RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
@atomleef, can't you ask to prusa to send you a spare PTFE tube ? O_O"
I don't personally use Anet but i have 2 Creality that are very reliable, i use those for more than two years without any major issue, and i use a Ultrabase bed that is for me a mandatory upgrade to do...
RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
This printer in my experience has a perpetual heat creep issue. I had the same exact experience as you did and now cannot get through a 10 min print with PLA. I upgraded to the bondtech heat break kit and still have the same issue. The extruder stops because the PLA clogs due to heat creep. I am almost at the point where I need to return this and try something different.
RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
All right, I have read some more on the forums and I think I have identified the cause of most of my issues as shifting room temperature. Calibrating the nozzle height before every print job makes it way more reliable.
I could swear I watched an official video that emphasized the Mini being a fully featured scaled down i3 and NOT a lesser machine. Being upfront and clearly stating its weaknesses would go a long way to avoid bad newbie experience. There is nothing shameful about a considerably cheaper machine not being as good as "the real deal".
Sorry to hear you have issues. According to this interview, Josef said MINI was aimed at people who would like to get a printer, but balked at the price of 20 thousand CZK for fully fledged MK3S or downright could not afford it (earnings and buying power in Czech Republic is different from for example "more western" countries or the US). It was not supposed to be scaled-down i3 from what I understood. Offer those nice functions and "smartness" but not MK3S, it's its own product.
There are some mods available - here on forum is nice thread about mounting different hotends, and Bondtech had released extruder and heatbreak upgrade which a lot of people claim helped them. Sure, it would be ideal if those were just "nice haves" rather than "must haves", at least for some people. I have had my MINI print hundreds of small mask accessories since March without anything but occasionally lubing rods and it's been doing fine... and that's R1 delivered in December with all its SNAFUs of that specific batch. I want to install Bondtech heatbreak, new X idler and new plastic parts I have in box since February or March but ... it still prints more or less fine when I task it 🤷♀️
The first layer at varying temperatures can be an issue - sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, I found it to be most prominent in enclosure when printing PETG few times in a row. I found PLA to be more tolerant to first layer inconsistencies than PETG.
RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
At least Prusa are working on a solution for the Minda temp issue https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/issues/636#issuecomment-659173415
RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
@gordon-w
Interesting ... so the MBL may not be working properly (I didn't do factory reset after upgrading to 4.0.5) or there really is an issue with probing at different temperatures, as it had been acknowledged by devs.
RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
For me the issue is an hardware one, it does not come from software, i have the right temperature in the nozzle and i can extrude some filament with my hand... I was thinking that the issues came from the heat break but it does not look to come from it...
RE: Prusa mini : The cursed printer ?
@ben-kindt
3D printers are on par with inkjet printers.