Wannabe or Klipper-based powerhouse? “It’s complicated 💀” with the Qidi Q2.

“Unapologetical”

That is the one word I would use to describe the Qidi Q2. It’s a printer that is made to a budget, they know it. They’re running standard open-source software that anyone can use, and Qidi is actually kinda proud of it. And yeah, instead of developing their own design language, it’s rather “inspired” by the Bambu lineup. Here, I’ll show you a couple of close-ups and you tell me which ones are the Qidi Q2 and which are a Bambu.

These were all from the Qidi Q2.

And actually, I think it’s a shame that the vibe Qidi is going for is “cheap Bambu knockoff”, because that first impression immediately devalues the printer when it actually has a lot of good stuff going for it.

So here’s the low-down on the Q2: This is a fully enclosed, and actively heated CoreXY-style printer, with a hardened nozzle that goes up to 370°C out of the box, and it’s all run by a standard Klipper setup, which is totally accessible to the user. The machine overall is pretty compact, but has a 270 square build area and goes 256mm tall, so just a little bigger than your standard-size printers; you can get the Qidi Box with it for filament multiplexing and drying, and the on-sale price for the printer is just 450 bucks, or 650 with the Qidi Box. 500 and 700 regular. This is a segment where you get a ton of choice in printers; every manufacturer has one, but they all have their own priorities in what they want to do well and where they skimp out.

The Qidi Q2 definitely sits in the high-spec, power-user sort of niche, which is interesting, because the features that make it unique within that group, which are the high-temp nozzle in combination with a heated chamber, mean that if you fill up the Qidi box with the sort specialty filaments that needs those specs, you’ve instantly got more money in high-end filament in here than this whole supposedly entry-level printer is worth.

Though testing the Q2 has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. If you look on Amazon, Qidi printers almost exclusively get glowing 5-star reviews that hit all the major talking points. But my expectations dropped to the floor when I took it out of the box and found what looked like a Dollar Tree version of a shrunk-down Bambu H2D. But then I started using it and found how openly this printer is built on Klipper and how they are doing everything local-first without forcing you to sign up for cloud services and the like. I really enjoy seeing that approach, because it means you’re not dependent on someone else’s services for using the thing you bought. But the more I kept using the Qidi Q2, I also kept on finding flaws that were getting harder and harder to brush aside, so right now, I’m just really torn on what to think about the Q2.

I had just tested the Bambu H2S, and aside from the obvious size difference, specs-wise, they are supposed to be surprisingly even, just that the Qidi Q2 also costs about a third as much. So, because the rest of the specs were so similar, I started running it through the same test parkour. First observations: The Q2 is a lot noisier, input shaping tuning sounds like the toolhead is about to fly out the side of the printer, and when it’s just idle, it always has a fan running with a pretty annoying noise profile. So I’m going to keep the Q2 turned off for this video.

Though by default, it actually prints quite a bit faster than the H2S, and with the right kind of part, it also gets some pretty respectable quality, too. That was really cool to see especially considering this is from the value end of 3D printers. So to sum up, print quality is good, and we can move on, right? Well, not yet.

I started off with PETG, first some simple parts, then this structural member from Caroline, and on there, I was starting to see some pretty gross artifacting around the bridging area of horizontal holes. Same on these LED panel clamps, but there it’s visible wherever the toolhead has to slow down for overhangs and then speeds back up for the regular sidewall.

But I thought this is Klipper, right, and what I’m seeing looks a lot like I just need to re-tune the Pressure Advance feature. After all, that is something that the Q2 doesn’t measure automatically, so I can just give it a double-check, right? And to my surprise, in Qidi Studio, you get a tuning tab that will generate a standard tuning tower for you. To dial in just that, it gives you instructions on how to do it and where to save the results. I think this is fantastic.

I would still prefer not having to do any tweaking in the first place. But since that’s not an option here, I very much prefer Qidi’s solution, where I’m sort of empowered to do something about the things I don’t like, vs. for example Anycubic’s approach, where you get an autotune button that doesn’t work, and no alternative.

But it turns out what I was seeing isn’t Pressure Advance at all – from the factory, the printer is already dialed in to precisely the same values that I found, so that’s… good, but it doesn’t fix this problem.

