
Prusa MINI: Smart and compact 3D printer - luastoned
https://blog.prusaprinters.org/original-prusa-mini-is-here-smart-and-compact-3d-printer/
======
j-pb
I'm glad that prusa has stayed true to his open hardware pledge all these
years, while continuing to push the reprap ideals.

Everybody is complaining about the price, but c'mon this thing is designed
printed and assembled in Prague, the EU. It creates local jobs for people with
fair wages, social security and good quality of life, we should strive to have
more of our stuff produced in the west.

Happy to see him design another printer, I really love my MK3.

~~~
jrockway
The price seems fine to me. This is going to print a lot of useful parts for
people and comes with great software for both your computer and the printer
that you can hack and modify. If this is anything like my i3, then it's going
to have high quality parts (Noctua fans!) and come in kit form to let you
assemble it yourself so you know where everything is if something breaks and
you need to repair it.

I am surprised that they switched to a more powerful microcontroller. While it
is something Reddit endlessly complains about (despite having no software
engineering experience), a lot of engineering is invested into their existing
8-bit platform which works perfectly fine. You don't need 32-bit pointers to
read a string like "G1 X42" and pulse an I/O pin a couple times ;)

~~~
dfasdfasd
> While it is something Reddit endlessly complains about (despite having no
> software engineering experience)

While I agree Reddit's obsession with weird technical details is annoying,
this is a pretty arrogant position. I've written motion control code for both
8-bit and 32-bit designs, and the difference is bigger than "read a string and
pulse an IO a few times". The Atmega has been outdated for the past 10 years,
the only reason it picked up in 3D printing was because of the accessibility
through Arduino and similar---not for any good, technical reason. They're
going to need to switch at some point, may as well be now.

Sure, you don't _need_ a 32 bit processor, but a modern Cortex-M0 or M4 is
much more powerful than an Atmega328 for the same cost or less. My Prusa Mk3
takes a non-negligible amount of time to sort files on the SD card, and the
screen could really show more information. There is also much more advanced
motion planning they could do with a little more power available.

~~~
jrockway
Sure, but now they are a small company that has to maintain two separate
codebases. Even big companies like Google can't keep their Android and iOS
apps at feature parity, so something has to give and it's the early adopters
with old hardware that is just not going to get any new features. Or they are
going to have twice the software engineering overhead.

I get why you would start from scratch with an M4. I don't get why you would
maintain two different codebases commercially, though.

(As for the motion control aspect, at the feedrates of 3D printers, I don't
think you get anything from a faster processor. Motion control is not what's
limiting print speed or accuracy.)

~~~
dfasdfasd
> Sure, but now they are a small company that has to maintain two separate
> codebases. Even big companies like Google can't keep their Android and iOS
> apps at feature parity, so something has to give and it's the early adopters
> with old hardware that is just not going to get any new features. Or they
> are going to have twice the software engineering overhead.

I mean sure, it's not going to be a perfectly smooth transition, but I think
you're underestimating how bad it was on the Atmega. There is _no_ code space
left on those chips, which makes adding features nearly impossible. They'll
probably just maintain the old version for as long as they can, while
switching new products over to the new one.

The codebase is also probably simpler than you realize. These microcontrollers
don't have the code space for programs of any significant size. Porting the
peripheral interfaces over to the new controller is not that hard.

> (As for the motion control aspect, at the feedrates of 3D printers, I don't
> think you get anything from a faster processor. Motion control is not what's
> limiting print speed or accuracy.)

This is actually a real problem. It's not the basic motion control, but doing
things like intelligent look-ahead or vibration compensation.

I think the technology is further ahead than you realize. It's not an Atmega
running your microwave we're talking about. Those chips _are_ seriously
limited, in material ways, even if you haven't run into it yourself.

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cthalupa
The mini is neat, but I'm more excited about the CoreXY based XL.

I love my MK3, which I've upgraded to the MMU MK3S, but have had a bunch of
projects where a larger printing area would be desirable (I print a lot of
board game organizers, to reduce shelf space usage, speed up set up/tear down,
improve playing ability during the game, etc., so usually this means 3-6
distinct sets of prints on the MK3S).

