Interesting that you experienced more VFAs than normal. I had the exact opposite experience. My Plus 4 prints exhibited far fewer VFAs than any of my other printers.
@@ButterPockets In general, most Plus4 printers seem to produce some of the most VFA free prints I've ever seen from a stock printer. Usually retensioning the belts and/or adding some lube to the linear rods tends to clear them up, along with making sure you run the ideal speeds for your printer. My Plus4 prints nearly entirely VFA free at around 200-250mm/s for example. Not the only good speeds, but known to work well.
One of the reasons stock PLA profiles don't end up with perfect corners and overhangs is that they don't enable the auxiliary fan by default. Just adding a little aux fan can really clean up cooling quality issues. Strange you are getting VFA issues. Most people tend to have very low VFA prints. My experience with the Plus4 is that it produces incredibly accurate and VFA free prints. I am very impressed overall. Belt tension and lubrication along with running ideal speeds are usually best to reduce the VFA, but sometimes there are other issues we haven't been able to fully nail down. Running a VFA tower print may help. Do let us know if you ever figure out your specific issue.
In my experience the aux fan on these printers only hurts because it adds cooling from one side only and not in a very optimal way. But to be fair I didn’t really try it with this printer and I’m actually surprised the default profiles don’t turn it on. At least I don’t think they do (I can’t really remember). And yeah I really did not expect this printer to have these issues and it stinks that it does. I plan to do some more tests and a follow up. I did run a VFA tower (I showed it off in the video). I ran several actually and in multiple materials as well. Hopefully I can solve it because I really do like this printer.
Try setting the pressure_advance_smooth_time to 0.05. That seemed to clear up a lot of the pressure advance "bounce" for me, which looked kind of similar to what you were showing off there. I managed to get all artifacts to go away by ensuring the out wall speeds were 170mm/s or higher. For small-print scenarios, I did multiple 1mm advance VFA towers, and for me I found a handful of very particular lower speeds where all the VFA's mostly went away. 56 and 96mm/s speeds in case you were wondering, but your individual printer may vary. I also ended up at 2000mm/s^2 accelerations for outer and inner walls and top surfaces, and used 7500mm/s^2 accelerations for solid/sparse infills. I don't know how I can show you images of my prints now on RUclips though.
For the pressure advance smooth time I was using 0.04. It’s my understanding that below 5k accels you use 0.04, between 5-10k you use 0.03, and above 10k you use 0.02. I can believe the fast and slow thing tho. People have found the same results on the X1. Go SUPER fast or really slow. I ran some tests with speeds no greater than 40mm/s and accels under 2k and they didn’t go away which really surprised me. I should probably make a discord or something but I’m on there with the username “butterpockets”.
@@ButterPockets I'm over on the Qidi Official Discord Server, mostly hanging out in the Plus4 channel there. You're welcome to come say hello. We have a massive VFA discussion thread there too.
I have pretty much no VFAs on my Qidi plus 4, did you run the input shaper again? how sturdy is the table it's on? maybe something has too much play, some early models had some play in the head.
Yeah I’ve run input shaper multiple times due to tensioning the belts. It’s on that slab of granite which is on my heavy duty shelves (you can see them in other videos).
My machine has bad VFAs very similar to yours. I have been trying to solve for well over a month now. I believe it's related to the bottom bearing in the X carriage. It's a graphite bearing not a ball bearing. Qidi suggesting oiling it (not greasing), maybe you could give that a shot? I'm pretty active on the Qidi Discord and it's a few of us that have 'unsolvable VFAs' but most people can get them to go away through tweaking. It does take a little effort on the user's part. It would be great if Qidi just figued out how to ship the printers in a more tuned state.
Typically other things start to fall apart the faster you print. Also, unless you can run insanely fast accels or only print large flat objects, you won’t run at your fast speeds. Any move change will require the tool head to run slower than the number you put in the slicer. That’s why a lot of those VFAs appear near the corner of the rock face print.
Hey. Dyu have custom profiles for the plus4 or vidz on how to better the default profiles on qidi studio defult settings. Also all the code upgrades and how to do em. Sorry m new to 3d printing n jus got one a month back
I don’t really share that kind of stuff on the internet. I have a video titled like “how I tune on Bambu lab printers” which almost all of that is applicable to a Qidi as well. Teaching tech has some good stuff too. Honestly just use default stuff until you see a problem, then try and fix that problem.