I know I’m kinda dwelling on this one issue, but if this is really the best that the printer can do, everything else just becomes irrelevant.

So I tried different profiles, I was tweaking speed limits and flow smoothing settings. Ultimately, I reached out to Qidi and asked them if they were aware that their Q2 prints like this, and they sent me back a tweaked print file that slows down the machine, and that does eliminate the issue. So it really was just poor default profiles. We’ll get back to this in a bit.

But of course, the big stand-out feature of the Q2 is that it can handle some pretty high-temp specialty materials, like PEI, PPSU, or PEKK. Those all need this hotend’s extended temperature range of 370°C, and the only other somewhat affordable printer I could find that goes that hot would be the Elyarchi Alcheman, but that one was a $1400 printer on Kickstarter that, honestly, just doesn’t look like it’s happening.

Though the PPS-CF that I have doesn’t print quite that hot, it would actually work fine on many of the other printers competing with the Q2, even if just barely. But on the Q2, it did print just fine, and it even works with the Qidi Box. The Bambu H2S, for example, doesn’t allow loading PPS-CF into the AMS because of the tight bends that would require, and this stuff is pretty rigid.

But still, I didn’t exactly get the PPS-CF part off the Q2’s bed in one piece. The PEI bed material seems to be the same kind that I saw on the Magneto; it’s a slightly more rubbery-feeling type of PEI, while Prusa and Bambu beds feel sort of dry and hard. This softer type often tends to stick to parts better than the part’s layers stick to each other, so on more than one occasion, I’ve had to scrape away torn-off PETG bits with a knife blade, and the little prime line the printer does at the front got trickier and trickier to remove with every print. It seems like the more you use these beds, the stickier they get, so maybe plan on eventually replacing this one.

On the other end of the extreme, PLA on the Q2 isn’t without its issues, either. I know this might be my bad, because the instructions on the thing I did wrong are literally printed onto the outside of the machine, but I didn’t think it would be that bad. On the CORE One, or on the Bambu P and X printers, you should open the door for better ventilation with PLA, but in my experience and for a lot of other people as well, you can also just leave the door closed and it’s fine.

But the Qidi Q2 instantly punished me for forgetting to open its top and had me tearing apart the toolhead to pick bits of bulged-out PLA out of the extruder for over an hour. Not the most enjoyable experience, I swear I’ll be better next time. With that fixed, and the top finally open, yes, it prints PLA, with the same results as the other filaments.

And those results are that the stock profiles are pretty recklessly tuned. The parts have some VFAs visible – the printer doesn’t do the motor microstepping matching thing with the drivers – there is visible curling on overhang edges, even with PETG, and of course, the flow inconsistencies show up with all materials. I would guess that’s actually due to the hotend struggling, even though the Q2 is already printing pretty hot.

With the slowed-down profile that Qidi sent me, much of that disappears, though now the parts are slightly more glossy, and ringing and VFAs show up more visibly. I think this slowed-down profile should be the default, but Qidi is still deciding whether they think this is actually better. As it stands, there are printers out there that manage to print better, even when running at full speed.

Qidi gives you a lot of freedom to do what you want with their machines. I just hope it’s not just an excuse for diffusing the responsibility of making it print well.

Qidi has built its reputation on making what are essentially pre-built Vorons. The printer and even the filament box are handled through just standard Klipper tools; you get full access to the Linux system, you can log in as root through SSH – but you don’t have to. Firing up Qidi Studio and just using it also totally works. The only things that I think are proprietary in this system are the AI detection tool and, as far as I can tell, the software driving the screen. Also, the “Qidi Link” component, which handles remote access, but it’s defaulting to doing everything over the local network anyway. They even include an Ethernet port and a cable for that, so that’s nice!

The rest of the hardware is… alright, but not super high-end, not that that’s what you should be expecting at the price. The screen is obviously cheap, it has visibly low contrast, low resolution, but totally serviceable; the camera that promises “up to 1080p”, is configured to only run at 640×480, which is okay for checking in on prints, but timelapses look like they were filmed in 2005. Though what’s cool about the AI detections is that that feature is built to run completely local on the printer’s SOC, and it should be able to do spaghetti detection based on a standard object classifier model, but also build chamber clearance monitoring at the start of a print. I tried enabling the AI and it immediately started finding ~~spaghetti~~ fried noodles and pausing my prints, even when it was just a partially printed block of tree-type supports. So I immediately turned the detection feature off again, and I’m not getting my hopes up for the detections on the Q2 ever working well enough to be worth enabling.

