[Solved] MK4 Wishlist  

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Please NO Touchscreen . Graphics display might be nice, but to be honest, the current display is enough for me since I have octoprint.

- As it is referenced quite often, maybe add two distinct buttons to move the z-axis without having to fiddle with the menu

- I see many people fiddling around to monitor enclosure temperature, implement a smoke detector or some similar environment/security monitoring. Maybe it worthwhile to implement an interlock input on the control board.

- I think the airflow of the fan nozzle is not fully optimized yet 😉

- As PRUSA is always trying to push the whole FDM technique to the next level, improving speed would be nice. Having Linear advance is already amazing, but maybe there is some magical way to push it even further to be competetive with other manufacturing methods. (Maybe very stiff frame, high flow extruder and ridiculous speeds)

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Built in OctoPi (rather than an option)

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

- As it is referenced quite often, maybe add two distinct buttons to move the z-axis without having to fiddle with the menu

I have a trick for you 😀

Press / hold the knob for 2-3 seconds which will jump to "Move Z Axis" Menu 😉

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Yeah that's already nice, but two buttons would be even quicker.

(Probably you are right. Adding two hardware buttons might be a little bit too much for saving 1 sec 😀 )

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Adding two hardware buttons

Would add to the cost because the current screen with single button and rotary knob is off the shelf. Asking for a special order one with the added button would add to OEM cost, which of course would add to the printer cost, for a few seconds of convenience.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

32 bit processor, now that Marlin is heading that way. Can be dropped into existing mk3 (printing new enclosure). It would be nice to have Octopi and all the new features at the same time.

'No' on touch screen.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Would add to the cost because the current screen with single button and rotary knob is off the shelf. Asking for a special order one with the added button would add to OEM cost, which of course would add to the printer cost, for a few seconds of convenience.

You're kidding, right? Current screen is indeed something already widely used, but for such big number of printers sold it's absolutely necesarry to order it specifically for prusa, he can't just go to store and buy a couple of thousands of them... 😕
Adding a couple of buttons won't mean nothing to final price, specially since majority of us wish for color LCD, so a new lcd board is a must.

- ARM controller is a must!
- not OLED, but classic TFT color display around 3.5 inch size - OLED's are expensive and, to be honest, quite unnecesarry. Just a fancy "uauuu" stuf...
- Touch screen doesn't seem a good idea. Like Josef said: they are clumsy when they are small. Encoder and a couple of buttons (attached picture is one of options)
- integrated octoprint server. And since ARM would be present perhaps server could run on same ARM, so better integration would be achieved and RPi board would not be needed.
- camera as an option.
- maybe integrated memory to replace SD card - flash's are cheap now, and we really don't need gigabytes of it... of course, in that case we would really need bigger transfer speeds from PC to printer, not just poor 115200 bps.
- ok, somewhat bigger print dimensions would be nice... 😀

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

How about,

“Alexa, Print me a benchy!”

😀

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

I'd like to see an easy to remove extruder assembly and an easy to remove hot end would be useful for maintenance, repairs, upgrades....

For Extruder assembly, maybe connectors on the extruder assembly so you can quickly unplug and remove without disassembling/removing everything from the control board.

For hot end, maybe something magnetic or other (pardon the pun) hot swap so you can quickly remove and/or swap hot end

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

I'd like to see an easy to remove extruder assembly and an easy to remove hot end would be useful for maintenance, repairs, upgrades....

For Extruder assembly, maybe connectors on the extruder assembly so you can quickly unplug and remove without disassembling/removing everything from the control board.

For hot end, maybe something magnetic or other (pardon the pun) hot swap so you can quickly remove and/or swap hot end

Easy swappable hot ends would be awesome... something similiar to Ultimaker 3. But that would probably mean more modifications to the regular E3D Hot-End or even maybe a completely new one.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Built in OctoPi (rather than an option)

No thanks. Cost would be a factor here. Not everyone uses OctoPi so people who don't use would view this as a negative. Besides, the option works fine so why change it.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Built in OctoPi (rather than an option)

No thanks. Cost would be a factor here. Not everyone uses OctoPi so people who don't use would view this as a negative. Besides, the option works fine so why change it.

Might be a good idea if Prusa offered an OctoPrint kit seperately. A pi configured and ready to plugin with no soldering or setup beyond wifi config.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Built in OctoPi (rather than an option)

No thanks. Cost would be a factor here. Not everyone uses OctoPi so people who don't use would view this as a negative. Besides, the option works fine so why change it.

I agree, OctoPi should be an option, not integrated.

