RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
@igor
I have a Mini on order and have a MK3s now. I think outside of needing a very high bed temp for any more exotic filaments and the fact that the mini is so new so it could require more tinkering in the early phase, the only downside I can see is lack of a power panic on the mini, but that can be rectified with a UPS to some extent. I had the power cut out during a Mk3 print for the first time last week and the power panic kicked in and I was able to complete the print without issue which was nice. Really though, as long as you do not need a Mk3 for anything specific, I think you should be OK and that was the intent.
BTW, you cannot just drop that you are in Antarctica casually and not expect a bunch of questions on that 😀 ...
Strange women, laying in ponds, distributing swords, is hardly a basis for a system of governance!
RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
One of main reasons why I look to buy Prusa's printer is that you just put your money on table and get a Product. Not undertinkered, uncompiled thing that is half product, will require some equilibristic operations then changing motors and sliders to something of a good quality to get everything "almost working", like most other devices in this price range. It took us one non intensive day, from unpacking to first good quality print. I will be back in Poland about dec 2020/ feb 2021 so I have some time to wait for Mini to get matured a bit.
Some antarctic things that can be interesting for 3d printing guys:
- We are powered by diesel generators, switched every x hours. Thus good implementation of Power Panic is one of most important functionalities. Our printer restarts perfectly after 15 mins break, without significant influences on printed part
- For normal people, our rooms are cold. In fact they aren't - if one wants, he can raise ambient temp to 18 or even 20*C bot nobody does. We live in cold cilmate and we are ok with 15-16*C in rooms on chest level. For standard i3 settings (60*C bed temp. for PLA), such ambient temperature wasn't enough and we have more than few prints unglued from bed. Raising bed temperature for PLA to 70*C solved the problem.
- (probably because temperatures) With glossy bedliner we achieve good results every time. With structural one, we were still losing some prints, so we just put the powder coated bedplate back into box. But I'm not sure if it's a problem with particular piece or with the type. Structural bedplate acts somewhat like it was oiled, but it's not. We tried to clean it with
- There is impossible to use the guarantee service, so we really have to rely on the printer as is. And the i3 emerges reliable. For mr Prusa it would be cheaper to fund us new SL1 "in the case of..." than to send us eg. broken cable for i3. Now there is still any chance to send anything to antarctica but it's extremelly expensive. During the winter, there is no physical contact. If anything (or anybody) die, we just have to keep it until next summer transport.
RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
Althrough we have fewteen power breaks a year in my city in Poland, (15mins - 10 hours at once) the breaks in 80% cases are adworded by the electricity provider (service breaks), the last 20% are wind+tree branch or similar faults. So I just have few UPS-es for most important devices and i'm familiar with using UPS. I power the UPS units with old car betteries which lost their starting current abilities but still saved about half of capacity. Should be enough to power a printer consuming 80 watts. So this shouldn't be a big problem with Mini if it works properly, powered by UPS. With i3, power fails handling is impressive and accurate.
RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
@igor
Naprawdę?
15 power outages a year seems to be quite a lot. I don't recall any last year at my place,except for the one that I drilled through the power cable in the wall 🙂
Anyway even basic UPS sounds like good idea for a birthday gift for you:)
I'm actually struggling with myself not to cancel/upgrade my mini order to mk3s. Only blockstopper is lack of free space in my apartment and my wife
RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
@visual
Really. Mysłowice. Jedna przerwa na miesiąc, taka na kwadrans, to pikuś, tego się nawet nie zauważa. Akurat jest czas żeby zamieść po spawaniu i maszyny wystudzić. UPS-ów mam dość, sam je potem ludziom daruję, przerobione pod samochodowe akumulatory.
Naprawdę. Mysłowice city. One power outage per month is nothing, you just familiarize and dont see it. Just perfect time for some brooming. I didn't order Prusa yet and am thinking which one is enough. i3 is more universal, but mini is half cheaper and maybe faster.
RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
@igor
Hahahaha this may be for you 😀
RE: Why I'm buying a Mini
For me, I seriously don't want to have another printer that has to be tinkered with every time I want it to make a mediocre print. I bought the mini and hope I can rely on it to keep working without having to spend so much downtime.