I've been trying to make a replacement filament guide/manifold piece for the top of my QIDI extruder assy because my feed hoses keep working their way out. The design that I am working with now is
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:735350
I've built it and tried it out and it seemed to work fairly well. It did need the two screw mounting holes drilled out to 3.5mm.
Note: By the way, the design in the "Useful items to make for Qidi Tech" (
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:616895 ) will not actually work on a current model Qidi. The filament feed holes do not line up with their current positions on the feed mechanisms. See the comment section in that part for more info if you're curious.
Anyway, in the process of messing with these things I noticed something odd about the Qidi extruder assembly. This filament manifold sits across the steppers, the filament feed mechanisms, and the 40mm fan cases. What's odd is the filament feed release handles actually project ABOVE the plane of the adjacent stepper top surface. The stock Qidi manifold has a completely flat bottom surface, and when it is pulled down into place by its two mounting screws, its bottom surface hits and compresses the top of the filament release handles, and forces them downward. Apparently this deformation is needed, because when I relieved the area of the manifold over the release handles such that the manifold no longer compressed them, the feeders stopped working reliably.
Does anyone else have any info on this?