First Impression/Unboxing  

RE: First Impression/Unboxing

I prefer 45 minutes of fiddling to the 20 hours of building.

Amen, brother!

To get to this point was rougher than anticipated

I agree. I've had every product Prusa has made since the Mk3, but this one felt like the worst out-of-the box experience.  Not terrible, but not smooth either.

After a bit more of a week of printing, I begin to see some of VFAs some people have reported. Not bad but visible.

RE: First Impression/Unboxing

Not perfect but way better than building from scratch.

Posted by: @matsubaa

I just got my printer and have it running off a first print now. To get to this point was rougher than anticipated but by no means terrible.

I broke a plastic rivet peeling off the film. 

The box with the touchscreen in it spilled out a tiny black screw when I just got it out of the box.

The factory filament still in the printer wasn't a problem because I'm experienced at this but it wasn't in the instructions to unload it and will trip up a first timer.

One of the metal side panels is loose. I think I can just tighten it up with a screwdriver but it might be more of those plastic rivet things.

The print head slid around when I had to turn it over an extra time to fiddle with the touch screen mount. This confused the crap out of it and on initial power up the "home" position was jacked. Manually moving the print head (with motors disabled) and then re-homing fixed it. 

The filament I loaded myself was a little deformed from the unload last time I used it. It wasn't bad but it was far enough off that the extruder wouldn't grab it and it didn't move smoothly through the filament sensor.

The print is only 7% done (Robo Alpaca pre-sliced on the USB stick) but beautiful so far.

It wasn't the perfect experience I was hoping for but it was very close. I built my Mk3s back when from the kit and I prefer 45 minutes of fiddling to the 20 hours of building.

RE: First Impression/Unboxing

It's been a couple days. I've done a bunch of PLA prints and they've all been great.

I did just a test in the TPU I had on hand. The idler is a little tight so loading the flexible stuff was a little bit challenging but once done it worked great. 

PETG worked without a hitch. 

These were all from generic profiles, no specific brand considerations (i.e. Overture PETG maybe wants to be printed at a slightly different temp than generic)

I did go back and fix that loose panel and in the process found maybe ten more places that the plastic rivets were missing. 

I did go back to add the anti-vibration bars that weren't in the instructions. I don't know how much difference they made in my particular situation. I do also have to confess to cutting them each in half to mount closer to the corners because that was easier than centering them in their undocumented intended positions.