Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer • Hacker News Board

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#31

Post by dual_basis » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

hevi_jos wrote: post #24

j-pb wrote: post #8

I'm glad that prusa has stayed true to his open hardware pledge all these years, while continuing to push the reprap ideals. Everybody is complaining about the price, but c'mon this thing is designed printed and assembled in Prague, the EU. It creates local jobs for people with fair wages, social security and good quality of life, we should strive to have more of our stuff produced in the west. Happy to see him desig…

Prusa cares about quality. Chinese mostly about price. For example, Prusa filaments are perfectly rewind, so the possibility of the filament making a knot and stopping the print like has happened to me with other filaments in 14h printing sessions does not exist. Or chinese aluminium printing beds, with 0.3-0.4 mms differences along the printer, that even with a touch probe you can't print big things over. Those beds…

Maybe, but quality is hard to measure. I just bought a Creality Ender 3 Pro for $180 and the print quality looks as good as anything I've seen from a Prusa or even the Ultimaker at my university. It's got a larger build volume than this mini as well. It doesn't have some of the comfort features, such as auto bed leveling or wifi, but if you really want these you can add them in and still be under the price of this mini, not to mention that the cantilevered design of the mini is almost certainly less stiff than the i3 style on the Ender 3.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#32

Post by m0xte » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

ericb wrote: post #10

MrGilbert wrote: post #5

I think the market for this one will be difficult, just because you can get a 3D printer (read: Ender) for basically half the price... ...with this being said, though - I'm happy to see a "entry-level" Prusa. One thing that lags the cheap printers are security measurements. I guess no one is keen on burning down their house, just because this giant hotglue on rails went rogue. On their website, they state that they a…

The Ender is a great printer if you're cool with it catching fire. In several of the 3d printing groups I'm in, the most common question is "what's the best printer around $300" I can get. The most common answer is something like "try not to scrimp and get the Prusa instead." That's a fairly tone deaf answer to someone truly budget constrained, though if the price is double their budget. But for an extra fifty bucks-…

I saw someone burn their house down with a high quality Weller soldering iron. Anything with a thermal control loop of some sort is potentially dangerous and should not be left unattended. Lest you get home to a pile of ash one day.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#33

Post by crankylinuxuser » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #8

I'm glad that prusa has stayed true to his open hardware pledge all these years, while continuing to push the reprap ideals. Everybody is complaining about the price, but c'mon this thing is designed printed and assembled in Prague, the EU. It creates local jobs for people with fair wages, social security and good quality of life, we should strive to have more of our stuff produced in the west. Happy to see him desig…

> I'm glad that prusa has stayed true to his open hardware pledge all these years, while continuing to push the reprap ideals.

He truly believes it. Not only that, but his left arm has the Open Source Hardware logo tattooed with honeycomb infill :)

I've been there and saw his progress from the beginning. I was at the first MRRF, and he flew in from Prague. Back then, I had my Prusa i2 printer, designed by him to use 8mm threaded rod with a simple 3d prints to make your own printer.

Things have indeed changed since those old days!

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#34

Post by johnchristopher » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

Can it be used to print small figurines for role playing or board games?

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#35

Post by crankylinuxuser » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

m0xte wrote: post #28

mk3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price is going to slay all Chinese crap makers. I always wanted mk3 but never had a big enough reason to buy, now I can justify it. It's the printer I will buy :)

It’s not. I bought an Creality Ender 3 recently for a lot less than that (152 GBP next day in UK) and the thing is perfect. It is also entirely open source. https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3 Quality is pretty top notch. It worked out of the box flawlessly and with no futzing.

Yeah, except for the things you can't see.

1. They use crappy MOSFETs that are known to fail closed. This means you can get a runaway heat on your hotend. A 40w cartridge can melt the alu heatspreader

2. The beds are anemic for heating. Not enough power

3. Crappy steppers

4. No features for jam detection, autoleveling, skipped step protection, filament runout

5. "Chinese" quality: good luck in getting any sort of tech support. Once they have your money, you're fucked.

I'm fighting right now with Pine64 over defective eMMC modules that ignore the first read, causing initrd to fail to boot. Of course, they were chatty on Twitter prior to purchase, but have ignored every way of contact AFTER purchase. But pretty much every Chinese company is like this.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#36

Post by omnimus » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

dual_basis wrote: post #31

hevi_jos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa cares about quality. Chinese mostly about price. For example, Prusa filaments are perfectly rewind, so the possibility of the filament making a knot and stopping the print like has happened to me with other filaments in 14h printing sessions does not exist. Or chinese aluminium printing beds, with 0.3-0.4 mms differences along the printer, that even with a touch probe you can't print big things over. Those beds…

Maybe, but quality is hard to measure. I just bought a Creality Ender 3 Pro for $180 and the print quality looks as good as anything I've seen from a Prusa or even the Ultimaker at my university. It's got a larger build volume than this mini as well. It doesn't have some of the comfort features, such as auto bed leveling or wifi, but if you really want these you can add them in and still be under the price of this mi…

Is this Creality Ender 3 Pro marketing team?

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#37

Post by tpmx » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

I never really understood why they stayed with building a giant 3d printer farm to build all those 3d printer parts, except for it being "cool". Especially in .cz, I think think they could have gotten all those parts injection moulded for a lower cost. At a higher precision.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#38

Post by jrockway » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #37

I never really understood why they stayed with building a giant 3d printer farm to build all those 3d printer parts, except for it being "cool". Especially in .cz, I think think they could have gotten all those parts injection moulded for a lower cost. At a higher precision.

Dogfooding is valuable. If there is a fundamental flaw in their printers, they're going to find out about it firsthand.

It is also nice to know that I can print replacement parts and that my replacement is pretty much identical to the original.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#39

Post by tpmx » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #38

tpmx wrote: post #37

I never really understood why they stayed with building a giant 3d printer farm to build all those 3d printer parts, except for it being "cool". Especially in .cz, I think think they could have gotten all those parts injection moulded for a lower cost. At a higher precision.

Dogfooding is valuable. If there is a fundamental flaw in their printers, they're going to find out about it firsthand. It is also nice to know that I can print replacement parts and that my replacement is pretty much identical to the original.

Sure, but they've kept doing it for many years now. At some point it shifts into some kind of "religion". Or, judging from your response, it's a part of their brand?

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#40

Post by magicalhippo » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #37

I never really understood why they stayed with building a giant 3d printer farm to build all those 3d printer parts, except for it being "cool". Especially in .cz, I think think they could have gotten all those parts injection moulded for a lower cost. At a higher precision.

Having just built a MK3S and not having done much printing before, it was nice to see just what kind of things you could build. The level of detail, how to design the parts that need to be somewhat strong etc.

Another point is that it allows you to print spare parts for your own or a friends printer if something breaks, or print upgraded parts if they tweak the design.