Ok,great thanks for the replies. If u do find any soln for the issue in the video, pls do make a vid as will be looking forward to that as mine has the same issue and also I notice more streaking on items I print towards the front (near the door) esp when m printing multiple items so some are placed there.dno if that's only mine too but will do more research. Otherwise it's an amazing printer and really enjoying it. Thanks again
In my experience the A1 does outperform the X1. I haven’t run dedicated VFA tests on it, but usually the default speeds and accels are way too fast. I should run a test tho
The default settings for the Plus 4 are faster than that. The problem is you can’t ALWAYS be at that speed. Notice on the rock wall it’s right between the corner and rock section. No matter what you set your speed to it’s going to be going much slower through that section unless you have absolutely bonkers accels. Especially for printers where going faster helps, it only exacerbates the problem because on small prints you’re not going to keep the speed up. It has to accelerate up to that speed so it’s going to be hitting it at some point. It’s not as easy as “print faster” especially get the default outer wall speed is 200 mm/s. The VFA tests corroborate this tho, and you can see as it transitions to high speeds the effect lessens, but it’s not going to go away. It’s the exact same thing BL tried to pull with the X1. It means the fundamental frequency of the system is too low and you must print above it to not have it. The problem is that you’re going to push into higher order modes and harmonics. Whereas with a well built system you could print *under* the fundamental frequency and have absolutely no modes present.
Yeah I use Polymaker ASA a lot, I just happened to use Polymaker ABS here. Much easier to print than the ABS in my opinion. I’ve had pretty decent success with it in my X1 tho.
Did you try with the to print with the resonance avoidance of? With my printer it does not seem to make a difference at all. I wonder if it works properly.
Yes I tried that on and off. There’s no way it’s doing anything because it’s only speed based. Unless you did tests to correlate which speed is causing the most vibration, it would be very hard to know. If I remember their default profile and my profiles didn’t even use the speeds within the region of that setting anyway. My guess was the 70-120 default setting for that was either random or it’s because of a holdover from early printing days. ~100mm/s was a weird transition speed between stealthchop and spread cycle.
Hello if u don’t mind can u do me a favor and messure the depth from foot to foot I want to by a tool chest to use as a table for it and the one I’m looking at is only 18 inches. I know the site says it’s 19 and change. So was hoping the feet are a little bit shorter. Thank you
I measured the outside of the printer and it’s about 19 3/8. But the feet themselves would be less. The feet could sit on something about 15.5 and a little bit. But the entire body is 19 3/8. If you were really tight on space, including the screen and filament holder, the TOTAL thing takes about 21”.
@ sucks about the bfas. I already ordered it before seeing ur video. Hope it gets fixed. But would be awesome to make a video if u figure it out. And I’ll let u know if mine does the same. Also would be dope to make a beginners guid series with the plus 4. It’s my first printer and I’m going in blind.
I am glad to see this video, I thought it was only my printer. It is pretty disappointing though. It is such a great printer, but this ruins it for me. Even at slow speeds they still show up. I saw a design of an adjustable belt tensioner somewhere, maybe that might help.
Yeah I tried not to search around and see if I could do something with my own knowledge. It is very disappointing. There were some other comments of people saying theirs isn’t like that at all. So hopefully it isn’t a problem with every printer.
I just traded my K1 max for this thing, absolute piece of shit so far, can’t leave it unattended, woke to a huge ball of molten plastic attached to the print head from an overnight print, wasted at least 2 rolls of pla on failed prints in a week
It sucks to hear - I would post on Reddit or discord somewhere and try to get some help. I’ve left mine running overnight over a dozen times during prep for this video and even just last night and nothing has failed. I would suspect either something is wrong with the printer or user error. Be sure you wash your build plate with soap and hot water.
its very likely a tension vs speed vs motor resonance issue look up MRR one way to upgrade this or remove the problem (if neither changing belt tension or speed fix it) is to have a motor replacement with a lower MRR. I have a qidi plus 4 and dont have this issue. back in the day the tmc 2208 could have also been an issue but this has been upgraded to remove salmon skin in modern iterations so what i said earlier is the most likely. Hope this helps!
Yeah I do know about these things. I’m hoping to go in and change some settings on how the motors are driven to see if I can resolve things with these motors in particular.
Interesting that you experienced more VFAs than normal. I had the exact opposite experience. My Plus 4 prints exhibited far fewer VFAs than any of my other printers.
That’s awesome and was my hope. Outside of that issue it prints phenomenally!
Do you use the Qidi studio slicer? Just curious if this might have anything to do with it.
@@ButterPockets In general, most Plus4 printers seem to produce some of the most VFA free prints I've ever seen from a stock printer. Usually retensioning the belts and/or adding some lube to the linear rods tends to clear them up, along with making sure you run the ideal speeds for your printer. My Plus4 prints nearly entirely VFA free at around 200-250mm/s for example. Not the only good speeds, but known to work well.