I have a good bit of experience on the Voron 2, and was thinking I was going
to build a 2.1 - the CoreXY design also has the benefit of being able to print
faster without quality loss, as well as being very amenable to designs that
have built in enclosures, which is a godsend for printing ABS (and building
exhausts to get the fumes out of the house), but with how great my experience
with my current Prusa has been, I'm going to wait and see how it shapes up.
It'd also save a ton of work, as the Voron is an entirely DIY design.

~~~
e12e
> I print a lot of board game organizers, to reduce shelf space usage, speed
> up set up/tear down, improve playing ability during the game, etc

Interesing use-case-do you have some photos? (and possibly design files,
although I currently don't have access to a printer)

~~~
cthalupa
I don't offhand, but boardgamegeek has a massive list where users contribute
their creations. Most include a link to thingiverse with the STL files and
pictures:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/186909/3d-prints-board-
ga...](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/186909/3d-prints-board-games)

I've used some fairly generic ones where existing solutions don't exist, but
there are some parametric generators on thingiverse that I've started
experimenting with.

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bsamuels
I guess switching to a bowden extruder let them cut a ton of costs. Can't wait
to see how it prints compared to the mk3.

The real test will be comparing it to the Ender 3, which seems to be the form
factor/market the mini is trying to go after. Even if the mini is 150 bucks
more than the Ender 3, if it prints even slightly as reliably as the MK3 then
the Ender 3 may be done for.

With low cost printers like the Ender 3/Maker Select/etc, after the first
50-200 hours of printing, you can end up spending more time on printer
maintenance than printing. There's also small problems that can happen that
for non-technical users would be the end of their adventure into 3D printing.
That is easily the greatest pain point at the Ender 3's price point.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Switching to the Bowden extruder may have been more about reducing print head
mass because of the cantilevered design.

I'd avoid printers like the Ender for fire risk as much as the hidden cost of
maintenance and upgrades. The Prusa Mini will be a much better entry option
than the cheap Chinese knockoffs.

~~~
shifto
Ender is fine and not comparable to previous chinese printers like the Anet
series. Also the merlin firmware has been made more robust against risk of
fire through some software mitigations (measuring extruder heat etc).

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MrGilbert
I think the market for this one will be difficult, just because you can get a
3D printer (read: Ender) for basically half the price...

...with this being said, though - I'm happy to see a "entry-level" Prusa. One
thing that lags the cheap printers are security measurements. I guess no one
is keen on burning down their house, just because this giant hotglue on rails
went rogue.

On their website, they state that they are:

\- monitoring FAN RPM

\- Have self diagnostic

\- Have a high quality PSU

\- and, even more important, use thermistors.

Taking all this into account, this might justify the price bump, if you aren't
able to add all this to, let's say, your Ender or any other printer by
yourself.

~~~
ericb
The Ender is a great printer if you're cool with it catching fire. In several
of the 3d printing groups I'm in, the most common question is "what's the best
printer around $300" I can get. The most common answer is something like "try
not to scrimp and get the Prusa instead." That's a fairly tone deaf answer to
someone truly budget constrained, though if the price is double their budget.
But for an extra fifty bucks--that's a no brainer.

Print jobs can easily go 24 hours and fires are fairly catastrophic. I think
Prusa just hit the ball out of the park with this pricepoint and approach
assuming they are using their usual reliable, vetted components. I have
_never_ seen a report of a fire with a Prusa.

~~~
MrGilbert
> I have never seen a report of a fire with a Prusa.

Tbf, that really depends on the market share. In the interwebs, I've read a
total of 3 - 5 reports of printers catching fire. Now, if 20% of the 3D
printers are Prusas, then the rest are chinese ones, which come all with the
same bad components. There is not much surprise here, at least for me.

Despite from that, the groups I know usually go like "Yeah, get a CoreXY
printer instead. Moving the printbed constantly in XY direction isn't a good
idea."

~~~
WillPostForFood
I agree it is hard to judge based on anecdotes, but we know Enders have had
specific issues that increase fire risk. E.g. thermal runaway protection
disabled by default, XT60 connectors with bad connections, defective MOSFETs.

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ChuckMcM
This is pretty awesome. I "upgraded" my Makerbot Replicator 2x to a Prusa MK3S
and the difference was pretty amazing. Now to see if I can upgrade the
controller to the Buddy.

