts, plus programming a couple raspberry pi’s and all that.

A marlin build was intermediate to advanced depending on who was helping you, this klipper thing has really elevated the difficulty level. Me a few years back would not have attempted it, hell, a few years back I did not attempt it because I was worried about the level of programming required. Even my most recent builds I screwed on up on an update and had to start over and reflash the pi and board, no idea what I did wrong.

I think this level of complexity has gone above an advanced project in my opinion, we are getting to extreme complexity.

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Maybe a better way to put it is relative to this level of printer the CNC’s are a basic project. Programming is minimal, if you can even count copy and pasting starting gcode as programming. Hardware build is even easier than a 3D printer.

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That thing is 800 bucks, your printer build costs more than that?

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I am glad you are liking your new printer! I picked up 2 of the Q1 Pro’s during the black friday sale for $350 each and have been beyond happy with them!

I am for sure keeping my eye on the Plus4 and extremely interested in the Qidi Box. If it is good when it comes out then I will probably pick up one of those with the qidi box to add to the fleet.

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Really? For me, Klipper made everything SO MUCH easier. Being able to adjust settings without having to flash stuff and use another program (yes I know that I could use gcodes and save settings) to do it was game changing.

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I bet I have $1000 or more in my V5 build. I refuse to add it up so I don’t know for sure lol.

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So i guess now that i read it 800 may not be bad, there is alot there. I do not make money off of mine, so maybe i would spend that if i did!

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My ender and longer probably would add up to, but ya know, it was slowly added :wink:

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Yeah, I am pretty sure my last one cost me exactly $800. This time around I was looking at a hotend and extruder, that was nearly $200, not including a hardened nozzle… For the components, I think these guys are in for a real shock if they think they can charge $100+ for a basic extruder for much longer. This Qidi replacement hotend, term, heater, and hardened nozzle is $45… let that sink in a bit. Plus4 Bimetal Nozzle Hotend – Upgrade Your 3D Printer Now – Qidi Tech Online Store

Your enthusiasm confirmed my hunch about Qidi. Bambu is great, still expensive and the firmware is so locked down you can not even skew adjust the Z axis, no thanks.

You must have a programming background? I am pretty good with Marlin, but with klipper you need to compile firmware for the pi, the control board, the probe, and configure your own macros. For me none of them were trivial. For the pi, if I did not have a good doc to follow step by step I would have never figured it out. It takes me hours to get a klipper build running basic stuff before macros, Marlin, far far less.

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I try my best not to count also. But at least that much… I am that way though… I could have bought a Ruger 10/22 for a couple hundred but each of mine are just shy of $800 after the parts involved.

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But how much does your wife think you have in them :wink:

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