One of the reasons stock PLA profiles don't end up with perfect corners and overhangs is that they don't enable the auxiliary fan by default. Just adding a little aux fan can really clean up cooling quality issues. Strange you are getting VFA issues. Most people tend to have very low VFA prints. My experience with the Plus4 is that it produces incredibly accurate and VFA free prints. I am very impressed overall. Belt tension and lubrication along with running ideal speeds are usually best to reduce the VFA, but sometimes there are other issues we haven't been able to fully nail down. Running a VFA tower print may help. Do let us know if you ever figure out your specific issue.
In my experience the aux fan on these printers only hurts because it adds cooling from one side only and not in a very optimal way. But to be fair I didn’t really try it with this printer and I’m actually surprised the default profiles don’t turn it on. At least I don’t think they do (I can’t really remember).
And yeah I really did not expect this printer to have these issues and it stinks that it does. I plan to do some more tests and a follow up. I did run a VFA tower (I showed it off in the video). I ran several actually and in multiple materials as well.
Hopefully I can solve it because I really do like this printer.
@ButterPockets Def try the aux fan helps tremendously with my PLA prints at higher speeds.
Try setting the pressure_advance_smooth_time to 0.05. That seemed to clear up a lot of the pressure advance "bounce" for me, which looked kind of similar to what you were showing off there.
I managed to get all artifacts to go away by ensuring the out wall speeds were 170mm/s or higher. For small-print scenarios, I did multiple 1mm advance VFA towers, and for me I found a handful of very particular lower speeds where all the VFA's mostly went away. 56 and 96mm/s speeds in case you were wondering, but your individual printer may vary.
I also ended up at 2000mm/s^2 accelerations for outer and inner walls and top surfaces, and used 7500mm/s^2 accelerations for solid/sparse infills.
I don't know how I can show you images of my prints now on RUclips though.
For the pressure advance smooth time I was using 0.04. It’s my understanding that below 5k accels you use 0.04, between 5-10k you use 0.03, and above 10k you use 0.02.
I can believe the fast and slow thing tho. People have found the same results on the X1. Go SUPER fast or really slow. I ran some tests with speeds no greater than 40mm/s and accels under 2k and they didn’t go away which really surprised me.
I should probably make a discord or something but I’m on there with the username “butterpockets”.
@@ButterPockets I'm over on the Qidi Official Discord Server, mostly hanging out in the Plus4 channel there. You're welcome to come say hello. We have a massive VFA discussion thread there too.
As above comments, please do a follow up video on the VFA issue when you can
I have pretty much no VFAs on my Qidi plus 4, did you run the input shaper again? how sturdy is the table it's on? maybe something has too much play, some early models had some play in the head.
Yeah I’ve run input shaper multiple times due to tensioning the belts. It’s on that slab of granite which is on my heavy duty shelves (you can see them in other videos).
@blacksynth me either
My machine has bad VFAs very similar to yours. I have been trying to solve for well over a month now.
I believe it's related to the bottom bearing in the X carriage. It's a graphite bearing not a ball bearing. Qidi suggesting oiling it (not greasing), maybe you could give that a shot?
I'm pretty active on the Qidi Discord and it's a few of us that have 'unsolvable VFAs' but most people can get them to go away through tweaking. It does take a little effort on the user's part. It would be great if Qidi just figued out how to ship the printers in a more tuned state.
I did oil the bearing up and that didn’t seem to make any difference. Thanks for the suggestion!
Hey Spooknik!
The VFA seems to go away the faster you print maybe try that?
Typically other things start to fall apart the faster you print. Also, unless you can run insanely fast accels or only print large flat objects, you won’t run at your fast speeds. Any move change will require the tool head to run slower than the number you put in the slicer. That’s why a lot of those VFAs appear near the corner of the rock face print.
Hey. Dyu have custom profiles for the plus4 or vidz on how to better the default profiles on qidi studio defult settings. Also all the code upgrades and how to do em. Sorry m new to 3d printing n jus got one a month back
I basically showed a profile in the video
Saw that one. Was that all there was to it?Asking about other types of filaments and if there r specific vidz u have for profiles
I don’t really share that kind of stuff on the internet. I have a video titled like “how I tune on Bambu lab printers” which almost all of that is applicable to a Qidi as well. Teaching tech has some good stuff too. Honestly just use default stuff until you see a problem, then try and fix that problem.
Ok,great thanks for the replies. If u do find any soln for the issue in the video, pls do make a vid as will be looking forward to that as mine has the same issue and also I notice more streaking on items I print towards the front (near the door) esp when m printing multiple items so some are placed there.dno if that's only mine too but will do more research. Otherwise it's an amazing printer and really enjoying it. Thanks again
Yeah I plan to make another video if I figure anything out. That’s kind of on the back burner now, but I plan to try some more!
A1 doesn't have VFA: 1.5mm belt pitch + flat belts on the idle pulleys.