------
alphagrep12345
Why does everyone need a 3d printer? Maybe this statement would sound as
ludicrous looking back as asking why does everyone need a PC in the 1980s.
However, I still don't understand why would a regular person need a 3d
printer? Mass marketed goods are always cheaper due to economies of scale. And
would you really want to put in the effort to make your own chair, etc?

~~~
dwoozle
I print a lot of stuff around the house with a toddler. I printed guards to
prevent him from turning on the oven, a insert for the piano that prevents him
from pressing the auto play demo, a shim to get a drawer to close more
smoothly, a shampoo caddy that hooks around our shower stall, a storage system
for small hardware, a set of clips for the computer cords to keep them
organized, a doohickey to strip leaves off of herbs, geez there must be more
I’m forgetting.

~~~
tumes
Ha, I thought I was being novel pointing out how convenient it was for solving
the myriad problems that come with parenthood. I printed a bunch of car logos
for my vehicle-obsessed kid to stare at, name, and futz with during diaper
changing time and it has figuratively paid for itself in terms of mitigating
piddling power struggles.

Plus I cannot express the collective relief my spouse and I felt when I was
able to repair a poorly designed part on the malfunctioning coffee maker in an
hour's time. We're solving the real problems here.

~~~
dwoozle
I forgot that! Once he started to recognize his name I printed several toys
with his name on them. Like, a dinosaur off thingiverse with “Steve” in raised
letters on his belly.

------
neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191012190019/https://blog.prus...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191012190019/https://blog.prusaprinters.org/original-
prusa-mini-is-here-smart-and-compact-3d-printer/)

------
mwill
Really curious to see what the print quality ends up being like on these.

Design wise they're very similar to something like a cetus, or many other
Chinese printers with similar mechanics with a major difference: Smooth rods
and bearings instead of linear rails.

In my own designs I've pivoted away from rods in favor of rails and seen much
greater quality, accuracy, repeatability, and speed, even with cheap knock off
rails from China, and most of the industry is moving that way as well.

What's curious is you can get a machine similar to the mini, using linear
rails, and more metal or injection moulded parts over 3D printed parts, for
just a little bit more than the mini.

Prusa has quite a good reputation though, so I'm skeptical they would release
an inferior machine at a the same price point, so like I said, really curious
to see how well these works.

~~~
dhon_
What I love about Prusa is that they eat their own dog food. They use their
printers in a farm producing parts for their products. This makes reliability
and repeatability first class citizens.

He mentions in the blog post that the motivation for this was wanting smaller
& cheaper machines for the farm, as two small machines can print faster than
one big one for the same cost.

I'll still wait for reviews, but this looks like a great little machine and I
suspect that quality will be reasonable for the above reasons.

One issue will be corrosion on the rails over time though. This affected an
original Ultimaker I had sitting around as I let too much dust gather on it.

------
sitkack
So much sinophobia and racism in this thread. Folks, remember that your
exquisitely built Apple products are all made in China.

~~~
ALittleLight
"Yes, China may be a brutal, authoritarian, oppressive regime currently trying
to censor discussion of their occupation of Hong Kong - but at least they
provide cheap manual labor due to lax labor laws, a disregard for the
environment, and the general poverty of their people."

Apple products could be built anywhere.

~~~
jdietrich
Chinese labour isn't particularly cheap by global standards, especially in
Shenzhen and the wider PRD region. We outsource to China because they're
_damned good_ at manufacturing.

Apple products could be built anywhere, but only because Apple have absolutely
vast economies of scale. Most consumer electronics products couldn't be built
anywhere else at a viable price, not because of labour costs but because of
infrastructure. China has the supply chains and the expertise to build
anything from a handful of PCBs to a couple of million units. There's just
nowhere else on earth where you can set up several assembly lines in a few
weeks or get a prototype built and tested in a few hours.

~~~
jbay808
> We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing.

I suspect it's the other way around. The supply chains, manufacturing
expertise, automation, and skilled labour that are now China's main advantages
were created through decades of investment that began with a search for cheap
labour, and gradually crept up the value chain.

30 years ago in 1989, you would have said that you outsource manufacturing to
Japan because they're "damned good at it". Only the very cheapest products
would have been outsourced to China at that time. The skilled labour and
supply chains weren't there.

30 years before that, in 1959, you would have looked to the US for a force
that was "damned good at manufacturing". Only the cheapest products would have
been outsourced to Japan.

Basically you start setting up factories making cheap stuff. Then as you gain
skill and expertise, your quality gets better faster than your prices go up.
The expensive countries see how much they can save by outsourcing more and
more of their supply chain to you, and in the process their domestic supply
chain dwindles and their skilled labour retires or gets laid off.

Eventually, you're the only choice for anything, until someone cheaper shows
up to undercut you on the cheaper stuff...

