Better than Bambu? | QIDI Tech X-Max 3 3D Printer Evaluation

hi I'm Ken of wrist Innovations and today let's talk about all the special features of the chy tech xmax 3 3D printer at the end of the video I'll share a special upgrade I created to easily get to the back of the printer for changing filaments and servicing the printer so you don't want to miss that I will cover the printer's key features setting up the printer my printer performance and the pros and cons of this printer I want to thank Chey tech for sending me the xmax 3 so let's get started the xmax 3 is a beast of a 3D printer its overall measurements are 22 in wide by 22 in Deep by 24 in high and it weighs 66 lb so you may want to consider getting some help to move the printer around especially lifting it up onto a table to put in perspective the bamboo X1 Carbon weighs only 31 lb and the creality K1 Max weighs 40 lb the xmax 3's build volume is 325x 325x 315 mm so it's big enough to print a full-size Helmet or any other large print it's a fully enclosed core XY printer that uses 10 mm diameter rods for the X Y and Z axis the xmax 3 has a 24v 300 W chamber heater that provides a maximum chamber temperature of 65° C which is the only 3D printer family on the market in the sub $1,000 price range that has this feature this feature can really reduce warping of Parts especially for engineering materials such as nylon to keep moisture sensitive filaments dry the printer has a dry box located at the back of the printer that includes desin the xmax 3 has a maximum hot end temperature of 350° C c and a maximum build plate temperature of 120° C the printer comes pre-installed with a copper alloy nozzle in addition a hardened steel nozzle is included for a brace of filament there is an all metal hot end which has a ceramic heating core which heats up very quickly nozzle options are copper or hardened steel in 4.6 or8 mm diameters because it's an enclosed design with the actively heated chamber it can print not only petg and TPU but also higher temperature engineering Plastics such as ABS ASA and carbon filled nylon it has a maximum speed of 600 mm/s and a maximum acceleration of 20,000 mm/s squared it's a Fast 3D printer and it can produce a Beni in approximately 17 minutes it has Auto bed leveling and gdtech recently upgraded their sensor from a BL touch probe to a proximity sensor but it has a manual Z offset which I feel is a bit outdated especially for a $900 printer it does have a filament run out sensor and that's located at the back of the printer the printer has input shaping or what gdtech calls residence compensation the xmax 3 uses Clipper firmware and it comes with an 8 GB emmc storage however you can upgrade to 32 GB storage for $20 which I think think is worth it I wish they would just include the 32 GB storage as standard because it doesn't take up many files to fill up the 8 GB storage the printer has Wi-Fi so you can print wirelessly or use a USB thumb drive it's a bit odd that the USB connections located on the right back top of the printer the printer has two 450 W power supplies which are needed for the build plate and the actively heated chamber the printer doesn't come with a camera camera however they just launched a camera option for $40 I bought the camera and installed it on my printer installation was relatively easy I unplugged the printer removed the back panel and connected the USB cable to the PCB I ran the USB wiring along the bottom of the printer and attached the camera to the right front corner of the printer and connected the USB cable to the camera I hope chy Tech includes the camera for future production because this is a standard feature for or many other printers in this price rate there is a carbon filter located at the back of the printer the printer comes with a pi double-sided textur to build plate and there's an auxiliary fan located at the right side of the printer which really helps with parts cooling the xmax 3 has a nice 5-in LCD touchscreen which runs its own firmware at the making of this video December 2023 the current pricing of the xmax 3 is on sale for $899 the bamboo lab X1 Carbon 3D printer is currently priced at $1,199 so $300 more after covering my printing experience of the xmax 3 I'll comment on if I think the xmax 3 is a worthy competitor to the bamboo lab x1c if you have a 3D printing need but you don't have a 3D printer I have the solution for you that brings me to the sponsor of today's video PC way if you're working on any prototype projects they can help you when you need a variety of Parts besides making pcbs they also offer CNC Machining sheet metal fabrication injection molding and lots of different types of 3D printing including metal printing I recently needed a metal 3D printed part out of stainless steel I went on their website uploaded my design selected the material and quantity and I got an instant quote then then they manufactured the parts within 9 days and shipped them right to my door give them a try and I think you'll be amazed at what they can do for you I have a link in the description below the printer was well protected in the packaging and setup was relatively easy the Box includes a spool holder a filament dry box with desicant a high temperature