FreeCAD 1.0.x. Neptune 4, Qidi Plus 4. Long Delay Apology.

Posted On August 28, 2025

Apologies for the long delay between posts. This has been a hectic year trying to keep employed, especially at my age. <grin>

FreeCAD

For your own designs, FreeCAD 1.0.x is out after 20 years of development work. (For the Mac, it is at 1.0.2 as of Aug 28,2025.) I have started using it after going through some YouTube videos on building a “rugged” box. The 15 minute condensed video took me about 4 hours to get through, rewinding and retrying my copy of their work. Absolutely worth it. I ran the video 3 times, and that effort provided me the “learnin” to use it for other designs.

It now beats Sketchup hands down. It is now my goto design package. I can now create almost as fast in it as with Sketchup. For item modification, it beats that program due to the ease of punching in different numbers to change things, even in the middle of a part.

FreeCAD borrows many ideas (renamed, of course) from platforms like SolidWorks, AutoCad360, etc. Once you are comfortable in FreeCAD, you can switch between those programs and FreeCAD with a minimum of discomfort. To send designs between CAD program, use STEP, or, in the worst case, STL.

With step and ingenuity, you can reconstruct and modify CAD files. With STL and a lot of work, you can get a CAD file that can be tweaked, but hard to modify.

There are many excellent YouTube tutorials on using almost every feature in FreeCAD. I have created several designs with it, and have exported the designs as STL files. So far, it has worked without any export issues, and with very few crashes.

1.0.0 has crashed on OSX Ventura once in a while, but the work was recovered. The 1.0.2 has not yet crashed on me. Cross fingers.

Neptune 4 Pro

I also used my CC points to get a Neptune 4 Pro from Elegoo for “free,” and a QIDI Plus 4 printer at half price. My previous printer was a Voxelab Aquila, which is an Ender 3 clone. Voxelab disappeared from the Web a few weeks ago. I think the company may be dead.

The neptune 4 Pro is an excellent open frame printer, except for the hotend. It uses Klipper and comes with a rockchip 4 core arm processor runing armbian. It is fast, with very small steps, making 0.16 layers a reality. I have had great luck printing with it (except for its extruder).

The Stock Extruder on the Neptune 4 is easy to clog and not easy to unclog. Sometimes you can unclog with a long unclog needle. If your PLA is the least bit brittle, it will clog due to filament fractures, and a full disassembly is required. (The design of the extruder does not allow fragments to be pushed into the heat area to be melted. It has to be a continuous piece of filament within the hotend near the heater block).

It is a pain to get the head off of the crossbar to pull the hotend out and work on it. Minimum 30 minutes must be spent, and a lot of tiny pieces floating around. After several clogs, I purchased an “upgraded” hotend. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7Q1DR1F?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_18

That hotend gives the Neptune 4 PID temperature management code a fit for about an hour. Temperatures move around from 0 to 10 degrees C above chosen temperture as reported by the onboard thermistor. That can be scary.

However, it has yet to clog. Its design is more open going down to the nozzle (which is a custom nozzle). The temperature fluctuations are settling down (to about 0 to 5 degrees C) by the time the printer starts laying down the first layer, since the heat up cycle is so long.

The price of the hotend and the lack of clogging makes the heat and nozzle issues a “no, never mind” for me. At around $18 USD, I can put up with a few issues like this. I dropped the temperature about 3 degrees C in my slicer, and that caused no issues for the print. After about an hour into the printing, the PID temperature management is around +2 / -0 degrees C.

The Neptune Slicer is Elegoo Cura, and it does not crash on the Macintosh. The stock cura, all the way to the recent one (first quarter 2025), crashes often on the Macintosh. Elegoo changed the settings file to fix the crashes, I suspect.

PETG, Not PLA

I also switched from PLA to PETG for my printing. PETG is more forgiving on the temperature for the initial layers, so the newer, hotter, hotend does not hurt my prints. I did find the prints have slightly more “hair” between protrusions, but it is not as bad as SUNLU’s Meta PLA was on my Aquila. Meta PLA is a waste of money to purchase. It will not easily stick to PEI, and it is brittle after printing.

With PETG, you can print on PEI. Using Suave hair spray and 80 degrees C for plate temperature, you can get very good prints without curling. After about a dozen prints and very light sprays, the hair spray coats enough where you don’t have to use it for at least 10-20 more prints. You do have to warp the plate to get the prints off when you have used hair spray. If you don’t use it, be sure to wash with dishwashing soap after every print.

Qidi Plus 4

The Qidi Plus 4 is a very good printer. It is a core xy, and is very accurate. I am not certain of its longevity, but it is very expensive and can print the PPS-CF filament that is an interesting filament for now. Its slicer is an Orca offshoot, and works well. It is still under development. It can go up to 120C for the bed, 65C for the chamber temperature, and 370C for the hotend. It comes with a hardened composite nozzle that can print the Carbon Fiber filaments..

So far, Qidi personnel have been very good at tech support. An email gets answered within two days, based on my experience.

Fini

Future posting will be sporadic, but I expect to do some additional design work in the stepper motor arena at some point in the future.

Enjoy!