Qidi Tech 1 - Replicator 1 clone

[Stwert]

Naw, I wasn't thinking that but damn it they need a US seller but seriously around 50-60 dollars for it with shipping I will have to pass on it no matter how good it is.

Man that is a hefty price, local sellers would definitely be a good idea.

Ontop of that there is another issue I think I see.

Just watched a bunch of youtube vids on it...noticing that EVERYTHING is being printed with rafts.

Whats the deal there?

If the trade-off for printing without a bonding agent is that everything has to be done on rafts I am not sure its so good. Using PVC sticker and glue stick I print almost nothing on a raft. It is very rare I come across something that needs a raft to print properly.

I never use rafts with mine at all and I never have a problem. Only thing I do is print a skirt to make sure the flows going good, but I do that regardless of my bed material.
No idea why people are using rafts unless that's their preference but it's been completely unnecessary in my experience.

[SteveW25561]

@DaveB I've had similar issues with mine when using the filament provided by Qidi with the printer. In my case it happened because the filament somehow got bound up at the spool: the printer was simply unable to pull more filament. I had to manually roll the spool back a bit to dislodge the filament so it could feed again. This has happened to me twice so far. The printer itself is fine in my case.

[Stwert]

This is why I would love to have a camera on while mine prints because I swear as long as I watch it the thing works but go to sleep and the evil Gnomes come out and wreck havoc. At least with a time lapse camera you can sort of see when it happened and very possibly why it happened.

I'm using an old iPhone with the Manything app, 24/7 free live streaming (so long as you've and old or spare device to use as a cam) but it works great, I can check on my print progress any time any where.

@DaveB

As Steve also said, I've had this happen to me once and it was because the filament had managed to get crossed over on itself, likely, or completely my fault, I must have let go of it when loading and allowed it to get loose on the spool allowing the crossover to happen.
When it does, sooner or later the filament will knot itself up and cause problems like this.

If that is the problem, nothing short of completely respooling the whole lot (what I did) but you need to be damn careful and not let it get loose when you're doing it. Or, unwinding the filament carefully, keeping it taught until you get to the point where it knots. Then cut off the loose stuff and uncross the lines of filament where the knot happened. Will prevent it from happening again, because if that's the problem it will definitely happen again.

I may be teaching my granny to suck eggs there, what do I know, I'm newish

[DaveB]

I'm using an old iPhone with the Manything app, 24/7 free live streaming (so long as you've and old or spare device to use as a cam) but it works great, I can check on my print progress any time any where.

@DaveB

As Steve also said, I've had this happen to me once and it was because the filament had managed to get crossed over on itself, likely, or completely my fault, I must have let go of it when loading and allowed it to get loose on the spool allowing the crossover to happen.
When it does, sooner or later the filament will knot itself up and cause problems like this.

If that is the problem, nothing short of completely respooling the whole lot (what I did) but you need to be damn careful and not let it get loose when you're doing it. Or, unwinding the filament carefully, keeping it taught until you get to the point where it knots. Then cut off the loose stuff and uncross the lines of filament where the knot happened. Will prevent it from happening again, because if that's the problem it will definitely happen again.

I may be teaching my granny to suck eggs there, what do I know, I'm newish

The cam I've got will do live streaming too, I just want to turn that into a timelapse movie. I suppose I could just record the whole thing what with storage as cheap as it is these days. Then just overwrite it when I start the next build. I've been throwing out junk to make room for 3D stuff lately and came across some 32Meg flash cards for some long gone digital camera. Only three orders of magnitude there vs current 32Gig sizes.

I've thought of the filament crisscross possibility, and have checked for it with each occurance of this problem. Visually, I don't see it happening. Also, the first thing I did after clearing off the build plate from this last fuzz bomb was the "Load Filiament" operation via the front panel. I would have expected that test to fail if the filament were jammed up. This filament is PLA from MakerGeeks, a US based filament manufacturer, and they seem a quality shop to me. I am an Engineer by trade, so my first assumption is nearly always that the problem is caused by my own hand. (I'm cleverly ignoring the part where I didn't design this thing.) It is possible that I've twisted the filament when mounting or unmounting it on the printer, but I've no smoking gun evidence of that yet.

