Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@minos197

I have a Monoprice Mini Delta printer, and I never use it. It's a clever idea, and I like the idea of a small printer that's easy to take to Maker Faires and schools, but it's _very_ picky about SD cards. You have to try a bunch of cards, and hope you find one that works and doesn't get corrupted by the printer. And it has 'heat creep' problems. They used severely substandard parts to get that amazing low price. So while the price was great, it's too much of a hassle to use. There's also the Monoprice Select Mini, which is a cartesian printer, which also has quirks, and requires some modding, but isn't as unusable as the Mono Delta.

My advice would be that if you can afford to wait for the Prusa MINI, it's a vastly superior printer for not much more money. Particularly for a first printer

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @laird-p

@minos197

I have a Monoprice Mini Delta printer, and I never use it. It's a clever idea, and I like the idea of a small printer that's easy to take to Maker Faires and schools, but it's _very_ picky about SD cards. You have to try a bunch of cards, and hope you find one that works and doesn't get corrupted by the printer. And it has 'heat creep' problems. They used severely substandard parts to get that amazing low price. So while the price was great, it's too much of a hassle to use. There's also the Monoprice Select Mini, which is a cartesian printer, which also has quirks, and requires some modding, but isn't as unusable as the Mono Delta.

My advice would be that if you can afford to wait for the Prusa MINI, it's a vastly superior printer for not much more money. Particularly for a first printer

I may do that with my ender-3.  I might try to get it to work this week and if it does not - off to donation it goes.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Greetings,

I placed my order 15 Nov 2019.  Looking forward to working with my first 3D printer!  🙂

Cheers,

~Pete

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Ordered first day, the wait is killing me!

This will be my second printer, looking to dedicate it as a spare/detail printer.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @laird-p

@minos197

I have a Monoprice Mini Delta printer, and I never use it. It's a clever idea, and I like the idea of a small printer that's easy to take to Maker Faires and schools, but it's _very_ picky about SD cards. You have to try a bunch of cards, and hope you find one that works and doesn't get corrupted by the printer. And it has 'heat creep' problems. They used severely substandard parts to get that amazing low price. So while the price was great, it's too much of a hassle to use. There's also the Monoprice Select Mini, which is a cartesian printer, which also has quirks, and requires some modding, but isn't as unusable as the Mono Delta.

My advice would be that if you can afford to wait for the Prusa MINI, it's a vastly superior printer for not much more money. Particularly for a first printer

I think that my point may have been poorly worded. What I needed to say is exactly what you your point is. My MP Select mini  (the cartesian one) is a cheaper printer, but the hours you will invest combined with the materials will cost considerably more than the Prusa, and that is not taking into account the closed source firmware making debugging a nightmare.

I have had several points of failure of the printer, from the extrudr plastic, the sd card, the usb socket, the z-axis, and so on, and I could fix them because that is relevant to my job, but the average novice user should not be expected to.

But in reality time is money, which is why I have ordered a  mini since the announcement, and in the meantime I have hacked around a cantilever monstrosity, trying to mimic the weight I expect the prusa mini to bear on Z axis, and its Bowden length and try to evaluate the expected ringing and stringing behavior combined with looking at the code of prusalslicer. 

Those are my two big question marks, since those are new introductions of this product line and I do not know if the team has had time to focus on them considering the pressure and QA required to launch in a new category.I am certain the team is way more skilled than a bored guy working on his free time, and I have no knowledge of the new extruder design they are introducing, but even if the printer does not meet certain expectations at launch, being fully open source will allow me and the community to address the shortcomings, either by software/firmware or redesign of the mechanical parts.

And this is what you get by buying Prusa, or anything community focused. No matter how skilled you are, there is always someone out there who can look at a problem and come back with a novel solution. The mini may be advertised as a farm space saving machine, but it can be one of the most powerful platforms for people who wish to learn how 3d printing works, rather than just print stuff of the internet.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@m8harry

Yea me too! This will be my first 3D printer. I figured I would save the money on the MK3 and learn how to use the mini!

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

I ordered mine on Oct 13th so I have no idea where I fall in the queue. Anyone have any ideas?

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

One spot has opened up in the queue. I had to cancel my pro-order as I will be unemployed in two weeks. I ordered on the 13th. I will be reordering once I have things sorted out. 

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Best wishes on the job front Nicholas, 

regards Joan

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@joantabb

Thanks Joan. While the job search is no fun and it's not the best time of year to be out of work, it is for the best.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

I was made redundant twice, on the second friday of January 1995, and the friday after my 60th birthday... 2015, not fun, but I am better off after both instances...

Joan

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @k9bub

I ordered mine on Oct 13th so I have no idea where I fall in the queue. Anyone have any ideas?

There's an unofficial spreadsheet of orders here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cEUO-8AQevqBbD37C25bSPWbb3Lpk6q_-WZuZ0HOIOY/edit?usp=sharing, and some discussion in the "Mini ship date poll" thread. The 13th was the second day of pre-orders, which puts you somewhere in the second ~1,000 based on wild guesses 🙂

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@marcins

Thanks for the order spreadsheet! I am #51 on the list 

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

If the shipping date is now the 9th of Dec, does that mean that the documentation and parts lists will be available for us to thoroughly analyse this printer before just before it gets delivered?.

I'm mainly interested in the electrics (schematics) to see if the controller could work with a Mk3 /s

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

As for seriousness of that darned bug?  I wager it is the filament sensor ... even on those printers that don't have the option.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

I doubt it is the filament sensor.  My printer worked for over 1/2 a year with a bad filament sensor.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @charles-h13

I doubt it is the filament sensor.  My printer worked for over 1/2 a year with a bad filament sensor.  

Just to clarify: There's an outstanding firmware bug triggered by the filament sensor code. Disabling the sensor is a work-around on the Mk3 series.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@bobstro

That is exactly what I did.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @tim-m30

As for seriousness of that darned bug?  I wager it is the filament sensor ... even on those printers that don't have the option.

I would doubt an optional feature would be enough to delay deployment. For a software bug to hold back hardware it could indicate that it has the potential to severely damage the unit in the time-frame of release and until the patch is deployed.

If i were to bet I would be looking into the stepper motor drivers.  I believe they are using a 32 bit relatively new but feature rich controller so re-using the existing tested code is not possible. And wrongly driving any stepper motor can cause "interesting" behaviour,

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @charles-h13

@bobstro

That is exactly what I did.  

Ok. Just wanted to be clear it's not always the hardware sensor!