hotend four rubber anti vibration feet 500 G of filament a power cord ethernet cable USB drive and some miscellaneous tools I removed the miscellaneous foam and packaging next I connected the power cord and turned the power on I followed the screen prompts which instructed me to cut and remove the zip ties holding the axes then I removed four screws that held the bed in place during shipping I then removed the foam from underneath the build platform then it was time for calibration the first step is to manually set the build plate temperature to your material in my case for pla the build plate temperature is 45° C once the build plate is up to temperature it's time to set the Z axis offset using the included special shim paper I had a hard time reaching through the front of the printer due to the small clearance between the frame and the build plate so I removed the top cover and reached inside from the top to test the shim paper fit after the Z offset is done it's time for the autoed leveling followed by input shaping the spool holder is located on the back of the printer which is hard to access due to the weight of the printer to move it around to get to the back you really need to be behind the printer to load filament but you also need to have access to the LCD screen so you can trigger the load feature first you manually set the nozzle temperature based on the type of filament you're loading then you push the filament through the tubing until it reaches the extruder once the nozzle has reached the correct temperature choose the amount of millimeters of filament that you want to purge and then push the downward Arrow the extruder will then Purge the filament onto the build plate repeat this step until you're satisfied that you've purged the nozzle of any of the previous filament now it's time to print my first part going into the files tab I selected a pre-loaded model of course my first print needed to be a Beni so I selected the file and pushed the print button my first print turned out to be an open cabin Beni actually this is where I began having problems with the printer because it would just lose power the LCD screen would go dark and the printer would just stop working I contacted gdtech technical support and they responded the same day via email because we were about 13 hours apart after doing some my own troubleshooting I discovered that one of the power supplies was defective because I measured the voltage of 110 volts coming in but not 24 volts outgoing so I ordered a replacement power supply on Amazon and I had it the next day a safety note you will need to be very careful with troubleshooting with the power on due to the exposed 110 voltage wires gdtech did offer to provide a power supply if I determined that to be the problem however I didn't want to wait because I didn't know where the power supply would be coming from from chy Tech whether it be local from the US or potentially overseas and I didn't want to waste any more time trying to get the printer up and running I installed a new power supply and that fixed the problem so I was back in business I don't blame cheaty tech for the defective power supply because it was an intermittent problem and I assume the symptoms probably didn't show up in their final testing this Beni came out very good next I printed another one of their pre-loaded models the fidget Cube the print quality was good and the clearance was fine because the fidget moved easily next I printed this pre-loaded model faceted bunny which also came out good all these prints were using pla then I moved to other prints that required slicing I downloaded CH Tech slicer software to my computer which is based on the prusa slicer they have a user guide built into the slicer which is very help ful there's also a device tab that allows you to see the fluid web interface directly in the slicer this is where I can see my installed camera I imported this phase from maker world and this is a Hendrix design I used Sparkle pla with a .12 layer height and it turned out beautifully it's very hard to even see the layer lines overall the quality was comparable to the bamboo lab X1 Carbon now next I printed this geometric shape from petg which turned out overall pretty good but it did have a few defects then I printed this calibration model from printables designed by gabox 3D in the same petg the results were pretty good the 10 mm diameter feature measured 9.72 mm which is only 5,000 of an inch under and the 10 mm length feature measured 10.09 mm which is about 3 and 1/2 in over the overhang test did well up to about 50° but it did print up to the design of 80° I'm not into cosplay but I wanted to print a large model so I chose this Eiffel Tower model from printables designed by yel I printed it in chy Tech ABS the chy tech slicer software warned me to turn on some supports but I went to see how the print would turn out without supports and I was pleasantly surprised although there a few defects after I cleaned them up I think the print turned out really well next I moved on to the chy tech carbon filed nylon filament I came across these tool files on auror Tech's YouTube channel and she provided a link to the files which were created from 3dprinted hardware.com links to auror