Prusa Mini Quality  

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

You've posted about your dissatisfaction with your Mini in a few threads, but I haven't seen you mention the specific issues. Whilst I agree that you shouldn't experience significant problems with the mini, if you share the details of the problem and what you've done to try and resolve it then users here will do their best to help solve them. 

You may find this thread https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/general-discussion-announcements-and-releases/avoiding-early-prusa-mini-issues-common-issues/ useful.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

I have mentioned my specific problems several places. $400+ is a lot of money to me, I started with an ender 3 because I dont have money to buy the high end printers (prusa). It really is devastating to finally be able to attain a Prusa and then find out its just as flawed or maybe more than an ender 3. 

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Part of what you buy when you get a Prusa is proper (i.e. non-community) support. Have you tried talking to live chat for official support if you haven't gotten satisfactory answers from the community? At the very least, link one of those places you've posted so people here can read and offer guidance. 

I was up and printing in under an hour with a Mini and have been more than pleased with the results so far. 

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

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RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Don’t give up. My mini worked well from day 1. After much printing with great quality for a month or so the dreaded click arrived. A few cold pulls and a clean out got me going again and then it jammed again. Then I adjusted the hot end and changed the PTFE tube. I also started the practice of preheating for five minutes to get a consistent live Z. Now it just keeps going and print quality is great. It’s so predictable. Fingers crossed it stays like this and your mini can reach the same state.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Maybe you misunderstood what you were buying?  The difference between a Chinese copy and a Prusa isn't that much they all use the same concepts and very similar components.  

What I bought the mini for was the support from Prusa and the fact under EU law every component is built to standards and is unlikely to burn my house down.  My time is worth far more to me than some additional $. 

Only my 3rd day of ownership I started getting under extrusion randomly.  I pulled up the help articles and walked through the steps and got my printer back up and running in a couple of hours. I know now I could fix it in 10 minutes. 

My point is that I could have spent hours searching around the internet trying various YouTubers opinions on how to fix the problem while potentially being mislead. Ultimately if I couldn't have fixed it with the help articles I could have chatted support for assistance as well. 

That's what you bought 

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Posted by: @josiah

I have mentioned my specific problems several places. $400+ is a lot of money to me, I started with an ender 3 because I dont have money to buy the high end printers (prusa). It really is devastating to finally be able to attain a Prusa and then find out its just as flawed or maybe more than an ender 3. 

You aren’t alone. I have a Mk3S and purchased the mini for work. I have been pretty let down by the mini thus far. It prints basic blocky items fine, but not fine details. It isn’t my first Bowden tube printer, so I did know what I was getting into. I’ve been printing for about three years. I think I was just so impressed by the Mk3 that I assumed this was just a miniaturized version with the same quality. 

It does fine for what I need it to do at work (medical training models) but I doubt I would recommend it to anyone for the price. There just isn’t a good printer in the $400-$500 range IMO. 

I’m sorry if I sound like a gloomy Gus, but you’ll inevitably get people gaslighting you into believing that you’re wrong to feel how you feel. I feel the exact same way, and I have years of experience printing and designing.  If you stick with your printer, you’ll get good prints; I’m just over the hours of tinkering on a brand new printer.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

I've learned a few things in the past couple of weeks with this printer that have helped me out. 

1. Set the seam position to "rear" to hide where it jumps from one layer to the next. This was actually causing me to believe I had more serious issues.
2. Set the elephant foot compensation to zero (0) if you want your brim to attach to your print and hold it down.
3. The nozzle jams if you try to squish the first layer down too much. Get it close and forget it. When you are getting close, don't do more than .020mm adjustments at a time. Seriously, get it close and forget it!
4. If you do get a filament jam, use these instructions up to step 9 to clear it. 
5. My PTFE tube was fine. Disregard the older advice saying that the PTFE tube inner diameter is too small. Mine was 2mm, and I got my printer a couple of weeks ago.

I'm too new to the forums to send you a PM, but if you PM me with questions, I'll gladly help you with what I know.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

This is pretty surprising to read.

I just got my Mini, coming from an Ender 3 Variant(Hey hey hey, good bye!).

Anyway, I'm pretty happy so far. I'm enjoying the mesh bed calibration, the hyper-vigilant temperature regulation of the nozzle, the excellent extrusion calibration, no screwing around with a glass bed and paint scraper, the no-fuss slicer profiles, the fast heat-up, the QUIET operation, the easy filament swapping, and the fantastic tailor-made embedded electronics and software.

It's on another level from your typical amazon chinese creality/me-too blah blah blah clone.

Really. 

