[Solved] MK4 Wishlist  

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Wifi.
Touchscreen.
Linear Rails.
1cm thick frame.
Smarter Cabling/cable free. Extruder draws power directly from rails, uses DC-line PLC communication protocols for fan/extruder/filament sensor/Pinda communication: therefore only rails required for all power and control. This handled through smart X carriage design. Let the engineers sort out the details and safety requirements.
Pins on smart carriage control a hot swappable extruder, similar to E3Ds tool changer system, but manual.
Higher Temp default Extruder and heat bed (heat bed powered through different connection underneath so no cabling extends beyond the frame). Similar z axis motor power connection, again, via a rail or something, no cabling extends beyond frame.
Prusa designed desktop enclosure that fits all models, including MMU2, with hepa filtering and humidity control (not the Lack, something more compact but roomy enough - this will be easy when the frame/y is the maximum extremity.. after cables are removed).
Smaller, more compact but higher capacity power supply.

Not sure what else I can dream of.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

This is not about mm/s, its more about acceleration, deceleration, jerks, corner detection, vibration and print artifacts;
and how the mechanic, electronic, firmware and slicers deal with that.

Interestingly when reading through the forums, lots of people have already done lots of promising work in this direction.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

Re: MK4 Wishlist

...

I'm not sure posting DRM closed source product in the open source community forum is appropriate.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

Sorry, did not realize that this could be an issue

Maybe that is more appropriate then:

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Graphic LCD and better MCU sounds reasonable. But we will never get rid of control encoder and buttons. Small touchscreens are clumsy 🙂

In all sincerity: Thank you, sir, for that fine answer!

From my own job experience I know that doing a half-decent touch screen interface is really hard and almost nobody ever gets it right. You have to take so much into account when designing human machine interfaces for touch. So I am actually quite content that the future Original Prusa will still include the control knob and button.

The most promising area of conservative upgrades in terms of the controller hardware is the microcontroller. In fact, I was quite astonished to realize that this device is still using an 8-bit Atmel MCU. For my personal projects, I switched from Atmel AVR to ARM-based 32-bit MCUs some time ago (STM32 in my case) and I am so glad that I did. It's such a blessing to have different-sized chips (in terms of physical size as well as internals) that are actually nearly 100% compatible to each other without having to worry about peripherals using totally different ways of accessing them—it's never been so easy to design on one chip and switch to the next larger one mid-project when you realize that something more powerful is needed.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I'm not sure posting DRM closed source product in the open source community forum is appropriate.

I don't how "technical discussion of all technological possibilities" is against the spirit of open source?

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I don't how "technical discussion of all technological possibilities" is against the spirit of open source?

Discussions are good.
This company is using proprietary hardware and software without disclosing any information except of "we can print fast". They also don't sell anything to the end customers. That's why this post looks to me just like an advertisement.
But I didn't reported it because I understood as as statement to want a faster MK4 printer and rene confirmed it.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

Weighing in on the touchscreen discussion.
I am coming from a Cel robox 3D printer.
What I loved about that machine was the ease of use. The printer was controlled over USB from a slicr-like program. There is no screen at all on the printer, just a single button to pause/resume the printing. You load your stls and could move/scale/rotate them to your liking. And set up the parameters Then you could just hit Print. It would slice it, send it to the printer and start the printer. All in one button. After that you could switch off the laptop or unplug it. Midway through printing you could reattach it and the settings would come in and you could see the progress, temperatures, etc.
No hassle with SDcards and gcode files.

Something like this is quite easy with the prusa as well I think. If you could just send the gcode file over USB to the internal storage/SDcard and remotely start the printer you are already there.

Bert

Re: MK4 Wishlist

Something like this is quite easy with the prusa as well I think. If you could just send the gcode file over USB to the internal storage/SDcard and remotely start the printer you are already there.

