Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?  

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Hi Cronhelm,

I am a moderator on the forum who approved your post.  (not a Prusa Employee)
unfortunately I do not have a Mini.  (I have 5 other Original Prusa's)

A number of people have cancelled their orders for various reasons, 

some have converted their Mini orders into Mk3S orders... 

this is a Support forum for people who are having difficulties, for what ever reason. 

the people who are not having problems do not generally log on here because they are too busy printing their models. so it is not surprising that you are seeing a lot of issues here,  

if you wish to cancel your order I would suggest that you contact Prusa Support via Chat, and discuss the options with them... 
regards Joan

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Cancel it. Don't wait.

Buy an Mk3S, kit. Yes, I read that you don't want a project. But the kit build is a wonderful experience. And the Mk3s is a wonderful product.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

I believe you can cancel an order that is not shipped.

I was wondering about the overall rate of issues. I haven't done a survey, so this is just a guesstimate. Let's say Prusa ship about 600 Minis per week, and we seem to get about 2-3 users with issues each week. Based on those numbers, that means 0.5% of users have issues. Of course, that number could be higher or lower, probably only Prusa could know.

I would guess Mini is slightly more problematic than MK3, but better than some cheap chinese job with poor support. Ultimately it's up to you whether you want to wait, and hope for the best, or spend more to get a MK3 sooner.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

The MK3 is a more mature design.  It has had several iterations to get to the 3s while the mini is the first generation. 

One of the reasons I didn't order one, well that and I cant stand bowden based extuders so that took it off my list no matter who makes it.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

I love my mini, I had an extrusion issue at the beginning that was easy to resolve (there is a detailed forum thread about this), but every other issue I've had has been just me learning the limits of printing and various filaments.

You are always going to see people here posting problems and think that's normal but it doesn't mean it is, and I can't tell you that it's not like this because only Prusa would know this. But I really love mine, it doesn't take up much space and the build volume is enough for almost anything I ever would want to print.

I think if you want a 3d printer that "just works" then you probaby shouldn't get a 3d printer just yet at all. But an awful lot of things do just work on the mini. I really don't regret getting one at all!

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Joan makes the very good point that the Mini forum likely over represents the likely hood that you will get a problematic Mini.

That being said if it's in the budget cancel the Mini and get a MK3S. 

I love all 3 of my MK3S printers but I continue to struggle with the Mini.  I think I have one more round of trouble shooting and then I am going to try for a return.  My unit is a January build and likely not representative of what you would likely experience.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

I got mine 12 days ago, built it and started printing, lot of small stuff, some bigger pieces. It's great. I can compare with two Geeetech i3 printers I own few years already and well.. its not comparable at all. Before seeing my first Mini print I thought I tuned the other ones quite well, but now I see it is garbage.

PLA prints great on the PEI sheet (Prusament, Smartfil, Sunlu silk, even DevilDesign where I got some low quality spool).

PETG prints nice on the textured sheet, I got some old (2-3 years) remains of PM filament (I used to print it on my old printers first, before switching to pla, but they had problems with the hotend temperature needed, and they stayed opened in my cabinet).

ABS - I had a 4-year-old spool from PM filament that was entirely unprintable on Geeetech (I tried on mine, my brother tried on his) and now I just took it and printed a good (still not great, I do not like ABS) xyzCube at first try (on the PEI sheet).

One problem I had was Fibersilk PLA sticking too much to the PEI sheet so I scratched it a bit when trying to get it off.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

I am also quite disappointed the Mini does not seem to worth with Cura.  I spent several years working with Cura so I am familiar with it.  Not overly interested in switching slicers ..... just because a new machine won't accept it.

I have contacted Prusa to cancel my order.  

Not sure what I am going to do now ........ 😪 

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Happy mini owner here. For the price, it's an amazing machine. It's my first 3d printer and I've had to learn a lot about filaments, adjustments, dealing with the occasional print failure. But I've made a bunch of great prints with it.

