Surprised to hear so many positives on the prusa. I have a prusa and a qidi x-pro and I'd 10x rather have the qidi than the prusa. It's just easier to work on, has less issues, and was even cheaper. Prusa has the bigger build plate and maybe slightly better quality, but that doesn't do much good when your prints have a tendency to form giant filament balls around the printhead when things go wrong every 30 or 40 prints. I'm not really a Prusa fan after using it a lot, it's just overpriced for what it is in my opinion.

When the qidi print has an adhesion issue, it just falls off the plate. When it happens on a prusa, you get this huge mess. The printer is fine and the bed adhesion is fine, it's just occasionally that when I'm printing the exact same print over and over one time it will come loose for some reason or another, but then it will work fine for the next 30 or 40 prints.

My prusa sucks compared to my qidi 3d enclosed printer. Qidi is 1000x more reliable.

Prusa is great...until you have an issue. Then it's a piece of crap, lol. Mine was great until I started having this issue where it would occasionally break the print loose and then create this giant ball around itself. It did this several times until it killed the hotend completely. Other printer, no issue with this type of stuff. Replaced the hotend, now it's got some sort of bed leveling issue where one corner isn't quite right now for some reason. I'm so sick of messing with it that it has basically just sat for the past 6 to 12 months collecting dust while I print on my cheaper Qidi X-pro that rarely ever has issues despite 20x the print time of the prusa.

I make big prints, so this kind of issue is a huge problem because of the huge ball it makes when it fails. I don't know why it has a tendency to stick to itself but it does.

Basically I think you're better off with one of the enclosed printers at the same price + add a glass bed.

They can, but here is my qidi compared to my prusa

qidi
cheaper
same speed
enclosed
had pfte tube clog a couple times

prusa
more expensive
has temperature issues with sticking to the plate when it gets colder
has a tendency to form large balls on the hotend
had a board short that I had to program around literally
has a bed leveling issue

Basically, even though qidi is a much cheaper printer, the prusa mk2 that I own has been way more trouble prone. If I didn't own a more reliable printer at a cheaper price, I'd probably think better of the prusa, but it's just been so troublesome in comparison that I don't recommend it. When it works, it's great, it's when you have issues that it sucks, the qidi is way easier to service.

Having been through this same thing a few years ago, I've bought 2 qidi's and one prusa. For a beginner, 100%, go qidi like this:

https://www.amazon.com/QIDI-TECHNOLOGY-Structure-Precision-Extruder/dp/B08S32JC4S/ref=sr_1_5

The CR printers and prusa's are printers for hackers. Great if you want to piecemeal together things into the greatest printer ever, awful out of the box experience and error prone. Qidi just prints right off the bat. No hassle, no issues. Has a touch screen instead of a cheap knob and character display.

Buying a qidi is like buying a dell pc, it's going to work and be pretty good. Buying a prusa is like building your own pc, it might far exceed what a dell can do but you also might have a lot of tweaking and issues to work through.

I just ordered a Bamboo carbon x-1 so I'm interested to see what it can do.

I think the fact that I own one, have burnt out a main board and hot end in just basic use, and even hacked the source code to work around the main board short would lend credence to the fact that I'm not just making stuff up here. Glass bed on a qidi > the sheet on the prusa as well. I have nothing financial to gain by ripping a printer I own other than stating my experiences with it. It is not a good first printer because if you have issues it can very hard to solve them.

The majority of prusa users are doing all kinds of tweaks and upgrades to their printers, very few leave them at the base level. Qidi is horrible for upgrading, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who's trying to do anything like that. But if I compare the two printers just straight up:

qidi:
cheaper
has enclosure for better temp control, more materials
touch screen
easier to level
better user interface

prusa
bigger build area
can be upgraded in tons of ways

I was so excited when I bought the prusa (I think I have the same mk3s+, I'd have to go back and look, I may have misstated it before). I even bought the mmu2s+ with it, but sadly I've never taken it out of the box because I had so many issues with the base printer. I've probably printed 3000 to 4000 hours worth of stuff the past few years. I would love the prusa to be awesome but mine is a lemon evidently, and feels very overpriced in comparison to the qidi just from a build quality standpoint.

