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.
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 ;)
Yeah, I posted a few comments here without actually watching their marketing video, and didn't realize it had those two things. Upgrading to get those features seems like a good idea, to compete with the cheaper models.
I don't think I would have engineered a new board and control stack just to get a web interface and a screen. Their last model (the i3 MK3S) has headers to accept a Pi Zero, and that seems like a good approach modulo the bugs, which would be worth fixing. (Apparently the bugs are, the Pi Zero isn't fast enough to emit gcode to the UART and record a video stream from a camera at the same time. I kind of doubt it, but that's what I'm told. The other problem is that the i3 has one power switch, so it can't keep the RPi on when the printer is powered off. This means a lot of people are corrupting their SD card, which is probably why they complain about the setup randomly breaking.)
I just want a USB serial port that accepts gcode. I have plenty of computers with much better screens (and SSL stacks) around for doing something more powerful ;)
> I just want a USB serial port that accepts gcode. I have plenty of computers with much better screens (and SSL stacks) around for doing something more powerful ;)
That's fair, but then you've added an extra processor which adds a lot of cost. I don't want to tie up a full computer and the associated space just to run my printer. Many people don't have a spare computer they can dedicate to printing either.
I just use a Raspberry Pi in a case that mounts to my i3, but I do realize that $35 is an order of magnitude more expensive than even an ultra luxury ARM microcontroller. I also realize that the Micro SD storage system that the Pi uses would never work in a consumer electronics product. (This is why the compute module has eMMC.)
I've built a ton of systems and they almost always end up being a variant of "arduino running GRBL" combined with "some sort of 'real computer' running Linux". For example, my MK3 is driven by a Raspberry Pi 3 running Octoprint. It's basically an appliance.
> I just want a USB serial port that accepts gcode.
From what I've heard, this is not reliable in the current implementations. If the computer goes to sleep, is under high load, or crashes this can result in a failed print. Of course you could build in more and more safeguards for this sort of thing (buffer the gcode, have some "emergency stop" movement which moves the head up and away from the print and decreases the temp of the hot end if there is a break in the stream of instructions) but this is a lot of additional effort when you could just as easily push all the gcode onto an SD card on the printer.
> 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.
Additionally, we don't need to speculate, they explained their reasoning in the article:
> Why did we decide to switch to a 32-bit board? Surprisingly, raw performance is not the main reason. We can now write cleaner and more abstract (reusable) code without assembler hacks like on the 8-bit board. Adding new features becomes much less of a hassle and we don’t have to count every single byte in the flash memory. Unit tests and JTAG debugging sped up the development and we also got the chance to include ethernet and optional Wi-Fi connections.
If you read through the firmware you'll find 1000000x #define's for different features that I'm sure they're eager to get rid of.
> There is also much more advanced motion planning they could do with a little more power available.
But for 3D printing isn't the printer simply reading the instructions in the gcode? It's not doing any motion planning at all, that is all decided by the slicer.
No, on most CNC machines the controller actually handles much of the motion planning.
The slicer will generate a command that says go from point (x1, y1, z1) to point (x2, y2, z2) with speed f, but it doesn't say anything about acceleration, or how to transition into the next move. A very simplistic controller will use a trapezoidal ramp profile where it will ramp up to the programmed feed rate at a fixed acceleration, then stay at the programmed feed, then ramp down in time to reach the end point. However, if the move was a very short line or arc as part of a large surface, the machine doesn't need to reach 0 speed before starting the next move. A smarter controller will 'look ahead' to predict the next few move and plan the motion of the machine to eliminate jerkiness or stopping.
The slicer may tell the machine what acceleration to use, but that's really just setting a parameter in the machine controller, and isn't settable per-move.
This isn't as critical for 3D printers as it is for big, heavy milling machines. Nevertheless, you can do clever things like trying to compensate for vibration, or speeding up or slowing down the extruder motor based on the pressure of the plastic in the nozzle.
This isn't to say Prusa is switching just to do better motion planning, it sounds like that isn't a primary goal, but I'm trying to illustrate there is a lot more room for intelligence than 'just wiggling some IO'.
I can see some benefit to motion planning on the device if, for example, decisions are being made based on real-time data. For example, if there is a pressure sensor for the nozzle then the board could use this this realtime data to adjust it's motion.
