Mk3s kit build, first impressions
Hi all,
I finished last week my Mk3s kit build. It was a VERY enjoyable build despite some difficult parts making you appreciate the engineering/design mentality of the printer. The online manual, coupled with the users' comments was extremely helpful. The whole assembly was uneventful, using only zip-ties from the spares. At the end w/o any adjustments, i ended up with belt tensions circa 265-273 and all tests passed.
I deviated a bit from the instructions, i opened up the haribo bag near the end of the extruder assembly. All in all, congratulations are in order to both Prusa and the community for such a well thought-of product, help and support.
First prints look great to me (benchy, marvin, prusa logo etc...) with very small defects (on the marvin only). The only thing i noticed is some mild creaking noise coming from the extruder (which from what i read/understand is possibly coming from the extruder idler but only happens on quick retractions/movements). For other noises, the whole printer sounds reasonable to me, with normal noise levels.
The only point i am trying to figure out (first 3d printer) is how to reduce stringing when printing fine meshes (like grilles) at very high resolution. I hope i am making sense with this.
Congratulations again!
RE: Mk3s kit build, first impressions
Hi
I'm with you, finished mine just over a week ago. Only one comment, I should not have ordered the black version. I am a little visually challenged and the contrast with the fasteners etc against the orange would have been better. I made it a bit fiddly for myself with the black option.
My extruder was squeaking badly. I printed a little sponge filled filament filter and put a TINY amount of pure vegetable oil on the sponge (and I mean only a tiny bit) and the squeaking stopped. If I do several prints without, the squeaking returns (but less so) and I oil it again. There was a youtube video where someone claimed it affected the strength of his test pieces, but he rescinded it in a later video because he used too much oil. It was all over his print bed! I understand the noise is coming from the filament on the teflon tube in the E3dV6 body.
RE: Mk3s kit build, first impressions
Not being mechanically inclined I found it was often a challenge and the circuit board is too crowded. Being pressed for time didn't help but the knowledge learned was invaluable.
I'd likely buy a LulzBot for a production printer but Prusas are a work of cultural and technological genius. I'm proud to support their development.
RE: Mk3s kit build, first impressions
Thank you both for your replies and ideas (about the sponge). So far so good, looking forward to try a spool of Prusament (PLA) that i got.
I must say, the work put into Prusaslicer really shows (in my opinion, with respect to the user-friendly-ness)... on top of the engineering of the actual printer itself.
In general i experimented a bit with the live-z, noticing that i needed to increase it a bit (ie less negative values) than my original settings because i was getting a few artifacts on my first layer.