Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Prusa i3 mk 3: Tomorrow’s 3d Printing Technology Today”.
Okay, so with every single digital fabrication shootout that we do, we always try to find the best machine in every single category and this machine here. The prusa i3 mark iii. Isn’T that so what makes this machine so special that we want to that? We want to talk about it today, so while it may not have been one of our top scorers this year, it likely will be one of the top scorers coming up uh, it’s only down by a few points, um, and the reason for that is the unit That we had was actually one of the first ones that they made, and so they weren’t totally done tweaking the software uh this one we just recently got. This is a production unit that we’re videoing now uh and we’re gon na put it back through its faces and see how it actually turns out, but the prusa team is still working on the firmware for it.
This has a lot of really exciting features that are really pushing what the industry is going to be doing. Uh joe prusa has been known and made his name by improving rep rap machines, and they really went a long ways on this one uh. That is really going to make people excited now you mentioned the software, and the software on this machine is really quite special, particularly not necessarily the software used on your computer, but the software that lives inside the control board of this machine yeah the firmware on the Machine i just got an update this morning because they’re still working on it, but the firmware on this machine really brings in a lot of new features, especially around the new board that they have running also, and the new stepper drivers that they’re using now.
What’S unusual. For most 3d printers is this machine actually doesn’t have any end stops in it right the new separate drivers to trinamix mean they don’t need end stops. The separate drivers themselves are able to detect when the machine runs into something and they use that as the end stocks, but they’re also able to use that to detect while printing, if the machine is collided with anything and pause, the print to ensure. If you have any curling that you got to pause, or you know if your cat walks onto your printer and accidentally knocks into it without that happen, uh, it pauses the machine for you yeah, and this uh.
This sort of fail, safe, also works for things like filament jams or like extruder snags, or anything like that right and they they doubled down on that, while they can still test some things on the extruder motor. There also added an optical sensor to make to make sure that your filament is actually extruding one of our favorite things about the previous generation. The mark ii was the print bed uh the pei sheet, just kind of made sure that your prints pretty much always stuck and they’ve done one better on the print bed. For this machine right, the mark iii still has pei, but no longer is it a sticker that you stick down? It’S actually spray coated onto the bed, oh and the bed’s removable. So the bed itself is spring steel. Once you get done with the print you pop it off cools down really quickly, once it’s off the machine, give it a little flex and your part pops right off when you’re ready to go just line it up with the peg and it magnets right in place. Couldn’T be simpler and a lot more robust than than previous beds and there’s a couple other nice things about the machine. Is you start to look around it? The mark ii for all of its high points, a lot of people kind of thought, less of it. That frame was made of threaded rod. This uses aluminum extrusions, which, if you’re building this from a kit, should mean that you’re you’re going to be able to get this machine uh square and true a lot easier right on the mark ii. They helped you with the squareness in that it was the first machine that not only did a calibration for leveling the build plate. It actually did a calibration for squareness.
So if you got it close enough, it would compensate, and it would tell you how close you were, but with the aluminum extrusion now everything’s bolt in it’s going to be stiffer it’s going to be more robust and we’re excited. So they just announced this machine at maker faire new york 2017, and they announced it that it’s currently being sold just as a kit and its sale price is what 750 749, which is only 50 more than what they were selling the mark ii, for which, for All the capabilities of the machine is really not a terribly high asking price. No, i i think it’s a great price point to have something with this many features in it. It’S going to be popular.
So while this wasn’t the highest scoring machine in the shootout, it has tons of features that we’re super excited about, and while some of them are a little bit finicky right now, uh as they as prison continue to develop the software. We’Re really excited to see how much more refined the machine will become yeah. That team is really dedicated. There’S no doubt that everything will be sorted out when this machine starts to ship in november.
Uh we’re excited about it. We had a special delivery of the beta unit here at the shootout uh, and the team was unbelievably unbelievably excited when they were able to see the speakers involved so between the price and the reputation for quality the prusa machines. Have you really can’t go wrong with this machine? Yeah absolutely get your pre-orders in you! .