Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “First Look: The Prusa Mini 3d printer”.
Welcome to make workshop, where we check out tools, toys and tech built for makers today we’re going to take our first look at the newest 3d printer from prusa. This is the prusa mini the latest printer to come out of prusa research called the mini because it is slightly smaller than the flagship printer that they have the i3 mk3s. The mini is a pretty impressive little machine coming in at about 350 brand new. It is chocked full of bells and whistles, let’s jump into it, so the build area – the name mini of course – implies that it’s smaller the build area on this is 18 centimeters, cubed so 18 by 18 by 18, which is seven inches. If you’re looking for a conversion there, so it’s a seven inch cube that it can print in which is actually fairly large.
I mean you, don’t only have to do small things on this. It has all the bells and whistles and features that you see in the rest of the prusa line, which is fantastic as far as the features that this printer has. The kind of things you can expect are the removable magnetic flexible beds. I love these. I will never have another printer without a removable bed and even my printers that i get without them.
I buy third-party additions for removable flexible beds, because removing a print off of a flexible bed is just amazing, easy it just pops right off. It has super super quiet operation thanks to the trinamic drivers. You can barely hear this thing going.
It’S actually quieter than the mk3s. At least mine is uh 32-bit main board. We have a color lcd here that gives you a nice little preview of your model before you print, which i really appreciate, because, like many people, i have a tendency to name my things stupidly and then, whenever i come back to them in a month or two, The name won’t make any sense, but if you can actually see the visual preview of your model, that can help considerably the one that i’m testing has the upgrade. That is um. I think it’s almost twenty dollars a little upgrade to get a filament sensor, which is nice, and i would definitely recommend that if you’re going to be doing lots of big prints uh, it has automatic mesh bed leveling every time you print you can see it go Back and forth and test the bed and level the bed so that you get that just beautiful first layer assembly was pretty easy. It’S actually.
It felt like a few more steps than something like a reality: cr6, which was just a few screws in one plug. There were a few more things to plug in, but really it was super simple. It’S three screws and um one, two, three two or three plugs to plug in so extremely simple to assemble, oh and then, then you have to put the lcd on there, which is another screw or two extremely simple. You start it up. The first thing you do is set your z height and then you’re done. I was actually curious now since, since i have a tendency to be overly positive about prusa machines, because i they always impress me, i thought i’d be really tough on this and mean to it.
So what i did is i went on the prusa website. I found a model that looked like it would be tough and large linked to this model by the way in the description below, and i threw it in the slicer sliced it at a all the defaults. The only thing i did was turned on supports and spit it out and printed it. It took a little over two days to print this solid running and you can see the results here, pretty impressive, most printers.
I wouldn’t throw something like that at it right out of the bat without first kind of testing and and figuring out. You know what the printer wants as far as settings, but i figured i’d be a little hard on prusa this time and it turned out fantastic. You can see the quality is incredible. I believe this print was actually designed, probably more for sla printing, but it it really handled it like a champ, the benchy came out pretty fantastically. I don’t really see any ringing, maybe the faintest ghosting like around the archways, but i mean it’s just right out of the box. This thing is so impressive: 3d printing is incredibly fun, but getting started can be really daunting. You see things like these awesome. You know files and you and you don’t really know how it all works to to create them to print them.
Things like that. We have a bundle in the maker shed of 18 books to help you get started in learning how to 3d print and doing some basic projects. You know adding electronics incorporating it into cosplay things like that check out the bundle linked below it is our kind of digital fabrication, e-pack 70 bucks, 18 books, chocked full of tips, tricks and projects.
Another noticeable change that they’ve done is they’ve, moved away from sd cards. Instead, favoring just a usb plug, which i personally prefer um, i i find that i’ve got a whole lot. More extra usb sticks sitting around and computers that can run them without an adapter, so i can just drop files on a usb stick and plug it. In one thing also, i noticed was upgrading the firmware was nice and easy. You just drop it on the usb stick and you can select it and upgrade it right off of the display.
This design, of course, is going away from their kind of i3 frame design that they’ve been using. We have the cantilever design here, with the lead screw for the z-axis and then belt drives for the x and y, and even though this is cantilevered out there and you can physically wiggle it. Whenever i’m printing, i didn’t see any changes or negative effects or vibration, because of that i mean you can see in this print that there’s not really any like warping as it goes higher, which is good, because i was a little bit afraid of that. Just because i can compare them side by side, let’s do it, you can see.
The mini, of course, is a lot smaller than the mk3s having the spools on top of it makes it seem even bulkier, especially with this drawer, that i’ve added or this little tray that i’ve added on there. But you know the real thing that people, i guess probably want to focus on most of the time is the print size here. So you can compare the print size of the uh mk 3s and the mini there. The prusa mini comes in at 350 dollars with just the prusa mini and the smooth sheet.
You can do a couple upgrades, you can add the textured sheet. If you’re going to be printing other materials – and you can add the filament sensor – i think the textured sheet is maybe thirty dollars and the filament sensor is maybe 20 bucks, but you don’t have to get those. And personally i monitor my prints pretty closely. So i don’t really need a filament sensor.
I mean it’s nice to have it, but i don’t need it and the the beds. I use the smooth one 99 of the time there have been some times that you know, printing in materials other than pla. You know something like petg that i’ve found that maybe the other uh the textured bed would be better, but i typically just use the smooth one, so you could get yourself pretty much. What i consider to be like a top of the line performance printer for 350 bucks us from prusa to get more information about the prusa mini and the upgrades available for it go to prusa3d.com.
So there you have it, that’s the prusa mini. I hope you enjoyed the video be sure to subscribe to this website for more cool maker tech, and let me know what other kind of cool stuff you’d like me to check out on the channel i’ll see you later, you .