Are you happy with your MK3?  

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Yes, very happy.
I built a Mk2 over a year ago and then upgraded it to a S. Received my Mk3 kit and assembled it with my grandson over the weekend. Huge improvement in almost every respect over the Mk2. Very good instructions. We took our time with critical alignment steps and it paid off. The printer fired right up and passed all tests. We were printing the Prusa label within 30 minutes of turning the power on. The software is more detailed and gives great feedback on the printers status.
My only complaint right now is the loading and unloading of filament. I'll have to search the forum for other users comments on this.
My prints, so far, are equal to the MK2s. Amazingly quiet.
When I first looked into RepRap I was suspicious to say the least. I've spent 50 years in the electronics industry and RepRap sounded like a silly joke. 1 1/2 years later I'm glad I chose Prusa. Their printers have far exceeded my expectations for such an incredibly inexpensive piece of technology.
Maybe my background in electronics where technology changed almost overnight and automated machinery that cost tens of thousand of $ was more often disappointing then productive. Can you imagine buying a piece of equipment for $65,000 and spending an additional $11,000 for licensing the software from the manufacturer...and you don't own it. You just get to use it but are barred from passing the software along to the next owner. Very very common.
Yeah, I'm thrilled with my Mk3 and very appreciative of the people on this forum and elsewhere who, in the spirit of RepRap, keep pushing this industry forward. Thank you Prusa and fellow printers.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Yes, very happy.
.... Can you imagine buying a piece of equipment for $65,000 and spending an additional $11,000 for licensing the software from the manufacturer...and you don't own it. You just get to use it but are barred from passing the software along to the next owner. Very very common.
....

When one of our vendors tries to "upgrade" one of our seats to a software as a service subscription we stop upgrading and look for alternative packages or keep the fully licensed seat and purchase a new subscription based seat... What I really hate is that our waterjet has proprietary software that completely sucks and I can't get a decent post processor to work with our nesting software, yeah purchasing f'ed this one up royally. Been looking at a WardJet controller retrofit to overcome the shortcomings and will likely chew up any of the cost savings from purchasing the techni. I digress....

Yes the Prusa could be worse but it could also be better, as it is now I don't print test cubes and have only printed a couple of benchies early on. My main use of the printer is functional designs and prototyping and for the most part it works well enough. Like others I have nothing to to really compare against than shapeways prints.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

In a word, Yes.

I bought a MK2 about a month before the MK3 was announced and ordered a MK3 late October. I have had an i3 clone for three plus years and have built myself a Delta so I am reasonably au-fait with 3D printers.

Overall the MK3 has lived up to my expectations. I took my time assambling it and checked the alignment carefully. It has a few quirks, the filament sensor will not detect white filament or one particular spool of orange PLA, If I try and plate up a full bed of parts it can fail to print as I think I have a slight misalignment on the bed height. On the plus side I love the spring steel sheet and the quietness, Both Prusa printers ate in the lounge and I had both running on Sunday and had forgotten how lound the MK2 was, and by caomparison how quiet the MK3 is.

I have printed PLA, ABS and flex with it so far. I will try PET-G and nylon soon, all of which I have printed on the MK2. I check last night and the total print time on the MK3 is over 23 days, in fact it has been printing pretty much non stop since last thursday. I know a lot of people have had issues and, yes I too was disappointed when I did not get the powder coated spring steel sheet, but I genuinely have not had many problems with it. Hope I do not jinx myself :D.

It is an expensive printer and it does fall short of the hype in some ways but maybe because i have been 3D printing for three and a half years and because the first three were with a i3 clone which has had numerous failures, I have more realistic expectations. I rarely use the MK2 (i tend to keep it loaded with TPU for those flexible jobs) and even more rarely use the old i3 any more.

This forum and its members deserve a big shout out though for the help and support they provide, although the few live chats I have had with Prusa support have led to quick resolutions (not of printer problems just order and shop related stuff).

I am waiting for the powder coated sheet to become available, although in truth I do not really need it the moment. 😀

Z

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Not any longer. From the beginning it worked without problems, but now it get worse and worse - overheating extruder causes PLA to be too soft to extrude, so not even the Prusa silver works any longer. The motor might be able to cope with high temps, but if the printer is unable to print PLA then what?? There's no enclosure, so large ABS/ASA prints do not work either and I did not buy a pre-assembled MK3 to be able to print only PETG 😕

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Not any longer. From the beginning it worked without problems, but now it get worse and worse - overheating extruder causes PLA to be too soft to extrude, so not even the Prusa silver works any longer. The motor might be able to cope with high temps, but if the printer is unable to print PLA then what?? There's no enclosure, so large ABS/ASA prints do not work either and I did not buy a pre-assembled MK3 to be able to print only PETG 😕

Please see my note in another thread about checking the filament sensor. There have been a couple short-circuits reported on this component, and it can cause damage so it's important that you make sure this isn't happening ASAP. Fortunately it's an easy fix.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Am I happy with my MK3?

Sadly, no.
There was so much wrong with mine. (prebuilt)

Loose screws, had to take apart the heatbed to tighten screws below it (rattling), filament sensor death, whining part cooling fan (didnt replace it, I dont mind it that much), dead extruder thermistor (had to be replaced) and overall print quality issues with all kinds of settings.

I thought Im done and dialed it in and suddenly expirienced problems again.

No problem with small first layer surface prints.
As soon as I print something big, the first layer starts to curl at some places and when I flip the double sided PEI spring steel sheet, prints wont stick at all in some places.