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Posted by: @dylan81

Anyway, I'm pretty happy so far. I'm enjoying the mesh bed calibration, the hyper-vigilant temperature regulation of the nozzle, the excellent extrusion calibration, no screwing around with a glass bed and paint scraper, the no-fuss slicer profiles, the fast heat-up, the QUIET operation, the easy filament swapping, and the fantastic tailor-made embedded electronics and software.

Hmmm. This whole post went dark for two days after I confirmed the user's concerns like it was hidden from view. Then it amazingly reappeared after a new user posts a gushing response, on his first post. 

I really hope that the mods on here would have better sense than to hide posts and create sham accounts. Maybe it was a weird coincidence. I came here because I hoped to get assistance from people that own exactly my printer, instead of Reddit where it's overly busy.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

It's just not that fascinating a thread. Nobody is asking for specific help. The posts are mostly "I'm disappointed" and "keep trying". These sorts of thread sink quickly.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Posted by: @josiah

This is my first Prusa Printer. I followed the hype on every blog and reddit thread about how great they were. I was excited when I was finally able to purchase a famed Prusa. I paid a premium and waited 2ish months to receive my printer. The Prusa printers are at the top of every recommended list for printers. The prusament carries a huge premium on Amazon. There is no indication that they make low quality products.

Then why I am I so disappointed in my Mini? I have had more problems with my mini in the first 2 days than I have had with my cheap Ender 3 in the last year. Is this a prototype, an unfinished project, a test kit? I am very confused. Prusa himself walks around with his somewhat egomaniacal shirt claiming he is a printer. Is he proud of this printer and the quality of it?

Were my expectations set to high? Is this product not what it claims to be? Is this par for the course for new Prusa printers? Someone please, restore my faith in this company. I want to love my printer, but honestly right now, I just want to return it. 

You are defintely in the minority.  Most users seem to very happy with their mini.   

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

We want to offer assistance with specific problems and try to find a solution. Anyone who is not satisfied with a product should contact the manufacturer and possibly return it.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

@karl-herbert

Very well put.  

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

@karl-herbert

No arguments that you need to be specific to get help. What I’m saying is that this thread actually disappeared completely. It wasn’t there until the brand new user showed up to defend the printer. It was gone. 

I found that a big problem was that it just wouldn’t print Prusament Galaxy Black PLA at all. I switched over to Matter Hackers PLA, and got extremely great results. Maybe I just got a bad spool?

It’s a good printer, it just wasn’t what I hoped it would be for the price. A dual-geared extruder would have been nice.   I think that my posts above are fair. Hopefully I helped Josiah. 

“You’re in the minority” is unhelpful and gaslighting. 

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

@daddyboomalati

I wouldn't call it gushing. I listed several things the mini gives you that el-cheapo printers don't. To compare the mini to those toy-grade printers just makes it sound like you don't know what you are doing.

I'm very real, and I don't appreciate being called a shill. I'll refrain from calling you something now.

This is all supposed to be fun.

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

@dylan81

I often wonder if threads like these are started by real owners or trolls.  

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

@daddyboomalati

The Mods on here do not hide posts unless there is bullying, or prophanity  or other unacceptable  behaviour, Most of us are users like yourself,  NOT Prusa Employees, and we have not been asked, or instructed to hide or delete dissatisfied user posts. 

I have personally removed prophanity from posts but let the posts remain to describe the dissatisfaction. and My name is recorded in the editing field to confirm that I edited the post. 

unfortunately the forum is currently run on a 'Word Press' product, which has a poor search capability. and sometimes threads are hard to find. If I know that I have responded to a post and a general search does not locate the thread, I often search My response activity on my profile. 

regards Joan

RE: Prusa Mini Quality

Posted by: @cwbullet

[...] I often wonder if threads like these are started by real owners or trolls.  

I don't think they're trolls, but there are some interesting mental gymnastics at play. Some users have a poor experience, whether due to real or perceived product issues and complain about it. Fair enough. That's what these forums are for. But there is a subset who get very defensive and respond with attacks against other users here who are, after all, not paid and are volunteering time and effort to help. They go from "I have a product issue" to "you're all bad people" very quickly. There is where the terms "troll" and "fanboy" start to show up. This is pointless (we can't fix Prusa) and rude. 

If you are unhappy about your product, by all means, post about it. But if you're expecting legion of users to rise up under your banner of whinginess and destroy Prusa, that's not going to happen. The company is simply too good and the products too cost-effective for that. You also shouldn't expect much in the way of responses. If all you've posted is your opinion, well, there are plenty of those around and I'm certainly not going to waste my time calming anybody down. If you start with ad-hominem attacks against members of this community with long-standing reputations, certainly expect some rather blunt replies. At this point, it would be best for all concerned if the aggrieved party would simply leave and deal with Prusa support directly.