Tex Channel and to 3dprinted hardware.com are in the description below I printed the pliers first in ABS and then in the carbon fi n on and I think they came out great I set the chamber temperature to 40° C and also 55° C for the nylon and I didn't have any problems warping on any of the parts I continue to print additional plier designs they all turned out beautifully Stefan of CNC kitchen recently published an excellent video on the benefits of a heated chamber especially when printing engineering filaments and that link is in the description so before I cover the pros and cons of the xmax 3 let me show you my special upgrade I mentioned it's very hard to move the printer due to its 66lb weight so I designed this Lazy Susan platform for the printer I used a high-quality lubricated bearing Lazy Susan with locking knobs which allows me to easily rotate the printer to have easy access to the back of the printer to work on the hotend change filaments or service the printer I will have more details on how I made the Lazy Susan in a future video so now let's talk about the pros and cons of the xmax 3 first the pros the Gtech xmax 3 is a solidly built fully enclosed 3D printer the large print volume core XY design and unique actively heated chamber allow you to 3D print a variety of materials so not only PLA petg and TPU but also higher temperature engineering plastic such as ABS ASA and carbon filed nylon the quality of the prints from the xmax 3 rival the quality I have experience with the bamboo X1 Carbon printer which I consider to be a gold standard of 3D printing I like the clear plastic door and top panel and LED lights which make it easy to see inside the printer it doesn't bother me that they're made out of plastic or that the side panels are plastic but they could streamline the overall size of the printer while keeping the same print volume because there's a fair amount of wasted space inside the printer the xmax 3 at $899 is $300 less than the bamboo lab x1c so I consider the xmax 3 to be a good overall value now the cons I don't consider the heavy weight of the xmax 3 to be a con but the weight makes it more difficult to gain access to the back of the printer for filament loading or servicing the printer I recommend that you you consider implementing a filament dry box and locate it to the side of the printer so you don't have to move the printer every time you need to change a filament another concern I have about the xmax 3 is the amount of time it takes to replace an entire hotend assembly there are eight screws and multiple wires you need to disconnect and you need to have access to the back of the extruder in order to work on the extruder assembly comparing that to the bamboo lab A1 or A1 Mini nozzle swap that can be done in less than 30 seconds gdtech should consider designing a more streamlined way to change the hot- ends I think CH Tech should include a camera as a standard feature for the xmax 3 so now that they have launched a camera upgrade for the existing xmax 3s they should consider that on future production of the printer updating the firmware is a bit cumbersome because you have to go onto the gdtech website download the firmware to a USB drive load the USB drive into the printer and wait for it to upload in comparison the bamboo lab firmware updates are handled via automatic notices when turning on the printer and they are completed very quickly also Gtech should automate the Z axis offset that is a standard feature for many other printers on the market overall I consider the xmax 3 to be a very good 3D printer and I'm glad I have it in my Arsenal the large print volume reasonable price and the heated chamber that allows you to print high temperature engineering filaments are the best features of the printer there are some quirky aspects of the xmax 3 that diminish the user experience but if you can Overlook those quirks then you may want to consider the chy tech xmax 3 for your 3D printing needs if you found this video useful please consider subscribing to my channel also let me know in the comments below if you think this printer is a strong competitor to the bamboo lab printer I do have an affiliate Link in the description below in case you decide to buy the CHD Tech xmax 3 using that link I would receive a small commission my next video will be a slightly different topic because I'm going to evaluate the creality Falcon 2 22 W laser engraver and show how it can be used with 3D printed parts so when that's ready that link will be here in the meantime you may want to watch my top bamboo upgrade for the X1 Carbon P1 series printers and that link is here thanks for watching bye

Channel: Rist Innovations

Views: 5,408

Keywords: Rist Innovations, 3Dprinting, 3d printing, 3d print, 3d printer, fast 3d printer, bambulab, bambu lab a1, bambulab a1 mini, bambu lab ams lite, bambu lab, bambu lab x1, bambu lab x1 carbon, bambu lab p1p, bambu lab p1s, best 3d printer, fastest 3d printer, bambu lab 3d printer, 3d printer review, best 3d printer 2023, a1 mini review, bambu lab a1 mini, fast 3d printing, bambu lab a1 review, qidi, qidi tech, X-max 3, X max three, qidi tech review, qidi tech evaluation

Id: oSrWloT1VHs

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023