Welp, I just must the unlucky smuck who had his printer self destruct on him twice in limited use. I just expected more quality for the price. Like this is the GUI of the printer I use that's like 1/2 the price (mines not an x-max, but it's the same gui):

It's like infinitely easier to do things on. Even shows me what I'm printing.

I need to work on my prusa and get it going again here sometime. After I replaced the hotend it starting having this issue where things in the upper right corner of the build plate started to be poor quality, like there's some sort of leveling or alignment issue now. After that happened with my previous problems I haven't really turned it on in the past 6 months. I'd sell it if anyone is interested, everyone thinks this is the best well they can buy mine. Or buy my mmu2s kit, I'll sell that too.

Btw, if you guys really want more in depth knowledge about 3d printers, you should listen to the 3d printers today podcast, probably the best 3d printing podcast out there. Those two guys are experts and have had like every printer under the sun. Shockingly, also not high on prusa either, lol, I think mainly because they don't think it's a very good value for your money. So it's not just me, listen to the experts there and see what they say. Unfortunately, I didn't find their podcast till after I bought my prusa I don't think. They're doing things like E3d tool changer, etc. I do think that the prusa XL looks interesting, wish it was cheaper but it does what I want in a 3d printer.

Got the Bambu X1 Carbon this week, finally got around to printing with it today. First impressions:

1) This printer is on a different level than the qidi and prusa I have. Like completely destroys them from a functionality/speed standpoint
2) The default plate I'm having issues getting stuff to stick properly. I've had this issue with almost every printer at first, either it sticks too much or too little and eventually I figure out the secret sauce.
3) I printed one of the things I think takes 8 hours on my qidi and like 7 hours on the prusa. On the Bambu it took 2 1/2 hours. Crazy fast.
4) I haven't tried multicolor yet but am trying that now. It was easy to setup.
5) Quality isn't better or worse than my other printers. About identical.
6) I can print remotely and monitor it via camera/app, and it even sends me notifications when things have gone wrong, and pauses the print if it detects issues.
7) It's built like a tank.
8) It's loud. Not a quiet printer due to the speed I think

I'll see how I like it as I go on. Key thing is what happens when there are issues and I'll have to use it longer to figure out the servicing part. I don't think it's as modifiable as other printers, I think it's pretty set in stone here. I'd really like to use a glass bed but I don't think that's supported yet unfortunately.

Just thought I would give my impressions for now.

First test of the multicolor went well. Did you have bed adhesion issues on yours when you started? Everything on it is top notch, I just need to figure out how to get stuff to stick to the cool plate.

73F71358-C232-4CE1-A2CB-E4FE6F23635F (resized).jpeg

I tried aquanet and that seems to help. I also tried turning up the heat but that didn’t help, on my qidi and Prusa I have to crank the bed temp to get pla to stick, otherwise it wants to start to pull off 1/2 way through my 8 hour print. It might just be my overture or hatchbox filament, it appears like the Bambu filament sticks much better.

I still have my mmu kit new in the box if you (or anyone else) want to try it. $200.

I have both of them sitting side by side. The Bambu is louder probably. However it's kind of irrelevant since the Bambu is so much better of a printer. It's laughable that they're even close in price.

You have to careful about licensed stuff though. Like the JP cup holder is awesome, but also not really valid to sell with that artwork at the bottom. You’ll notice that most of the things people sell are something related to the theme but not directly copying artwork,etc.

Someone is actually making these out of TPU on this site I think for the same reason. I think they work fairly well.

Sounds like my issue with my mk3, it imploded on itself and took a while to get it working right afterwards. Mine was Z height + new hotend.