MK5 wish list now the MK3s has shipped  

MK5 wish list now the MK3s has shipped

I expect the feature list for the MK4 is quite settled at Prusa as companies have to plan their product line well into the future.

so for the MK 5 my main wish is that

1. the printers be optimised for maintenance teardown and rebuilding. it must be easy to swap in another configuried hotend... (perhaps using the universal system that e3d is developing on their railcore but without the hotend changing system just the snap in plate system.) fool proof connectors is the major hurdle here... the ease with which a nozzle may be changed on a Slice Eng Mosquito hot end is an example of thinking of future service and usage concerns

2. also important is making it easy to service the bearings and their carrying system need some improvement. in the Y with those hoops being seated using needle nose pliers on the hex nut is not good design. You should be able to remove and grease and replace in just a few min. total teardown of the X axis to service the extruder carriage bearings must change.

I understand that we have conflicting goals here. the assemblies must be robust enough to provide the needed accuracy and also be easy to assemble for a neophyte kit builder and to add ease of R&R to that is not trivial but some consideration must be given to those who buy assembled printers... they have a huge hurdle to surmount when it is time for their major printer service.

well that is a start... I have quite a few others that i need to think on ....perhaps a clean sheet of paper will be needed and a major redesign which would end the upgrade path for existing owners of Prusa i3 design printers; it might be time for Prusa to consider a Railcore 2 design for another prosumer line; much as SeeMeCNC has done with their new Boss line of Prosumer of huge deltas while just coming out with their Rostock Max V4 to support their legacy line of Rostock Max V1,V2,V2.5,V3,V3.3 kit printers. at some point Prusa will have to embrace a modern controller... perhaps not the Duet it might be something still on the drawing board somewhere but the ENSY has taken the Rambo controler about as far as it can go.

a sad fact of a Tech company like Prusa is that if they stop growing and innovating they can wither away even the creator of the Mendel RepRaP had his first company close its doors about a year or so ago. I think perhaps because of the rods and plastic connectors design, it had gone about as far as it could.

then you have the Industrial design folks where it is all about how the whole package looks... I don't think the basic FDM hobby printer has reached the level where the emphasis needs to shift to esthetic design of the whole package becomes the driving force rather than technical innovation.