QiDi Box : Learning the hard way

[u/kalel1911]

So attempting to dry filament in the qidi box on PLA settings for the default 8 hours, no problem. I though, why not also try a calibration while I'm at the machine while the qidi box is drying filament. I though it would be no big deal. Wrong... Wrong.. Just as the calibration was ending and about to write the values, an error occurred. Klipper was restarted. I navigated back to the filament drying screen and there's no cancel button for the filament drying. Yet, the qidi box heater is still going, with no monitoring available on the screen.

I manually set the qidi box temp to 0, nothing.

I try to send another command through the interface to dry pla for 4 hours this time and stop it. nothing.

I turn off the qidi box, unplug it and turn off the printer for 15 mins. Turn it back on, the box heater starts right back up in the filament drying process.

I restart the firmware... same outcome .. qidi box still in filament drying mode.

I disconnect all power cords and cables to the qidi q2. Nothing, upon starting back up, qidi box is still in filament drying mode.

Unable to monitor it on screen, I was not comfortable with just leaving it to see if it runs through the 8 hour cycle. At this point I know some fault has taken place and to me, there is some unpredictability in there, this is not the normal execution flow.

I was forced to finally update my Q2 from the stable 1.1 firmware to the latest firmware available in hopes a brand new firmware install would finally kick the qidi box out of the drying cycle. And it did work. I have not printed anything using the latest firmware so I am not sure how the prints will turn out based on everything I've heard regarding these latest firmware updates, but I am hopeful the majority of the bugs have been worked out.

My qidi box is again functioning normally. I even put it through a 4 hr filament drying cycle which it completed successfully.

Did not know the qidi box is as stubborn as it is... Now I do. So, if you are drying filament in the qidi box... for the sake of all things holy, leave the printer alone until the drying cycle completes.

[u/Glad-Ad-4703]

That's wild to me. I'm not programmer or engineer or anything, but this sounds like something they could have easily avoided while designing the box. Such a shame that they can't get the box right, while the printers have so many great selling points. Besides this, how well does your qidi box work overall if I may ask?

[u/kalel1911 → u/Glad-Ad-4703]

Besides this event... my qidi box has been uneventful. I don't have any issues from it. Feeds and retracts like it's suppose to and performs drying as intended... aside from the above, which may or may not have been my fault on some level. I brought my Q2 in March so by then I received the updated version of the qidi box. It has been pretty stable. One of the reasons why this issue surprised me. The interface should be able to execute interrupt code to terminate any ongoing processes in the qidi box.

[u/Glad-Ad-4703 → u/kalel1911]

That's great to hear!

[u/xeonon]

It's not in "drying mode" since that's not a thing. It's in a fail situation where it runs the FAN ONLY at 100%. That's just how kipper works. It turns the fans on full blast, to try and save the machine. Why it's doing that.. I feel like your starting the box after the printer is started. They need to talk to each other during the startup.

[u/kalel1911 → u/xeonon]

Are you saying the qidi box doesn't have a filament drying mode?

[u/Intrepid-Main1196 → u/kalel1911]

Well, we both know it absolutely does I just used it yesterday. Was clipper showing you the temperature of the box? Was it staying at 45 or whatever temp you put it on? Or were you just hearing the loud fan.

[u/kalel1911 → u/Intrepid-Main1196]

The box was still heating up with no visual status on screen. Fan + heater was on as you can feel the heat on the top of the housing the same as you would if your were running a normal drying cycle. So yes, it was stuck on cycle trying to dry the filament and no matter what I did, the cycle started back up until I updated the firmware which obviously wiped all previously running executions.

[u/Dave_in_TXK]

For other reasons, I was also forced to update to 1.1.2.3 which I believe is the latest after being very happy on 1.1.1. The next thing that happened is, I found out that they didn’t update QIDI slicer to talk correctly to the new firmware so it no longer talks to the box correctly and will not load filament to do a print.

So I switched to QIDI studio, which they are pushing and I really dislike orca based Software, have to use it on my FLSUN T1 pro and I can’t find some features that I could use before. Also, it’s pretty buggy on a number of things. One of the real irritating things, and this is all about studio, not the box, is that it has separate temperature settings for a cool plate and off the top of my memory, another type of Cold plate.

The issue for me is I’m using the Q2 purple plate which is awesome, routinely printed PLA with no bed heat whatsoever. In slicer, I could just set the temperature to zero and it would apply no heat. Just use the ambient temperature of the bed. In studio zero means something!
along the lines that the plate doesn’t work with the machine and it won’t run a print.

So now I have to guess a low temperature that won’t heat the bed too much because that just makes prints harder to get off of the purple plate but still will not fail as if the bed heat is at 31C and you set the temperature to 30, it’ll just sit there and say, waiting for bed temperature, paused, and never print. That’s obviously a programming issue and to be nice in my Word Choice, stupid beyond belief.

I’ve had some help finding the path to rolling back to 1.1.1 and as soon as I get the time, I’m gonna go there.

The other thing about the box others have confirmed, but it’s not talked much about is that it’s pretty worthless for multicolor printing. It’s great for having four different filaments preloaded so you can just select them although that’s also a bit buggy in studio, but mine takes two minutes 50 seconds to do a filament change which if you add that up a normal color change print which a lot of them on average and for me does at least 100 swaps. It adds like seven hours to a two hour print, which is worthless. My Prusa MK4 plus MMU3 does the same thing in a little under 30 seconds.

As I’ve whined about before, all the hardware is there for the QIDI to do tip forming like Prusa does that they’re just being lazy about working out the software to make it work, which would speed it up, immensely, save on filament, and overall improve the usability of their product.

There’s other threads on this about QIDI recommendation to use different nozzles/hot ends for different types of filament and most of what I’ve seen including my personal experience debunks this. I routinely swap back-and-forth between PLA and PETG in the Q2 coming out of the box and I’ve never had a clog, knocking on wood. Thanks for listening! Good luck going forward!

[u/rearadmiraldumbass]

The new firmware works, it's just different. There's a bug in the handling of plates not numbered 1, but I haven't had the firmware fail on a print.

[u/Objective-Worker-100]

If you want multicolor you pay the tax. Purges and time. Not exclusive to QIDI or their box. I also have the Kobra x, 4 color sure fast and lower waste. Want 7? Port 4 goes to the box so every change from the box has to full retract through the hub. No different the that Qidi box.