Something like this does already work with MK3. With the Pi Zero module you can send it from the Slic3r and let the print automatically start. With the Smartphone app (or web browser) you can monitor and take action, if needed. So it actually work even more convenient over WiFi.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I love the size and touch screen on my Creality CR-10S Pro. I only wish it was reliable.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

RE: An LCD touchscreen... I think it'll be interesting to see just how well the one on the forthcoming SLA1 works, maybe that is what will be used on the MK4?

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I'm new to Prusa (have had a MK3S for a couple of weeks), but not new to 3D printing (this is my sixth printer).

I am not a fan of small touchscreens - making adjustments can be tedious and error-prone, especially if the screen doesn't respond accurately to touches (cough..Robo..cough)... I agree that the menu system of the current setup can be a bit confusing at first - probably my biggest irritation is how quickly it reverts back to the main screen. (Yes, I know I could change this in the firmware.)

I don't want to see a PiZeroW included - my experience with those is that they are too slow for anything useful. I am currently driving my Prusa with a Pi3B+ and Octoprint and I like that combo. Leave it open for people to use whichever connection setup works best for them.

I would like to see mount points for cameras and LEDs, keeping in mind that these would be of varying shapes and sizes. I have yet to find a Pi camera mount that fits the MK3S properly.

Having followed threads on steppers, I think switching to higher resolution stepper motors would be goodness. Higher quality bearings would probably also be welcome.

What I love most about the Prusa is the active community offering so many possible modifications and improvements. I hope that never changes.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I have to disagree with a lot folks on the touch screen. I just got a Creality CR-10S Pro to print large prints that will not fit on my Prusa. The touch screen is very precise and easy to use.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I have to disagree with a lot folks on the touch screen. I just got a Creality CR-10S Pro to print large prints that will not fit on my Prusa. The touch screen is very precise and easy to use.

I think the hesitation about touch screens is experience shows way more poor touchscreen implementations than good implementations. At least with my experience. Also, one has to define what "small" means. IMHO a touch screen the size of the existing i3 screen would be way too small to implement a reliable interface. Probably the minimum size would be about the size of a US 3x5 index card, 5" (12.7cm) wide by 3" (7.62cm) tall.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

I have to disagree with a lot folks on the touch screen. I just got a Creality CR-10S Pro to print large prints that will not fit on my Prusa. The touch screen is very precise and easy to use.

I think the hesitation about touch screens is experience shows way more poor touchscreen implementations than good implementations. At least with my experience. Also, one has to define what "small" means. IMHO a touch screen the size of the existing i3 screen would be way too small to implement a reliable interface. Probably the minimum size would be about the size of a US 3x5 index card, 5" (12.7cm) wide by 3" (7.62cm) tall.

It is true, you would have to make it about the size on the iPhone 5.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

Not necesarilly. Accuracy is not conditioned by size, but with quality of touch screen and software. I've had Nokia 5800 phone which had resistor touch screen and it worked quite nicely. Phone was quite smaller than iphone 5.
So, if you buy cheap chinese touch or expensive one it's a biiiiig difference to start with. Then good software and you won.
Capacitive touch is expensive, it would add to final price too much, i guess.

Re: MK4 Wishlist

why would you seek for touchscreen? its not used as your smartphone...There are way more important wishlist priorities out there in terms of reliability, quality of print, instead of touchscreen...

Re: MK4 Wishlist

well, direct wifi control and i can skip the entire lcd screen and control straight from my computer haha

Re: MK4 Wishlist

This seems to have become a touchscreen topic but the OP suggests it was intended as a catch-all so here's my wishlist item:

Filament Speed Monitor (Jam Detection) - I know this was there with the prior filament sensor but appears to be gone with the MK3S sensor. If the speed measurement is accurate enough (i.e. not just jam detection) it can be used to automatically adjust flow to compensate for any slip in the hobbed gears.
Diameter Monitoring - also sense the diameter of the filament so variation from spool to spool, manufacturer to manufacturer, etc is automatically compensated.