Exxos's QIDI X-PLUS 3 adventure

[Steve]

I've been experimenting with some 3D printing stuff today.. I bought a reel of ePA-CF (Nylon & Carbon) to do some prints on our works Prusa MK3s. I bought it because it's very impact resistant & oil/chemical resistant (For printing crash-bars on a petrol powered radio control car) But I quickly started to get very worried, people online were talking about needing to de-humidify the reel for 12 hours at 70c prior to use! I don't have that kind of equipment. Anyway I managed to find a persons custom settings for this type of material and set it off printing. Fingers crossed.

[exxos]

Had to do some experimentation after changing the filament to PTEG. I also notice it is actually under extruding slightly, so had to increase the multiplier to 1.05. I also noticed gaps in the top and bottom and the height was a bit to tall. So I just adjusted the bed Z start and reduced it be 0.15 in the end.

This was actually one of the earlier attempts..

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This was getting the best print overall...
Maybe some more tweaking as time goes on but already been at this all day..

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Time to print the ST2VGA bottom section again, looks pretty nice so far!

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[exxos]

This printer "sings" :lol:





Should I crank the speed some more ? :twisted: :twisted:

[exxos]

I think there is a couple of bugs I have found so far in the firmware I presume :roll:

On a second print, the bed heats up but the target temperature remains at zero. So I think this is purely a display issue.

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The extruder correctly shows real-time and target temperature..

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Also I was trying to figure out where the home position was, it seems to be the centre of the bed.. fair enough.. BUT.. When I manually send G28 to home, the extruder homes to the centre of the bed, the bed moves upwards and crashes into the extruder rather badly!! :cry:

Homing with the display also causes a head crash :( I guess it was good I had the removable print plate actually removed otherwise it would have a dent in it now!

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I have just reported both issues to QIDI...

EDIT:

I did a G28 Z; and that seemed to work fine. :shrug:

[Badwolf]

I can see how they got there, but it does read a little confusingly.

"Preheat the hotbed to the (appropriate for the) filiament printing temperature..."

As some filiaments will print with a bed at 90, some at 60, 50 or some cold.

BW

[stephen_usher]

I was wondering why you went for this printer. I thought that it must be the build volume but it's not that different to a Bambu Lab P1S... and the current price looks about the same. So I'm a bit baffled.

[exxos]

"Preheat the hotbed to the (appropriate for the) filament printing temperature..."

That makes way more sense!

[exxos]

I was wondering why you went for this printer. I thought that it must be the build volume but it's not that different to a Bambu Lab P1S... and the current price looks about the same. So I'm a bit baffled.

It was more like double the price last time I looked. So I never considered it.

The QIDI got loads of good reviews.. but then again, so did the all the other printers I got which were garbage. Though the QIDI fixes all the things I disliked about all the other printers. I had head-crashing with other printers as well. So I don't know how these problems can remain for so long and nobody seems to notice them..

[stephen_usher]

Most 3D printer buyers until recently have been tinkerers and their hobby is mostly fixing the printers and making benchy models it seems.

The Bambu Lab printers were game changers in that they were designed to be consumer items, to be taken out of the box and the first print finished within an hour by a novice. Prusa et al are racing to catch up.

[exxos]

So the head crash was mostly down to operator error it seems :roll:

I took the build plate out as it was hot and had my print on it. Then started to tweak my startup script..which homes the bed etc. QIDI told me the Z probe won't work without the build plate fitted as it has no metal to "see" and thus the bed crashes into the extruder.

There should really be a warning sticker about that or something.. Though I guess not many would be doing exactly what I did anyway :roll:

I guess it doesn't help that they only other printer I had within the bed moving vertical was the flash forge , but that was all manual adjustment anyway..

I've been tweaking my print profile and the speed and accuracy is way better than my other printers. I don't have to mess about for hours trying to get it to calibrated either.

There is one annoyance I'm yet to solve. But it may be more slicer related.. In that the bed and extruder heat up, then it does the z calibration.. Nothing wrong with that at first glance. But a tiny bit of filament oozes out of the extruder and leaves blobs all over the print bed as it's calibrating.

I tried retracting 15mm at the end of a print but it doesn't help. I need to contact simplify3D about that. As I think it heats up then starts running the startup script.. Which is fine.. But I don't want the full temp at that point. I guess the workaround would be to set the temp to 150, then set to 240 in the startup script after calibration..