I use Toshiba FlashAir SD card in my Prusa printers for transferring gcode files from PC to printer. When first setup, it works fast over WiFi. As files are stored on the SD card, power resume will work and print continues after a power failure.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

The first thing I'd ask for would be a version of the MMU that has direct drive, so it can work with flexible filament. Based on the posts in the forum, it sounds like (not surprisingly) the MMU's Bowden style setup doesn't work well for flexible filament. I'd wonder if it would be possible to have an additional exruder directly driving filament into the hot end, with the four 'bowden' extruders pushing filament into/out of the direct drive motor. It'd require some tricky coordination between the motors (since ideally only one motor touching a line of filament at a time is powered on, so you don't have contention between two motors on the same filament), but the result should ideally be direct drive control (less stringing, support of flexible filament, etc.) plus the ability to swap between colors cleanly.

I am surprised by the strong dislike of the idea of including the Pi Zero W pre-installed in the Prusa. It's only a $10 board, plus a little microSD card, on a $750+ printer, so it's hard to imagine that adding under 2% to the price could really be an issue. On the 'plus' side, if it's pre-installed then there's no soldering pins and no installing Octoprint required (neither that hard, admittedly, but less work is less work), and more importantly Prusa would have to have the firmware fully support Octoprint. Certainly a convenience, but then so are the other features of the Mk3, so for $10 it'd be a powerful added capability. For non-engineers, avoiding soldering and Linux software installation is a big deal, IMO.

Bigger enhancements would be:

Larger print volume. A larger size printer is sometimes nice to have access to - not the mainstream, but for people who need it, it's worth paying for. I'm not sure how large the Prusa geometry can scale, though - moving the entire print in the Y axis is a lot of mass; doubling all the axis means moving 8x the mass of a print if you fill the print volume. Still, there are large format printers out there, so perhaps Joe can figure out how to make one based on his design work well.

A real enclosure for heated printing (especially ABS). The filament and electronics should be outside the heated print volume, and (in high end printers) the air should be heated to a controlled temperature. So not "put a Prusa in a box" - that we can do ourselves - but a design with an enclosure as a fundamental part of the design. This is a much more high-end market than Prusa's current market, so it'd be a stretch.

I'm not expecting the last two - they're pretty radical moves for Prusa - but I'll put them out for discussion. 🙂

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

I am surprised by the strong dislike of the idea of including the Pi Zero W pre-installed in the Prusa. It's only a $10 board, plus a little microSD card, on a $750+ printer, so it's hard to imagine that adding under 2% to the price could really be an issue. On the 'plus' side, if it's pre-installed then there's no soldering pins and no installing Octoprint required (neither that hard, admittedly, but less work is less work), and more importantly Prusa would have to have the firmware fully support Octoprint. Certainly a convenience, but then so are the other features of the Mk3, so for $10 it'd be a powerful added capability. For non-engineers, avoiding soldering and Linux software installation is a big deal, IMO.

Except that it wouldn't be just $10 plus sd card that would be added. There's the support for it, firmware mods, testing, (possible) licensing or some other arrangement with the author of Octoprint. There would also more than likely be some sort of arrangement needed with the RPi Foundation. They currently have a restriction on the number of Pi Zeros that can be ordered together.

There are probably other things as well so, no, it wouldn't just add a few bucks to end cost of the printer.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

A volcano like hotend.
Now that steppers are well driven and the stiffness is improved, the printer can go up to 200mm/s (as advertised). But the E3D v6 is a serious limitation to that speed. It can't extrude plastics fast enough.
A bigger hotend is coherent to the global performance that can be reached.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

I would prefer not including any kind off RaspberryPi, since it is not an open hardware platform.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

A better MCU will allow to run at more stepsper mm, so round corners would be much smoother. I would really love to see a better MCU on the Prusa...Otherwise the printer really is good as it is!

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

A better MCU will allow to run at more stepsper mm, so round corners would be much smoother. I would really love to see a better MCU on the Prusa...Otherwise the printer really is good as it is!

I second this. I don't know for sure if more resolution is required but I think the mcu needs more heft and this could allow better calculations for acceleration profiles and flow control of the filament (linear advance)

Next step should be something like Cortex M4F so that not only do you go 32 bit you also have floating point. My guess is that the current problems with firmware are due to simple overloading of the micro.

Re: MK3S / MK4 Wishlist

Built in OctoPi (rather than an option)

No thanks. Cost would be a factor here. Not everyone uses OctoPi so people who don't use would view this as a negative. Besides, the option works fine so why change it.

Might be a good idea if Prusa offered an OctoPrint kit seperately. A pi configured and ready to plugin with no soldering or setup beyond wifi config.

Why would you want that?
The hardest part of an entire OctoPi setup is the wifi config. I'm pretty sure that if you can use a 3d printer that you can copy octopi on an sd card, connect a Raspberry Pi to power and your printer and boot it? 😕