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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

#81

Post by sitkack »

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-…

The monoprice maker select mini 2 is an excellent printer, this is basically the Prusa version of that printer with upgrades.

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=33012

I own the model before this as well as Prusa Mk3. They are both wonderful. Now that Prusa Mini is out, it will probably be the printer of recommendation due to it being open source over the MP Mini.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#82

Post by BoorishBears »

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…

I'm legitimately regretting my Ender 3 purchase after seeing this printer. It should decimate the Ender 3 if there's a real future to FDM...

My Ender 3 Pro cost 230$ and came with a magnetic bed.

Added about 30$ for Automatic Bed Leveling.

Adding a 32-bit board would cost at least what? 50$? ( The stock Ender 3 board has so little memory I had to remove LCD support to get Unified Bed Leveling working)

Max quoted hotend temp is 280 °C so unless Prusa is condoning heating up PTFE to life threatening temperatures it has an all-metal hotend, so another 30$ for a middle of the road one?

Adding steppers... I think we've hit what the Prusa costs, except you hacked together this kit so now it's on you to support it, and also the prices I listed are not for high quality parts.

Then there's just the fact, Prusa will make a 3d printer that just works, and if it doesn't just work, they'll make it right. Good luck if that 50$ Aliexpress-sourced 32 bit board conks out, and have fun tearing it down and returning it to stock if Creality wants to help you out.

This printer represents careful design and good support, I'm going to try and get rid of my Ender 3 immediately and get one of these.

I wanted a Prusa originally but didn't feel like sinking the money into a proper printer when I didn't know I was going to use it. Instead I ended up with something I'm not using because it never works correctly and has actively damned my enthusiasm for FDM...

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#83

Post by dfasdfasd »

alphagrep12345 wrote: post #17

Why does everyone need a 3d printer? Maybe this statement would sound as ludicrous looking back as asking why does everyone need a PC in the 1980s. However, I still don't understand why would a regular person need a 3d printer? Mass marketed goods are always cheaper due to economies of scale. And would you really want to put in the effort to make your own chair, etc?

No everyone needs a 3d printer for sure. A big part of what stopped the idea that 3d printing would be this magical revolution is that designing plastic parts is actually fairly hard.

I don't use my 3d printer to 'fix' things around the house that often because it's frequently cheaper to work around it or buy a replacement. The times a high-value item breaks in a way I can fix with a printed part are rare enough it certainly doesn't justify owning one.

That said, if you really like designing mechanical things or working on electronics projects or similar, a 3d printer is a total blast. I'm currently using mine to make molds for real ceramic parts.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#84

Post by dfasdfasd »

eyeball wrote: post #64
alphagrep12345 wrote: post #17

Why does everyone need a 3d printer? Maybe this statement would sound as ludicrous looking back as asking why does everyone need a PC in the 1980s. However, I still don't understand why would a regular person need a 3d printer? Mass marketed goods are always cheaper due to economies of scale. And would you really want to put in the effort to make your own chair, etc?

I want to buy one so I can convert a brain MRI I had a while ago into a 3D printed model of my brain.

There are a ton of online services that allow you to order 3d printed parts from your own designs. The quality will likely be much higher than what you can print at home as well.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#85

Post by dfasdfasd »

olafure wrote: post #62

I like Prusa, but after they stopped releasing firmware updates for my MK2S for no good reason, so did my business with them. Such a shame.

I've literally never firmware updated my Prusa and it works totally fine. This is a bit of a bizarre nitpick. Hell, you can build your own firmware if you really care that much.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#86

Post by mch82 »

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.

The objective of the RepRap project is 3D printers that are “self-replicating”, meaning they print 100% of their own parts.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#87

Post by dfasdfasd »

dfasdfasd wrote: post #74
jrockway wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> While it is something Reddit endlessly complains about (despite having no software engineering experience) While I agree Reddit's obsession with weird technical details is annoying, this is a pretty arrogant position. I've written motion control code for both 8-bit and 32-bit designs, and the difference is bigger than "read a string and pulse an IO a few times". The Atmega has been outdated for the past 10 years, t…

Additionally, we don't need to speculate, they explained their reasoning in the article:

> Why did we decide to switch to a 32-bit board? Surprisingly, raw performance is not the main reason. We can now write cleaner and more abstract (reusable) code without assembler hacks like on the 8-bit board. Adding new features becomes much less of a hassle and we don’t have to count every single byte in the flash memory. Unit tests and JTAG debugging sped up the development and we also got the chance to include ethernet and optional Wi-Fi connections.

If you read through the firmware you'll find 1000000x #define's for different features that I'm sure they're eager to get rid of.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#88

Post by interpenetrate »

dfasdfasd wrote: post #80
sitkack wrote: post #67

So much sinophobia and racism in this thread. Folks, remember that your exquisitely built Apple products are all made in China.

These threads are always a strange and uncomfortable bridge between valid criticism (many products made in China are cheap and break easily, the Chinese government uncomfortably authoritarian) and actual racism ("the Chinese" only make cheap shit, Chinese don't care about freedom).

...your "valid criticism" will never escape the constraints of orientalism. racism is not a phenomenon of the individual, it's a class phenomenon owing its modern form to imperialism. racism is the crystallization of chauvinism among those classes who benefit from imperialist policy. words like "authoritarian" are taken for granted even though they have a priori definitions and they absolutely come out of the hegemony of these racist classes. sober study of the real is counterproductive or even impossible for these classes. instead, the labor aristocracy (to which all the users of this site belong) speaks from the soul: "the chinese way of life is incompatible with our democracy." nothing new here. the imperialist class proper happens to agree (https://twitter.com/chinfo/status/1182610604353376257)

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#89

Post by bsder »

jdietrich wrote: post #78
ALittleLight wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yes, China may be a brutal, authoritarian, oppressive regime currently trying to censor discussion of their occupation of Hong Kong - but at least they provide cheap manual labor due to lax labor laws, a disregard for the environment, and the general poverty of their people." Apple products could be built anywhere.

Chinese labour isn't particularly cheap by global standards, especially in Shenzhen and the wider PRD region. We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing. Apple products could be built anywhere, but only because Apple have absolutely vast economies of scale. Most consumer electronics products couldn't be built anywhere else at a viable price, not because of labour costs but because of infrastru…

> We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing.

They are now. They were not when outsourcing began.

And that amazing "supply chain" relies on the fact that the West consumes large amounts of expensive consumer goods continuously. Consequently, the parts flow continuously and are consumed without need for inventory. If manufacturers start moving out of China, the parts flow will stop, inventory will back up, and the supply chain will dry up and blow away post haste as everybody heads for the door to avoid being the one holding the bag.

Many things in manufacturing rely on flywheel inertia to keep going. When the flywheel hiccups, the stuff upstream crashes to a halt.

Re: Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer

#90

Post by contingencies »

dwoozle wrote: post #21
alphagrep12345 wrote: post #17

Why does everyone need a 3d printer? Maybe this statement would sound as ludicrous looking back as asking why does everyone need a PC in the 1980s. However, I still don't understand why would a regular person need a 3d printer? Mass marketed goods are always cheaper due to economies of scale. And would you really want to put in the effort to make your own chair, etc?

I print a lot of stuff around the house with a toddler. I printed guards to prevent him from turning on the oven, a insert for the piano that prevents him from pressing the auto play demo, a shim to get a drawer to close more smoothly, a shampoo caddy that hooks around our shower stall, a storage system for small hardware, a set of clips for the computer cords to keep them organized, a doohickey to strip leaves off o…

insert for the piano that prevents him from pressing the auto play demo

Haha, brilliant. Could have done with one of those...

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