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Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

blog.prusaprinters.org

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Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#41

Post by royletron »

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…

So does it feel like this is the first genuinely plug and play 3D printer...? That's always been one of the things that puts me off, I don't want to have to learn so much...

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#42

Post by tpmx »

magicalhippo wrote: post #40
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.

The could have

a) injection moulded the parts

b) provided all of the parts as 3d models for for spares

though. There's something else all you guys are being weird about.

Is it the IKEA effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect) in action?

I was interested in upgrading my 3d printer to a prusa model.. but... the having the parts being built to subpar-precision using a FDM printer in a Czech 3d printer cluster didn't seem super exciting in itself...

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#44

Post by jrockway »

johnchristopher wrote: post #34

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

Yes, but in general everyone that buys an FDM printer for things like that is unhappy. Your parts will look 3D printed. If you care about fine detail, you really want an SLA printer.

(The fact that this printer is small doesn't make it any better at small parts. It just takes up less space and can't print bigger parts.)

I got into 3d printing about 6 months ago and am thrilled every time I print something. But 100% of the things I design and print are practical and solve some sort of problem. My parts look 3D printed, but I don't care, because they're performing a useful task. Many people on the Internet are not interested in that, they just want to produce injection-mold quality parts from 3D models at home. If that's your use case, don't buy this. The SLA printers are much much better at that.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#45

Post by m0xte »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #35
m0xte wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

Note: former EE. I’ve taken it and the provided power supply to bits before I even fired it up.

1. They’re IRLR3103PBF operated within their SOA. They’re fine. Most MOSFETs fail short due to the construction of the MOSFET. I’ve actually got a few scars on my arms from the buggers exploding on me misusing them on purpose as RF PA’s as a ham. I’ve seen them blow up in various bits of expensive US made kit too (tektronix 22xx in particular grr)

2. I’ve had absolutely no problems at all with mine and adhesion.

3. A decent stepper costs as much as a Prusa i3. All the steppers at this price are crap. But they work pretty damn well.

4. These are luxuries really. If it jams the Bowden tube pops out and you clean it up and off you go. I levelled it in 3 mins myself. Skipped step I’m not sure if the scenario. Filament run out doesn’t happen if you pay attention to the Cura filament length and don’t try to wing using up the ass end of a roll.

5. I’m not paying for support. I’ll fix it myself. I’m quite handy with a screwdriver, a compiler and a soldering iron. The thing is just an AVR running open source firmware. Nothing complex.

The main thing is I can get functional chunks of spare parts for this next day via eBay.

As for comparing Chinese support to US support, I’ve had better luck out of the worst Chinese company than Microsoft and Apple.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#46

Post by jrockway »

BubRoss wrote: post #3

This is an advertisement and I don't think there is anything exceptional here.

Prusa is running a pretty good business. 100% of their hardware and software is open; you can print your own Prusa i3, build your own controller board from schematics, modify all their software on both the firmware and slicing side, etc. I don't think it's bad to give them a shoutout on HN, they're doing good work and you can benefit from their work without giving them a dime.

(After struggling with a cheap Chinese 3D printer and learning to hate 3D printing... I switched to a Prusa i3 MK3S and am loving it. The software doesn't annoy me. The prints stick to the bed every single time without fail. And I got to assemble the whole thing myself, so I know how every component works and how to fix it in the event that something breaks. And if something breaks, I don't have to order a replacement part, I can just go to the makerspace, print it out, and be back online!)

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#47

Post by Klathmon »

royletron wrote: post #41
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…

So does it feel like this is the first genuinely plug and play 3D printer...? That's always been one of the things that puts me off, I don't want to have to learn so much...

I'd say the MK3S printer is like 75% plug and play. (For reference, I consider current wireless "2d" paper printers to be 100% plug and play now).

You will eventually need to do maintenance on it, you'll eventually have a clog or a broke part or need to do some slightly technical stuff to fix an eventual problem, but most adults capable of building Ikea furniture should be able to follow instructions and do it.

I'm assuming this will be closer to 85% "plug and play". Things like the "one click print", color screen, WiFi and automatic firmware updates are the biggest nice to haves.

But I don't think they've gotten to the point where you'll have reliability similar to a normal "2d" paper printer, so at some point you'll need to take some stuff apart to unclog it. But that's about the extent of the technical needs I'd expect from this printer.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#48

Post by jrockway »

m0xte wrote: post #45
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

Note: former EE. I’ve taken it and the provided power supply to bits before I even fired it up. 1. They’re IRLR3103PBF operated within their SOA. They’re fine. Most MOSFETs fail short due to the construction of the MOSFET. I’ve actually got a few scars on my arms from the buggers exploding on me misusing them on purpose as RF PA’s as a ham. I’ve seen them blow up in various bits of expensive US made kit too (tektroni…

I think he is referring to a step motor controller as a "stepper". People love the fact that Prusa uses Trinamic drivers instead of no-name drivers.

I personally don't understand why step motor control is something that needs to be outsourced. Just stick an H-bridge between the microcontroller and the motor and improve the control algorithm with every release.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#49

Post by mwill »

Really curious to see what the print quality ends up being like on these.

Design wise they're very similar to something like a cetus, or many other Chinese printers with similar mechanics with a major difference: Smooth rods and bearings instead of linear rails.

In my own designs I've pivoted away from rods in favor of rails and seen much greater quality, accuracy, repeatability, and speed, even with cheap knock off rails from China, and most of the industry is moving that way as well.

What's curious is you can get a machine similar to the mini, using linear rails, and more metal or injection moulded parts over 3D printed parts, for just a little bit more than the mini.

Prusa has quite a good reputation though, so I'm skeptical they would release an inferior machine at a the same price point, so like I said, really curious to see how well these works.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#50

Post by jrockway »

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…

The price seems fine to me. This is going to print a lot of useful parts for people and comes with great software for both your computer and the printer that you can hack and modify. If this is anything like my i3, then it's going to have high quality parts (Noctua fans!) and come in kit form to let you assemble it yourself so you know where everything is if something breaks and you need to repair it.

I am surprised that they switched to a more powerful microcontroller. While it is something Reddit endlessly complains about (despite having no software engineering experience), a lot of engineering is invested into their existing 8-bit platform which works perfectly fine. You don't need 32-bit pointers to read a string like "G1 X42" and pulse an I/O pin a couple times ;)

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