The app that goes through Qidi Link, for me at least, did work, but the reason it has 1.7 stars seems to be that it turns off all the fans on the machine every time you use it to check in on a print job, effectively always running that print in the process. Schrödinger would love this app.

Now, I *don’t* actually mind the visibly cheap manufacturing on details like the case itself. Sure, it could be nicer, but it would also make the machine more expensive to build. From what I’m seeing, the parts that are actually responsible for function are built well enough, and that’s what matters… to me.

Finally, I should cover the Qidi Box real quick: This is an optional upgrade part, but it does the four-filament multiplexer thing, or up to 16 filament with up to four Qidi boxes, it does filament drying, even while printing, which the Bambu AMS for example does not do, but temperature control for that isn’t great, I set the Box to 25°C, the printer showed it was going up to 35, and the hotspot most likely was well above that. Kinda makes sense that Qidi doesn’t allow turning on drying when you have PLA loaded.

But in general, the experience of using the Qidi Box isn’t at a level yet where I would really recommend getting one. For swapping filament, you can’t just pull it out, you always have to go through the printer’s screen and wait for it to unload it for you, and then it spits it out with the end just completely loose. You want crossed filament? Because that’s how you get crossed filament on your spools.

And actually using it for a multi-color print went pretty well, until it didn’t. At 39%, the printer stopped because one of the filaments failed to unload. At first, I thought that the filament must have gotten stuck in the hotend, but it was just the stepper motor inside the Qidi Box glitching out for some reason.

And then I reached into the poop bin, and, well, that shouldn’t be in there.

That’s a pretty solid chunk that made it down the chute, but usually, you don’t get metal parts coming out the back of the printer. The printer’s inside was a mess, too, and the rubber nozzle wiper was starting to come off its position, I guess because the little piece of stick tape holding it in place started giving out.

That’s also where that metal bar is supposed to be; it’s the primary extrusion wiper, held in place only by being poked through the rubber.

Thankfully, it doesn’t look like anything has been permanently damaged, and the wiper slides right back into place.

As a filament dryer, or as a single-material selector, and as a convenient way to sync filaments to the slicer, the Qidi Box is… fine, but I really wouldn’t recommend relying on it for multi-color prints to do hundreds of filament swaps. I mean, not that that’s a good idea anyway, simply because of the insane amounts of filament that that process wastes. So honestly, I would just skip the Qidi Box entirely, and get a separate single-filament drybox for about 40 bucks, unless you really want the convenience of always having four filaments on tap in your slicer.

So what is this printer? I know this is going to upset some people, but the closest analogy that I came up with is that it’s the Linux of 3D printers. In theory, yes, it does all the things any other printer can do, plus so much more. Except for the features that aren’t done yet, and the ones that don’t work, and the ones that just aren’t as good as you expected, but you can always submit a pull request if you don’t like it, right?

Qidi runs a surprisingly good compromise with running a fully accessible Klipper underneath, but still adding just enough of their own tools on top to make it a smooth experience. I fully acknowledge that this is a really tough place to be, and I so prefer Qidi’s function-first approach over other solutions that try their best to look polished, but end up being held together by thoughts and prayers. The documentation on the Q2 is surprisingly good, and I can totally look past stuff like the AI detections not doing much yet, or the app being… unusable, that’s all bonus. But what needs to work out of the box is that the printer can print quality parts. In this day and age, I have zero tolerance for stock printing profiles not being tuned well.

This is one of those situations where software updates and profile tweaks can turn the ship around, though, as it stands, the Q2 is still more of a hands-on printer than I think it has to be. Links in the description below.

But for now, be kind to yourself, keep on making, and I hope to see you all in the next one.

Models shown:

Filaments used:

Tools I use:

🔩 Onshape Cloud-native CAD (free for Makers)

🎵 Epidemic Sound for video music (30-day trial)