At this point my current guess is that something in the extruder mechanism path is marginal. I will be taking that puppy apart again and staring at it again later today I think. Qidi support, for some reason that totally escapes me, keeps trying to assert that the issue is with S3D; That I should use MakerWare instead. That the same issue occurs with an .x3g file that Qidi sent me (untouched by S3D coder's hands) is apparently irrelevant somehow. (!!?) That it only happens on the Left extruder, and that re-starting the same print from the same SD card file, without power cycling the machine, or jiggling the filament reel, yeilds a totally successful print (sigh) is all just part of the mystery. Printer pixies, no doubt about it.

[Stwert]

The cam I've got will do live streaming too, I just want to turn that into a timelapse movie. I suppose I could just record the whole thing what with storage as cheap as it is these days. Then just overwrite it when I start the next build. I've been throwing out junk to make room for 3D stuff lately and came across some 32Meg flash cards for some long gone digital camera. Only three orders of magnitude there vs current 32Gig sizes.

I've thought of the filament crisscross possibility, and have checked for it with each occurance of this problem. Visually, I don't see it happening. Also, the first thing I did after clearing off the build plate from this last fuzz bomb was the "Load Filiament" operation via the front panel. I would have expected that test to fail if the filament were jammed up. This filament is PLA from MakerGeeks, a US based filament manufacturer, and they seem a quality shop to me. I am an Engineer by trade, so my first assumption is nearly always that the problem is caused by my own hand. (I'm cleverly ignoring the part where I didn't design this thing.) It is possible that I've twisted the filament when mounting or unmounting it on the printer, but I've no smoking gun evidence of that yet.

At this point my current guess is that something in the extruder mechanism path is marginal. I will be taking that puppy apart again and staring at it again later today I think. Qidi support, for some reason that totally escapes me, keeps trying to assert that the issue is with S3D; That I should use MakerWare instead. That the same issue occurs with an .x3g file that Qidi sent me (untouched by S3D coder's hands) is apparently irrelevant somehow. (!!?) That it only happens on the Left extruder, and that re-starting the same print from the same SD card file, without power cycling the machine, or jiggling the filament reel, yeilds a totally successful print (sigh) is all just part of the mystery. Printer pixies, no doubt about it.

Funny, in my short but colorful life I was once an engineer, before I moved on to, well that's a long story, so I tend to assume the same thing. Well that or there's just no explanation for it, I like to fall back on that one now and again

[wirlybird]

Just got S3D installed and getting ready for a few test prints. Any suggestions for the current version that has the QIDI listed as a printer such as the scripts etc?

[wirlybird]

Ok, so parts are print pretty good so far. I am getting some "stringing", any recommendations to help out that?

Parts stick like crazy to the blue pad but this is no surprise after reading through here! I am getting ready to print parts for the glass bed. What recommendations currently for the clamps etc? I have marked all of the parts used over time in this forum but what are you using now that seem to work well?

Thanks everyone!! Hopefully in time I can contribute answers and less questions!

[Syd_Khaos]

Ok, so parts are print pretty good so far. I am getting some "stringing", any recommendations to help out that?

Parts stick like crazy to the blue pad but this is no surprise after reading through here! I am getting ready to print parts for the glass bed. What recommendations currently for the clamps etc? I have marked all of the parts used over time in this forum but what are you using now that seem to work well?

Thanks everyone!! Hopefully in time I can contribute answers and less questions!

I tried alot of versions of printed plate clamps.....nothing seems to work very well.
Ended up going to Wal-mart and spending $3 for a pack of 12 small pinch clamps. Have been using those to great results ever since.

[Noircogi]

Glass bed holders: I fabricated some small aluminum brackets which bolt onto the bottom corners of the build plate and hold the glas in place nicely. Printing some out of ABS is not really a good choice with a heated bed IMO. I just used some aluminum sheet with two tabs bent up and slightly in and a hole drilled in the appropriate place to go over the 3mm bolt on the bottom of each corner of the bed. I do also use 2 small clips on the sides to make sure it's held firmly down though.

TImelapse videos: I posted full instructions for making Octoprint work a few pages back. That gives you remote control and monitoring, ability to easily home for bed leveling and automatic timelapses of all builds for around $45 in parts (plus the webcam). Astroprint is easier to make work, but not nearly as good IMO.

[JSensebe]

With blue painter's tape on the aluminum and glue stick on that, ABS seems to adhere well. I'm using Slic3r and GPX now with a modified version of the Simplify3D G-Code posted here. I made a filament profile called "None" to better handle the case where I'm using one extruder, so I don't need two printer profiles for single extruder prints.