If there's no realtime data being input then everything is simply a deterministic function of the gcode, and all of these aspects related to acceleration and jerk can be precomputed on your powerful multi-core desktop and "rolled into" the gcode.
It can't be "rolled into" the gcode though. Gcode is sadly extremely limited, and while you could build some pretty complex extensions, there is no reason to avoid switching to a (cheaper) more powerful microcontroller to avoid building gcode hacks.
Regardless, I was just pointing out one place where a bit of extra power could help with printing. However, that's not really the point. It's not that the core _needs_ to be 32 bit, it's that most modern microcontrollers are 32 bit. The Atmega is more expensive, has less memory, no JTAG, no DMA, poor debugging support, and mediocre peripherals. The extra power to run more advanced motion control is just a bonus when you switch to a modern Cortex-M.
The real usefulness of power is the possibly to add other features not directly related to printing like built-in ethernet/wifi, or a larger screen (it drives me nuts that I can't see longer file names on my Prusa screen).
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.)
> 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.
Prusa cares about quality. Chinese mostly about price.
For example, Prusa filaments are perfectly rewind, so the possibility of the filament making a knot and stopping the print like has happened to me with other filaments in 14h printing sessions does not exist.
Or chinese aluminium printing beds, with 0.3-0.4 mms differences along the printer, that even with a touch probe you can't print big things over.
Those beds are so cheap, and you could print small pieces with them, but anything serious in size like 18x18 cms will fail. Prusa warrantees it.
Quality control is the great advantage that Prusa has over the Chinese(that love lying). He knows it, and sends you a report of the QA of your specific machine.
So does it feel like this is the first genuinely plug and play 3D printer...? That's always been one of the things that puts me off, I don't want to have to learn so much...
I'd say the MK3S printer is like 75% plug and play. (For reference, I consider current wireless "2d" paper printers to be 100% plug and play now).
You will eventually need to do maintenance on it, you'll eventually have a clog or a broke part or need to do some slightly technical stuff to fix an eventual problem, but most adults capable of building Ikea furniture should be able to follow instructions and do it.
I'm assuming this will be closer to 85% "plug and play". Things like the "one click print", color screen, WiFi and automatic firmware updates are the biggest nice to haves.
But I don't think they've gotten to the point where you'll have reliability similar to a normal "2d" paper printer, so at some point you'll need to take some stuff apart to unclog it. But that's about the extent of the technical needs I'd expect from this printer.
Maybe, but quality is hard to measure. I just bought a Creality Ender 3 Pro for $180 and the print quality looks as good as anything I've seen from a Prusa or even the Ultimaker at my university. It's got a larger build volume than this mini as well. It doesn't have some of the comfort features, such as auto bed leveling or wifi, but if you really want these you can add them in and still be under the price of this mini, not to mention that the cantilevered design of the mini is almost certainly less stiff than the i3 style on the Ender 3.
Its the parent who is clearly marketing different product in multiple comments around the thread. I was just annoyed that i had to read thrid comment about how great differend product is
If you're worried about abuse on HN, like astroturfing and so on, please email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. That's also what the site guidelines ask you to do. Make sure to include specific links. I took a quick look at the commenter's history and didn't see the kind of thing you're talking about here, but it's always possible I missed something.
> I'm glad that prusa has stayed true to his open hardware pledge all these years, while continuing to push the reprap ideals.
He truly believes it. Not only that, but his left arm has the Open Source Hardware logo tattooed with honeycomb infill :)
I've been there and saw his progress from the beginning. I was at the first MRRF, and he flew in from Prague. Back then, I had my Prusa i2 printer, designed by him to use 8mm threaded rod with a simple 3d prints to make your own printer.
The price is going to slay all Chinese crap makers. I always wanted mk3 but never had a big enough reason to buy, now I can justify it. It's the printer I will buy :)
It’s not. I bought an Creality Ender 3 recently for a lot less than that (152 GBP next day in UK) and the thing is perfect. It is also entirely open source.