As for "not wanting a project:" I think the only way to avoid that completely is get a pro-level machine which will start at around 10x the cost of a mini.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Posted by: @cronhelm

This forum doesn't exactly fill me with confidence regarding my purchase of the Prusa Mini.  Should I cancel my order?  Can I even cancel my order?  It hasn't been shipped yet.

I want / need a machine that just works.  Not interested in purchasing a project.

I don't know which threads you've been reading, because I've only said good things about mine 🙂 It is working wonderfully and the print quality is great! So quiet too! Didn't really have a lot to do apart from positioning the heatend and the probe correctly, it took like five minutes.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Hi guys. Why doesnt the mini work with Cura. ?

I thought slicers were able to work with most printers

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Hi guys. Why doesnt the mini work with Cura. ?

I thought slicers were able to work with most printers

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Posted by: @joantabb

Hi guys. Why doesnt the mini work with Cura. ?

 

I thought slicers were able to work with most printers

This would be a question for Prusa to answer.  There are multiple threads in this forum asking about Cura profiles and not a single answer.   

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

I am eagerly awaiting my MINI. I've looked at every single thread dealing with problems, have chatted with people who have had problems and have resolved problems. Including one person who returned their MINI for service and recently got it back.

with all of this, I believe it is a good product and worth the wait. It will get better. They are making software and other upgrades.

Just wish mine would get here already.

In the absolute worst case, I'll swap out a few parts for the Bondtech upgrades. I suspect I won't need to.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Posted by: @joantabb

Hi guys. Why doesnt the mini work with Cura. ?

 

I thought slicers were able to work with most printers

Cura printer definitions are community-submitted. No one has submitted a mini / mini extruder definition for Cura yet, apparently

https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/wiki/Adding-new-machine-profiles-to-Cura

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

@sfrazer

that is what I thought!

I am sure that Cura will work with the Mini. 

all it needs is someone to put the effort in.  

Prusa supply a fully functioning slicer to work with the Mini.  
I see Angus at Makers muse and Tom Sandladerer grab Prusa Slicer and quickly configure it for whatever printer they are using...   

I have to admit, I did try an earlier version of Cura, with My Mk1 Prusa (Some five years ago...) And I didn't get on with    Cura... 
I have a Simplify 3D license and a Kiss Slicer license, but I still use Prusa slicer most of the time. 
there are Cura Profiles in the Mk3 section of the forum, not sure if they are for the up to date cura... 

Speaking to the developers for the Mini, they were using the Prusa Mk3 profile  for the mini, before they released the Mini profile

could one of you Mini owners take the Cura Mk3 or Mk3s profile, modify the X and Y size and the Z height and try it with the Mini? 
regards Joan

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Posted by: @cronhelm

This would be a question for Prusa to answer.  There are multiple threads in this forum asking about Cura profiles and not a single answer.   

As nice as everybody plays, Prusa (developers of PrusaSlicer) and Ultimaker (developers of Cura) are competitors. They provide some support for each others' printers in their respective slicers, but they aren't obligated to provide profiles for a free slicer to support a competitor's version of the product they make a living off of.

I just purchased an Artillery Sidewinder. There's no default profile for a Sidewinder in PrusaSlicer, nor do I expect there to be one. I am developing one now and will submit it as a user contribution, but that's it. I certainly don't expect Prusa to spend development time supporting a competitor's printer any more than I expect Ultimaker to support it.

In short, if you want to use a slicer other than what the manufacturer of your device develops and supports, you can develop your own profile. It's annoying and a bit time consuming, but if you contribute your results to the slicer effort, you'll improve things for everybody.

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?

Used Cura probably less than 10 times before. It took me 5 minutes to setup the Mini (didn´t transfer the start gcode). I can confirm the Mini is able to print with Cura. To set up a basic profile I think it  would take 15 min. 

But to be honest, try prusa slicer, it is much more intuitive to use.

Cheers

RE: Not Confident in the purchase of a Mini ..... cancel?