With big prints the nozzle starts scratching the infill over and over again (nothing major, but its loud) and nothing I tried helped. (different settings, live z etc etc).

Already invested around 20 - 30 hours trying to fix that problem.

My MK2 never had any problems whatsoever, neither part or print quality wise.

And this time I even ordered prebuilt and this kind of quality is just a really bad expirience, espacially when Im still fighting some issues right now.

I still ordered the MMU2 yesterday, but till that arrives, I have to sort out any print quality issues, otherwise the MMU wont do jack 😀

So in the end, am I happy? No, not yet.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

No! I am not happy and every time I have to chat to support I come away feeling like they are doing me a favor talking to me.
Timely shipping is a pipe dream I have a two week old parts order for a set of gears that are not listed as back ordered are listed as in stock and have not even been packaged yet, every time I ask about it the only answer I get is "it will ship soon" by that logic I am pushing 50 I will die soon also.

I need a new plate they are not in stock, Prusa doesn't know when they will be in stock and doesn't seem to give two squirts about customers needed parts once the printer is paid for.

I will bet my last dollar Prusa would gladly take another 1100 bucks from me and ship me a new printer sometime in 2025

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

No. Nozzle still hitting infill and no amount of live-z tuning or other settings tuning helps. And the most recent problem is that extrusion consistency has gone to shit.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

No. Nozzle still hitting infill and no amount of live-z tuning or other settings tuning helps. And the most recent problem is that extrusion consistency has gone to shit.

Did you try adjusting your Z hop (in Slic3r, it is Lift Z)? I was having that issue but changing the Lift Z to 1 seems to have resolved it.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

No. Nozzle still hitting infill and no amount of live-z tuning or other settings tuning helps. And the most recent problem is that extrusion consistency has gone to shit.

Did you try adjusting your Z hop (in Slic3r, it is Lift Z)? I was having that issue but changing the Lift Z to 1 seems to have resolved it.

Tried it. Didn't do anything. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Found a couple of threads on reddit with what looks like the same issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/8csz8o/prusa_clicking_on_infill_intersections/?ref=share&ref_source=link
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/8csy5v/nozzle_hitting_infill_please_help/?ref=share&ref_source=link (this one looks like curling is part of this guys issue. Mine mangles the infill near the middle of my prints where there shouldn't be curling)

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

This may be an early vote as I have only had it for a couple of weeks, but have put over 120 hours on it. This is my first 3D printer and sense I don't have a baseline to judge off of I can only go off these couple weeks of learning, calibrating, and enjoying myself.

I haven't had any problems after calibration which did take a while for the Z as its difficult to see what a good distance is from extruder to bed even after a dozen youtube videos on the subject. Once dialed in and making sure the bed is clean I no longer had any problems with it sticking to the bed. I am slowly learning slic3r and have tried cura, but cura's settings are off a bit even after tweaking. So I am sticking with slic3r for now even though most of it is Greek to me at this point.

I was disappointed not receive the powder coated bed, but will order it as soon as they are available and whenever I receive the discount.

Thumbs up for me for the MK3 two weeks in.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

No.

Print quality with MK2S was much better. I can't even get stuff to print reliably anymore. MK3 was supposed to be MORE reliable. It hasn't been (for me).

It worked for about 20 prints, now I have bad extrusion problems that basically prevent any prints from being successful.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Looks like a partially clogged extruder, or maybe some other mechanical problem with your extruder. Do a couple cold pulls, use the needle, and check the idler tension as well as motor gear.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

I figured out my extruding problem. The long screws that hold the bondtech gear door closed keep backing out. I can tighten them up but about an hour of printing later (mid-print) they're already significantly backed out and the filament isn't being pushed properly. I think I'll apply some locktite to the nuts to see if that helps.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

That should not happen at all... are you sure you have the springs in there?

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

I am very happy with mine. Kit went together very well, the instructions are awesome. Been printing continousley for the last three days and the prints are better than I had expected after reading the forums while waiting for it to come. Yes there is room for improvement while I learn what I am doing, but I have not experienced the problems that others have talked about.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

I am very happy with mine. Kit went together very well, the instructions are awesome. Been printing continousley for the last three days and the prints are better than I had expected after reading the forums while waiting for it to come. Yes there is room for improvement while I learn what I am doing, but I have not experienced the problems that others have talked about.

Starting to notice a pattern here- almost every person happy with their printer in this thread built their own, while most of the unhappy people such as myself bought pre-built. hmm

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Starting to notice a pattern here- almost every person happy with their printer in this thread built their own, while most of the unhappy people such as myself bought pre-built. hmm

Common human subjective perception. In the shopping center most people think they're waiting/standing in the wrong queue, which is the slowest one.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Starting to notice a pattern here- almost every person happy with their printer in this thread built their own, while most of the unhappy people such as myself bought pre-built. hmm

Common human subjective perception. In the shopping center most people think they're waiting/standing in the wrong queue, which is the slowest one.

Suggestive perception?, I think if you take the chance to read a few threads you'll find most people here that have issues ordered pre-built machines.

It's called analytical fact.

Re: Are you happy with your MK3?

Suggestive perception?, I think if you take the chance to read a few threads you'll find most people here that have issues ordered pre-built machines.
It's called analytical fact.

I do follow this forum very carefully and especially in the last couple month in more detail. My suggestive perception does not agree with your analytical fact 😀