~~~
jdietrich
_> I suspect it's the other way around. The supply chains, manufacturing
expertise, automation, and skilled labour that are now China's main advantages
were created through decades of investment that began with a search for cheap
labour, and gradually crept up the value chain._

Of course China started at the bottom of the value chain and moved up. The
point I'm making is that China is no longer just a mass of undifferentiated
cheap labour and low legal standards - it's a serious industrial power with a
lot of unique strengths. A lot of low-skill, low-cost manufacturing has
already left China in search of cheaper labour, but China is likely to remain
a powerhouse in many industries for the foreseeable future. They're heavily
investing in automation and are well-equipped to remain competitive despite
rising labour costs.

~~~
jbay808
I didn't mean to come across as disagreeing with you about China's strengths.
I fully agree with what you have written -- but it's also exactly the same
thing we could have said about Japan in 1989 or the USA in 1959. Right down to
investing heavily in automation and being well equipped to remain competitive
despite rising labour costs.

And Japan still makes a lot of top-notch stuff, and even the USA does too,
although neither are the obvious go-to places to get something made, which
they used to be.

The same thing may well happen with China; their integrated domestic supply
chain and expertise are huge advantages, but the same used to be the case in
the USA and that didn't stop companies from looking elsewhere.

At the same time, Chinese companies have noticed that they don't have to be
anybody's contract manufacturers; they can design products faster and better
than engineers in the USA who have never visited a production floor in their
lives. And so it goes...

------
tpmx
I never really understood why they stayed with building a giant 3d printer
farm to build all those 3d printer parts, except for it being "cool".
Especially in .cz, I think think they could have gotten all those parts
injection moulded for a lower cost. At a higher precision.

~~~
jrockway
Dogfooding is valuable. If there is a fundamental flaw in their printers,
they're going to find out about it firsthand.

It is also nice to know that I can print replacement parts and that my
replacement is pretty much identical to the original.

~~~
tpmx
Sure, but they've kept doing it for many years now. At some point it shifts
into some kind of "religion". Or, judging from your response, it's a part of
their brand?

~~~
kbob
Keep in mind that the printers are getting regular upgrade cycles. A 2019 i3
MK3S is nothing like a 2015 i3. Firmware upgrades are released every couple of
months. So continuous testing is still valuable.

~~~
jrockway
I was going to cite this example. I think recent MK3Ss have different fan
shrouds than the first batch of MK3Ss, because the community found a better
design. All Prusa had to do to upgrade new customers was to send their print
farm a different file; total cost $0. Meanwhile, customers with the original
design could download a file and print it, getting a factory-quality part for
(essentially) free.

Managing a printer farm sounds like a lot work, but they did do that work and
can reap the benefit that prototyping and manufacturing are the exact same
process. It's like saying "why does Google have all these servers when they
could just buy them from AWS?" Well, they got good at building datacenters
before you could just rent a datacenter from Amazon. If you're good at
something, keep it up!

------
AYBABTME
This is pretty exciting, I'm glad that they doubled down the path of making
high quality hardware and remain open source and a net positive player in the
space.

------
olafure
I like Prusa, but after they stopped releasing firmware updates for my MK2S
for no good reason, so did my business with them. Such a shame.

~~~
reaperducer
Did your printer stop working when they stopped writing software for it? Does
it no longer do what it did when you took it out of the box?

(Serious question. I don't have a 3D printer, but I've been thinking about it.
If they're reliant on constant firmware fixes, then I will probably wait
another year.)

~~~
BoorishBears
They're not.

Many people will never even update their firmware from what was in the box,
and in fact, some require you to tear them down and wire up a ISP device to
flash new firmware, since there's no bootloader (and even if you do all that,
there's barely enough memory to hold a firmware with all it's features
enabled)

Having firmware upgrades without tearing down the machine is literally a
differentiator at the price point this is launching at...

------
jasiek
Does it make sense to 3D print these parts rather than injection-mould them?

