PLUS4

After looking at video’s of a number of 3D printers inc: Prusa, Elegoo, Bambu. Last week I decided to buy the Qidi Plus 4 from Amazon's UK site I placed the order on the 5th it was delivered on the 7th, it was extremely well packed. I unpacked it as shown in the quick start guide and on screen startup, I loaded the sample filament and proceeded to print the Benchy during this print I noticed the Hot End Fan cover was moving on further investigation I found the Left & Right plastic fixing points had broken off from the main fan assembly, I could not see any other damage or possible cause, however, on reflection the tie wrap securing the Hot End to the back of the machine for shipment was very tight, it is possible this caused the issue. I made a temporary repair and continued testing the machine and found no further issues, I’m very impressed with speed and quality of all the prints I’ve made, the print quality is every bit as good if not a little better than I get off my Ultimaker 2+, however, the speed of the Qidi is incredible while maintaining the same superb print quality. I contacted Qidi support on the 10th, I sent a short email, attached a couple of photo’s help explain the issue, on the 11th I got an email back with a link to a very informative video showing exactly how the Hot End is disassembled/reassembled and a request to send my proof of purchase/order number so they could setup a warranty claim, on the 12th I received an email asking me to confirm my delivery address and to tell me they would sending out a new fan assembly and Hot End carriage plate. The parts arrived from China on the 16th by DHL I fitted them and can report the machine is back in as new condition and is working very very well. I cannot fault the Qidi support team, how they handled this issue, the speed of response and the professional way they handled my complaint was excellent. I would not hesitate to recommend the Qidi Plus4 to anyone thinking of buying a 3D printer it just works out of the box. Last week I decided to buy the Qidi Plus 4 from Amazon UK site I placed the order on the 5th it was delivered on the 7th, it was extremely well packed. I unpacked it as shown in the quick start guide and on screen startup, I loaded the sample filament and proceeded to print the Benchy during this print I noticed the Hot End Fan cover was moving on further investigation I found the Left & Right plastic fixing points had broken off from the main fan assembly, I could not see any other damage or possible cause, however, on reflection the tie wrap securing the Hot End to the back of the machine for shipment was very tight, it is possible this caused the issue. I made a temporary repair and continued testing the machine and found no further issues, I’m very impressed with speed and quality of all the prints I’ve made, the print quality is every bit as good if not a little better than I get off my Ultimaker 2+, however, the speed of the Qidi is incredible while maintaining the same superb print quality. I contacted Qidi support on the 10th, I sent a short email, attached a couple of photo’s help explain the issue, on the 11th I got an email back with a link to a very informative video showing exactly how the Hot End is disassembled/reassembled and a request to send my proof of purchase/order number so they could setup a warranty claim, on the 12th I received an email asking me to confirm my delivery address and to tell me they would sending out a new fan assembly and Hot End carriage plate. The parts arrived from China on the 16th by DHL I fitted them and can report the machine is back in as new condition and is working very very well. I cannot fault the Qidi support team, how they handled this issue, the speed of response and the professional way they handled my complaint was excellent. I would not hesitate to recommend the Qidi Plus4 to anyone thinking of buying a 3D printer it just works out of the box.

As an experienced resin printer user for engineering parts, I had long eschewed FDM printing as lacking the precision and finish I wanted. However the time came, that the size of the parts I needed to print were borderline impossible on an SLA printer - and definitely in any vaguely sane timescale. So I entered the market looking for an FDM printer with a decent build plate size. The Creality K1 & K2 got knocked off the list pretty quickly, the community sees them as unreliable and flaky, and I needed something that just worked. I have zero interest in screwing around with someone else's poor design choices and sloppy quality control. So a Bambu Labs K1C it was then. Whilst casually checking Bambu Labs open source credentials, I happened across the shenanigans they decided to pull in early 2025 regarding locking people out of slicer features and requiring their cloud service. I despise with a vengeance companies that try to lock me into their BS "cloud" service that I don't want or need, so thanks to that discovery I carried on shopping, and came across the Qidi range. Coming across the Qidi Q1 with great reviews online, the build volume was just not quite what I wanted, do they do anything bigger? Oh they have the Q4! Bar some moans in the US about faults with their 110v power supplies in the early batches, the reviews were, well, too good to be true. But wherever I looked the this baby ticked almost all my boxes, so I took the plunge and got one. As an engineer, I really don't do impressed by tech very often, but wow, just WOW! Well packaged, it was up and running in about an hour. I'm used to calibrating resins on my SLA printers so was happy to spend the time tuning it in with eSun ePLA-ST. Holy cow this is good. I mean really really good. My first serious part was a 500mm long multi-part mould for a carbon fibre UAV wing that I had started to resin print, and gave up after a 14hr print. The Qidi Plus4 spat out the same print out in 4 hrs. It was almost flawless. The wins kept coming, I wondered could I print the entire wing in the eSun ePLA-LW foaming PLA, after calibrating, a few hours later and half the wing was sitting on the build plate. I am genuinely gobsmacked at how good this thing is. Aside from taking the time to calibrate different filaments, this is literally a "plug-and-play" printer that just works and delivers jaw dropping quality, and I say that as someone used to producing injection moulded quality parts on my SLA printer. Sure with a 0.4mm nozzle and a 0.2 layer height, the fidelity isn't even close to a 0.05 layer height SLA printer, but with some post processing it's really not far off. The speed this thing prints at - OMG! I have the acceleration set to 15000mm/s and it hits that! I could mention the flaws... the really really stupid power supply position, the cr@ppy build plate that everything sticks far too well to, the poor filter, the sluggish UI etc etc, but none of those issues make me sad I own this printer. In fact, when my workshop is finished I will probably buy at least 1, if not 2 more. So, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bambu Labs. Had they not pulled their cloud nonsense, I would have bought into the Bambu Labs ecosystem and bought an X1C - a more expensive printer with fewer features and a smaller build volume that would have locked me into their useless cloud service. Thank you Bambu, sometimes serendipity really does happen. === EDIT === If you read other posts online, Qidi has a very good reputation for support, and so when my hot end collided with the cleaning chute due to a blockage, I needed to contact Qidi support myself to try and either fix it or replace it. I emailed them on a Bank Holiday Monday, by the Friday of that week there was a new hot end fitted to my printer and being recalibrated. So their reputation for exceptional service is definitely well deserved too.