Look upon my maker space, and despair.
Anyway, here's what a 15 minute Benchy looks like.
Things I like:
- This thing can print stupidly fast. I don't know, maybe this high speed CoreXY shit is what all the cool kids are already doing these days, but this is new to me.
- Runs ordinary Klipper g-code, and while the firmware is quite customized it's still at least open source.
- Huge build area.
- Basically unbox and go.
- Look and feel, interior lighting, etc. is significantly improved over my 1st gen X-Plus.
- Has an optical bed leveling sensor built in.
- Has an actual chamber heater element with a PID, doesn't just rely on the residual heat from the build plate.
- The top lid authoritatively keeps out dust when the machine is not in use, or when running it enclosed with the chamber heated. The last gen machine had a big ass hole in the lid all the time, which let in grit and fuzz. (My machine is parked in my basement, as you can see, which is not a super clean area.)
Things I don't like:
- The build plate is textured on one side... And textured the same on the other side. That's stupid. Qidi sells a replacement plate that's smooth on one side like the ones that used to come with their old models, but you have to buy it separately and it's like $48. It's also out of stock everywhere.
- Doesn't come with an internal camera. Again, Qidi sells one separately. But it's an added expense.
- Didn't come with the nice little tackle box case for the included tools and spare parts like my old Qidi, either. Teh fook? I guess I'll have to print one.
- It's fucking enormous. I had an opportunity to see a Bambu X1 Carbon in person today, and the Bambu is way smaller in external dimensions, even moreso than the difference in build area would lead to believe. It wastes a ton of space inside.
- It's also heavy as hell.
- It comes with a dry box, but it's not an inbuilt dryer. It does have a spot to stick desiccant, though.
- The rear filament spool loading location is moronic. You need like 12" behind the machine to be able to swap spools. I will be running this from an external dryer placed on the table next to it instead.
- The build plate base has an incredible amount of thermal mass, and does not actually reach the temperature of your setpoint at the surface until some minutes after the PID says it did. You should start preheating a few minutes before beginning your print.
Quirks and annoyances aside, this machine looks like it's shaping up to be able to knock out parts about four times faster than my old one. So that's nice.
If I had to do it again I may have gotten the X-Plus 3 rather than the Max (my old machine was also a Plus) since I'm not really sure I'll use the extra build volume too often. But damn it, I like knowing I can print a part a whole foot across in a single shot.
It makes the dinkum drawing table I have it sitting on wiggle quite a bit when it's doing high speed moves. You probably want a very solid foundation to put a machine like this on, and I will probably have to devise a different table situation soon.