~~~
sannee
The fact that you can repair your printer by using your printer is a big
selling point imho.

------
johnchristopher
Can it be used to print small figurines for role playing or board games?

~~~
jrockway
Yes, but in general everyone that buys an FDM printer for things like that is
unhappy. Your parts will look 3D printed. If you care about fine detail, you
really want an SLA printer.

(The fact that this printer is small doesn't make it any better at small
parts. It just takes up less space and can't print bigger parts.)

I got into 3d printing about 6 months ago and am thrilled every time I print
something. But 100% of the things I design and print are practical and solve
some sort of problem. My parts look 3D printed, but I don't care, because
they're performing a useful task. Many people on the Internet are not
interested in that, they just want to produce injection-mold quality parts
from 3D models at home. If that's your use case, don't buy this. The SLA
printers are much much better at that.

~~~
e12e
What you might be able to do, is print at 5x/10x size in order to verify your
designs, then have them printed in final 1x form by a commercial service?

------
sannee
Too bad they don't have a proper kit version. If it was 100$ cheaper (same
ratio as the MK3S), I would definitely consider buying it.

------
BubRoss
This is an advertisement and I don't think there is anything exceptional here.

~~~
jrockway
Prusa is running a pretty good business. 100% of their hardware and software
is open; you can print your own Prusa i3, build your own controller board from
schematics, modify all their software on both the firmware and slicing side,
etc. I don't think it's bad to give them a shoutout on HN, they're doing good
work and you can benefit from their work without giving them a dime.

(After struggling with a cheap Chinese 3D printer and learning to hate 3D
printing... I switched to a Prusa i3 MK3S and am loving it. The software
doesn't annoy me. The prints stick to the bed every single time without fail.
And I got to assemble the whole thing myself, so I know how every component
works and how to fix it in the event that something breaks. And if something
breaks, I don't have to order a replacement part, I can just go to the
makerspace, print it out, and be back online!)

------
monkmartinez
I don't like it for a few reasons;

1\. It looks like you are going to fight "ringing" with lack of rigidity.

2\. Its a bowden extruder... which I suppose is a necessity due to the lack of
structure. Still I would rather have direct drive on every machine.

3\. It's very expensive. You can buy an Ender for $200 or less on sale... or
around $230 normal price. Upgrade the board to a 32bit Bigtreetech for $60
with Trinamic drivers... plug and play.

4\. Most people find they want a bigger printer... not smaller.

This is my initial reaction. I am always looking for innovation in this space
and most of it is happening in the "industrial" realm. For example, I wish
they would make an SLS machine or a "beginner" industrial machine.

The companies like Creality are just dominating everything.

We need prosumer/industrial machines that have features you can't get with
$750 dollar machine.

~~~
Klathmon
Re: points 1 and 2, I think they're connected. The lack of rigidity is
mitigated by the Bowden making the hotend so damn light it probably won't be
as big of a deal as you might think. Also tweaking some jerk and acceleration
settings will almost always fix ghosting and ringing caused by a "less stiff"
frame with minimal hit to the print time. (And I'm assuming they'll do most of
the legwork to have a great printing profile out of the box)

>You can buy an Ender for $200 or less on sale...

This is exactly why I love the idea of this printer so much more! You could
get an ender for $200 (plus $60 to $100 to improve the worst parts and make it
less likely to catch fire). But you're still manually leveling, you're still
fighting with scraping prints off the bed, you're still missing stuff like
filament run-out detection, automatic firmware updates, spring steel PEI print
surface, crash detection, power panic, stealth mode, and a lot of other safety
features.

And at the end of the day, an ender 3 is gonna cost $260 to $300 and require
the user to know what to replace fix on day 1 for a safe printer, while this
is $350. And outside of commercial manufacturing, most users don't ever max
out their print area with most printers (at least from what I've seen spending
a lot of time on 3d printing forums).

I'm super excited for this, because $800 to $1000 is just to much for the
average person to spend on an easy to use printer like the MK3S. This is only
slightly more expensive than other "starter" printers, and has most of the
niceties, safety features, and support.