In my experience the A1 does outperform the X1. I haven’t run dedicated VFA tests on it, but usually the default speeds and accels are way too fast. I should run a test tho
@@ButterPockets Or just google, it's known fact that A1 has less VFA and better extrusion.
If that X1 was running slower it would show more VFA.
Okay? I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.
@@ButterPockets Dunno, that VFA belt induced artifacts decrease with speed. Print faster than ~180-260mm/s and those mostly go away.
The default settings for the Plus 4 are faster than that. The problem is you can’t ALWAYS be at that speed. Notice on the rock wall it’s right between the corner and rock section. No matter what you set your speed to it’s going to be going much slower through that section unless you have absolutely bonkers accels. Especially for printers where going faster helps, it only exacerbates the problem because on small prints you’re not going to keep the speed up. It has to accelerate up to that speed so it’s going to be hitting it at some point. It’s not as easy as “print faster” especially get the default outer wall speed is 200 mm/s. The VFA tests corroborate this tho, and you can see as it transitions to high speeds the effect lessens, but it’s not going to go away. It’s the exact same thing BL tried to pull with the X1. It means the fundamental frequency of the system is too low and you must print above it to not have it. The problem is that you’re going to push into higher order modes and harmonics. Whereas with a well built system you could print *under* the fundamental frequency and have absolutely no modes present.
Good material! Polymaker ASA have you print on it? On Bambu X1 is very hard to make a usable print with this mayerial.
Yeah I use Polymaker ASA a lot, I just happened to use Polymaker ABS here. Much easier to print than the ABS in my opinion. I’ve had pretty decent success with it in my X1 tho.
I use Polymaker ASA on a P1s with no problems. No warping, good bed adhesion using glue stick.
Did you try with the to print with the resonance avoidance of? With my printer it does not seem to make a difference at all. I wonder if it works properly.
Yes I tried that on and off. There’s no way it’s doing anything because it’s only speed based. Unless you did tests to correlate which speed is causing the most vibration, it would be very hard to know. If I remember their default profile and my profiles didn’t even use the speeds within the region of that setting anyway. My guess was the 70-120 default setting for that was either random or it’s because of a holdover from early printing days. ~100mm/s was a weird transition speed between stealthchop and spread cycle.
Did you print with the default profile? I printed directly with the default settings of QIDI Studio, and the VFA was almost gone.
I mentioned in the video when I did and didn’t print with default settings
Hello if u don’t mind can u do me a favor and messure the depth from foot to foot I want to by a tool chest to use as a table for it and the one I’m looking at is only 18 inches. I know the site says it’s 19 and change. So was hoping the feet are a little bit shorter. Thank you
I measured the outside of the printer and it’s about 19 3/8. But the feet themselves would be less. The feet could sit on something about 15.5 and a little bit. But the entire body is 19 3/8. If you were really tight on space, including the screen and filament holder, the TOTAL thing takes about 21”.
@ sweet thanks that helps a lot. And perfect timing there was only one left the was more then 21 inches deep.
@ sucks about the bfas. I already ordered it before seeing ur video. Hope it gets fixed.
But would be awesome to make a video if u figure it out. And I’ll let u know if mine does the same.
Also would be dope to make a beginners guid series with the plus 4. It’s my first printer and I’m going in blind.
I am glad to see this video, I thought it was only my printer. It is pretty disappointing though. It is such a great printer, but this ruins it for me. Even at slow speeds they still show up. I saw a design of an adjustable belt tensioner somewhere, maybe that might help.
Yeah I tried not to search around and see if I could do something with my own knowledge. It is very disappointing. There were some other comments of people saying theirs isn’t like that at all. So hopefully it isn’t a problem with every printer.
It’s an amazing printer for the price.
I just traded my K1 max for this thing, absolute piece of shit so far, can’t leave it unattended, woke to a huge ball of molten plastic attached to the print head from an overnight print, wasted at least 2 rolls of pla on failed prints in a week
It sucks to hear - I would post on Reddit or discord somewhere and try to get some help. I’ve left mine running overnight over a dozen times during prep for this video and even just last night and nothing has failed. I would suspect either something is wrong with the printer or user error. Be sure you wash your build plate with soap and hot water.
its very likely a tension vs speed vs motor resonance issue look up MRR one way to upgrade this or remove the problem (if neither changing belt tension or speed fix it) is to have a motor replacement with a lower MRR. I have a qidi plus 4 and dont have this issue. back in the day the tmc 2208 could have also been an issue but this has been upgraded to remove salmon skin in modern iterations so what i said earlier is the most likely. Hope this helps!
Yeah I do know about these things. I’m hoping to go in and change some settings on how the motors are driven to see if I can resolve things with these motors in particular.