Prusa Mini Clone from China  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@charles-h13

With the dubious business practices these suppliers exhibit, I would not send anyone a dime.  It reeks of a scam. If they can afford to send the hardware to you for free, they can afford shipping too. As I said before, they can send you a good one and then start shipping crap to other buyers. That is why a review of a standard purchase, as done by Consumer Reports, is best. You get what a normal buyer would get.

I am very cynical, as you might guess. I am also really opposed to free products in exchange for good reviews. It's bribery to me.

Regards,

Mark

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@marklgoldberg

I agree but am intrigued.  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

I'd gladly buy a prusa kit where I had to assemble everything if it saved a few bucks. I do enjoy the monotony of building things.

My main question with the clone is whether or not they fixed the Z offset issue, are they using a probe that is prone to temperature drifts and/or does their probe apply temperature offsets?

Fix for the Z offset issue reqires a firmware change. This clones run genuine Prusa firmware, so I would assume they did not fix anythig. I have ordered one. Will let you know what's in the box, but it will take a few weeks probably to get this stuff delivered.

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

Posted by: @marklgoldberg

@charles-h13

With the dubious business practices these suppliers exhibit, I would not send anyone a dime.  It reeks of a scam. If they can afford to send the hardware to you for free, they can afford shipping too. As I said before, they can send you a good one and then start shipping crap to other buyers. That is why a review of a standard purchase, as done by Consumer Reports, is best. You get what a normal buyer would get.

I am very cynical, as you might guess. I am also really opposed to free products in exchange for good reviews. It's bribery to me.

Regards,

Mark

Hey, it's free printer for Charles if nothing else 😀 

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

I like the Chinese places that send you free stuff then post reviews of everything in the world with your name attached.

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@crawlerin

I have to agree.  Free stuff is a good thing.  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

Posted by: @charles-h13

Does anyone not think it is worth having a warranty, printed parts, and hours of your time back to print to just pay more from Prusa?  I think my time is worth more than $100.  

A clone is in my eyes a copy of a product, as these are open source they are not copies. It is a Prusa Mini, just not an original. I mean, if you follow the recipe of a famous bakers cinnamon buns, have you then cloned it? 🙂 But for sake of argument, let's call them clones.

I think that these clones will be less popular when Prusa is able to deliver in a sensible time. I can have a Mini setup and printing in about 7-8 days if i order a clone today. The things it can produce in the 7 weeks more I'd have to wait if I ordered from Prusa is probably going to make me more the the $100.
I have a clone thats unfortunately is not working atm because of a broken Minda probe. A new one is in the mail on warranty and it takes about 7 days to get from Spain to me i Sweden. My last delivery from Prusa also took 7 days so I would not be able to get spares quicker form them either. The order was a pei sheet for the mini as the clone only came with a textured.

Sure, you probably don't get the same quality support for everything so I would not recommend a clone to some one thats just starting out but if you know your way around a printer it really not that much that can fail. 

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

Posted by: @goszu

I'd gladly buy a prusa kit where I had to assemble everything if it saved a few bucks. I do enjoy the monotony of building things.

My main question with the clone is whether or not they fixed the Z offset issue, are they using a probe that is prone to temperature drifts and/or does their probe apply temperature offsets?

Fix for the Z offset issue reqires a firmware change. This clones run genuine Prusa firmware, so I would assume they did not fix anythig. I have ordered one. Will let you know what's in the box, but it will take a few weeks probably to get this stuff delivered.

"Runs Prusa Firmware"

I'll just curl up and cry now. 

I guess that was to be expected, these Chinese companies usually only clone things. 

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@drkmstr

"Runs Prusa Firmware"not wanting to make a big deal about it but Prusa's software is opensource. Although that begs the question, what about the bootloader, did they create/buy/steal/whatever their own or did they lift Prusa's. And if they aren't using  Prusa's, is signing implemented?

Personally small price difference would make this clone a no-no. Although I wouldn't buy a real Mini till the lead time was reduced and version 2 was available.

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@drkmstr

Cloning is the way fo China.  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

I have not but I can not believe it can have more problems than the Mini. 

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

Ok, a box showed up at my house.  It was a mini clone.  I will post the unboxing next week.  I have ordered another Prusa Mini, and the clone was for a little over shipping cost ($75).  The deal was in response to my posts that I felt the clones were overpriced.  I posted this one on several forums and Facebook.  

As I posted above, I was skeptical and asked why they gave me such a deal.    The printer returned by another customer, and the vendor could not sell it for the same price.  It does not appear to have been assembled.  Their loss will be our gain as a community.  

Although the seller was not FYSTC, I suspect they are the manufacturer.  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

Interesting topic. I am looking forward to your review. I got my original Prusa this week and while reading all the fysetc posts on facebook I don't want to spend my time with low quality bearings etc. I buy prusa's because of the "they always work" principle.  🙂

In the end you pay 150 euro's less but you will spend it on bearings, perhaps a hotend and some quality extruder gears.

Again, looking forward to your impressions!

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@charles-h13

Take lots of pictures please! We've been asking for a barebones Prusa Mini kit for awhile, this might fit the bill until Prusa offers similar kits. 

It would be nice to have a kit that requires a bit more building than the oversimplified mini kit. Perhaps if they preinstalled all the hard stuff (pressing of bearings, etc) and left the rest to the user, that would be nice.

Back on topic though, I would like to know if it works at all with remote printing, my intent is to get a printing farm running with these, once someone fixes the probe issue.

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@drkmstr

Will do.  I will not do videos, but will find a way to either do stills of time lapse.  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@lennart

I will let you know.  I saw those posts also.  

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@charles-h13

I don't need videos, I just want to see pics of the parts that are difficult to assemble so I can better argue with Prusa for a fully DIY mini kit 

Have fun! 👍

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@drkmstr

It’s not hard to assemble. Easier than the mk3s I think. I have done both. 
Fysetc have a series of videos on YouTube for assembly. 

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

I have that clone because I didn't want to wait 3 months for the original. My recommendation: wait for the original. For example, look at extruder gear: 

With normal Marlin firmware, this isn't a problem, but you can't change E-steps or PID calibration in Prusa Buddy Firmware.
Another problem is a thermistor, hotend is ~ 10° C hotter than original so prusaslicer profiles didn't work well.
Also, I hear that cooling fans don't have the same performance.

.... but it was really fun to build Prusa MINI.

RE: Prusa Mini Clone from China

@jiri-n16

Do you have both?  I am going to provide an unbiased comparison as I have done with the print sheet or surfaces.