Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@jweaver

Could be that the Raspberry Pi Zero is to weak to drive Octoprint. I use a Raspberry Pi 3 (1. version) and have sometimes issues that the printer stops, waits a few milliseconds and continues then printing. Can have an impact on print quality.

Best regards,
Clemens Mödlin

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @charles-h13

1 day of printing down.  Just test prints to date.  I think I prefer it over the MK3S.  It will print most of what I need to print.  

Prefer over MK3S? Please elaborate! 

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@clemens-m

the Rpi Zero W with headers directly mounted inside the MK3s works without any issues. no performance problems i have seen.

The issue of the printer stopping and continuing can be a few issues. I have seen this happen due to the heater readings, or even sometimes even due to data transfer speed issues with a bad SD card.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@littleneutrino

Even when you run octoprint on the Zero?

Best regards,
Clemens Mödlin

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@burtronix

I really like the Simplicity and most of the stuff I print will fit the small bed.  I need more time testing but I can see 2-3 more on my to order list.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@charles-h13

O.k. it was to read that you are building flying scale rockets. But do you also have a business running printing parts for others?

I have lots of ideas and engineer all the parts I print. But I am not able to have my printer (i3 MK2.5S) running 24/7. No problem - I had to order a MINI not for sharing the load but because of being fascinated in this technology and the great possibilities coming with it without having a big workshop.

Is it really the demand to own so many printers or is it some kind of desease to own all of them (which I would really understand)?

Best regards;
Clemens Mödlin

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@clemens-m

I am starting a business.  I print parts fort folks that fly rockets.  I have been doing this for about 6 months and have paid for my first MK3s.  My printers run mostly when I at home and 24/7 on some weekends.  

I used to print 24/7 but nearly had a fire so I don’t do that any more.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @charles-h13

[...] I used to print 24/7 but nearly had a fire so I don’t do that any more.  

I tend to ignore a lot of the "almost had a fire" stories from people using the cheap knock-off printers or who don't use safe practices. When you have an incident, Charles, it gets my attention. I know you've mentioned doing a YouTube channel, presumably to support your new business. I haven't seen anybody with a real angle on using 3D printers for small scale production. The channels all seem to be for hobbyists, or the big CNC guys doing large-scale production. Consider this as a topic for a future video. Would love to hear what happened (and am glad it stayed "almost") and what you're doing to balance between safety and production volume. Will this business be your primary income, or are you keeping your day job?

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@bobstro

My son is visiting this weekend to help set out first video - Prusa Mini Review.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Woot!   Looks like I'll get mine before Valentines day after all!  

Spreadsheet updated....

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Congrats to all who received (or about to receive) their printer -- keep us in the loop about progress and if possible photo's of beautiful prints 

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@littleneutrino

I found Octoprint to be too slow on the Pi Zero(although I haven't tried it in 3 years).  I ended up using a RPI2b and now am moving on to a RPI4.  I found the lack of processing time to be inadequate on the zero.  It worked, but took forever to upload files while running the UI.  It's only a single core CPU so it's a night and day difference between it and the quad core variants.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @derek

@littleneutrino

I found Octoprint to be too slow on the Pi Zero(although I haven't tried it in 3 years).  I ended up using a RPI2b and now am moving on to a RPI4.  I found the lack of processing time to be inadequate on the zero.  It worked, but took forever to upload files while running the UI.  It's only a single core CPU so it's a night and day difference between it and the quad core variants.

Would it be fair to say performance with the Pi Zero could be insufficient for complex shapes because they require denser code per unit volume printed (therefore, more lines of code processed per unit time)? 

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

The PI 4 is far superior to any of its predecessors.  

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@frankincell

Nice, also fun fact your Order number is after mine, and mine hasn't shipped yet. lol

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Here are all the prints from my MINI so far. All successful. They look great, and can't find any issues with them. It is my first time printing, so i might be missing something, but i am not complaining.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@burtronix

No, it shouldn't matter.  Gcode is gcode and it's only going as fast as the printer is, which is only a handful of lines per second.  1Ghz should be plenty, assuming your resources aren't bogged down with other tasks.  The size of the gcode also doesn't matter, provided it's not bigger than the remaining RAM(512MB-OS usage with the Zero)

The Pi zero is 1Ghz single core and the Pi4 is 1.5Ghz quad core.  On top of other features, the Pi 4 is WAAAAY superior to the Zero in every way.  More expensive, yes, but the better value is in the Pi4 considering the Zero hasn't seen a CPU update since 2015.

Where you'll see the main difference in performance(between Zero and other Rpi versions is with uploading files into Octoprint and giving the printer commands.  The faster the CPU, the better.  On paper, the Rpi4 is 6x faster than the Pi zero but it's actually a lot more in reality due to CPU architecture and the fact your OS is tieing up a ton of resources on the Rpi zero.

I'm not an expert with these things but hope this helps.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

43144 here, my mini shipped! I was an October 14th order

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

@aualow

😯aww, another one after mine that has shipped 😛 it'll happen eventually lol.

RE: Unofficial Prusa Mini Wait Thread

Posted by: @derek

@burtronix

No, it shouldn't matter.  Gcode is gcode and it's only going as fast as the printer is, which is only a handful of lines per second.  1Ghz should be plenty, assuming your resources aren't bogged down with other tasks.  The size of the gcode also doesn't matter, provided it's not bigger than the remaining RAM(512MB-OS usage with the Zero)

The Pi zero is 1Ghz single core and the Pi4 is 1.5Ghz quad core.  On top of other features, the Pi 4 is WAAAAY superior to the Zero in every way.  More expensive, yes, but the better value is in the Pi4 considering the Zero hasn't seen a CPU update since 2015.

Where you'll see the main difference in performance(between Zero and other Rpi versions is with uploading files into Octoprint and giving the printer commands.  The faster the CPU, the better.  On paper, the Rpi4 is 6x faster than the Pi zero but it's actually a lot more in reality due to CPU architecture and the fact your OS is tieing up a ton of resources on the Rpi zero.

I'm not an expert with these things but hope this helps.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how gcode works. For instance, if you're printing a hollow cube with just 1 inner & 1 outer perimeter, a single layer would just need just 8 (2x4) move instructions. But if the shape were hexagonal, a layer would need 16 (2x8). Is it not true that more complex shapes need more lines of gcode? Don't more lines of code take longer to both upload & process ?