1. They use crappy MOSFETs that are known to fail closed. This means you can get a runaway heat on your hotend. A 40w cartridge can melt the alu heatspreader
2. The beds are anemic for heating. Not enough power
3. Crappy steppers
4. No features for jam detection, autoleveling, skipped step protection, filament runout
5. "Chinese" quality: good luck in getting any sort of tech support. Once they have your money, you're fucked.
I'm fighting right now with Pine64 over defective eMMC modules that ignore the first read, causing initrd to fail to boot. Of course, they were chatty on Twitter prior to purchase, but have ignored every way of contact AFTER purchase. But pretty much every Chinese company is like this.
Note: former EE. I’ve taken it and the provided power supply to bits before I even fired it up.
1. They’re IRLR3103PBF operated within their SOA. They’re fine. Most MOSFETs fail short due to the construction of the MOSFET. I’ve actually got a few scars on my arms from the buggers exploding on me misusing them on purpose as RF PA’s as a ham. I’ve seen them blow up in various bits of expensive US made kit too (tektronix 22xx in particular grr)
2. I’ve had absolutely no problems at all with mine and adhesion.
3. A decent stepper costs as much as a Prusa i3. All the steppers at this price are crap. But they work pretty damn well.
4. These are luxuries really. If it jams the Bowden tube pops out and you clean it up and off you go. I levelled it in 3 mins myself. Skipped step I’m not sure if the scenario. Filament run out doesn’t happen if you pay attention to the Cura filament length and don’t try to wing using up the ass end of a roll.
5. I’m not paying for support. I’ll fix it myself. I’m quite handy with a screwdriver, a compiler and a soldering iron. The thing is just an AVR running open source firmware. Nothing complex.
The main thing is I can get functional chunks of spare parts for this next day via eBay.
As for comparing Chinese support to US support, I’ve had better luck out of the worst Chinese company than Microsoft and Apple.
This sort of attitude ignores the fact that a lot of people would rather spend time designing things and prototyping, rather than fix their printer.
I had the experience of getting and assembling a Prusa MK3 kit for myself, and getting access to a cheap Chinese printer at roughly the same time.
The Prusa cost more than twice as much and I've already made upgrades. Worked correctly right after assembly. I've already gone through several kilos of successful prints. And the frills just make it so much nicer to use: spring steel bed, auto mesh leveling, the Prusa fork of Slic3r just keeps getting better and better.
The Chinese printer required you to attach the gantry to the bed. But after weeks of tweaking. It still doesn't work correctly. It's completed prints. But none of them have been of decent quality. Now, some of the Chinese printers appear to be good. But do yourself a favour and research the specific models if you want to buy one.
Otherwise, if you really care about designing and prototyping, spend the extra cash and spend more time making things. There are a few brands out there. I reckon Prusa has the best kits if you swing that way.
I think I’ve spent less time debugging it and having software issues than my HP 3636 inkjet though. I care about the result more than the fettling and it does me well.
I have an Ender 3 Pro, it's seen little use and I regret the purchase despite enjoying using our office 3D printers (Taz)
It's just too finicky. Too many odd issues with jams, adhesion. I left it sitting for a while and for some reason when I came back to use it I had to play with the belt adjustment. The magnetic bed doesn't align properly so you need to intentionally line it up in a way that doesn't cleanly overlap the metal base.
And I'll admit recently there's a trend of Chinese companies in the space actually working on conscious iterative design based on feedback, especially Creality... but it's still obvious they're just reacting to whatever pops up, instead of trying to get ahead of what people want (which Prusa excels at)
Creality tried tried to fix the fan issue everyone complained about (fan exposed to dust and filament refuse) in the Ender 3... by mounting the board upside down with the fan mounted on the bottom millimeters away from your work surface. Which made any modifications that needed access to the board a massive headache (I actually didn't bother putting back half the screws, since to access them you need to put the entire machine on it's side... )
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Long story short, when I want to print something, I want to know, this thing will be ready to go. The hard part should be designing it, if I can't rely on the printer to just work™ when the motivation is there, I just don't bother.
And this is someone who likes to tinker, it's just when I want to tinker on X, I don't want tinkering on Y to get in the way.
I think he is referring to a step motor controller as a "stepper". People love the fact that Prusa uses Trinamic drivers instead of no-name drivers.
I personally don't understand why step motor control is something that needs to be outsourced. Just stick an H-bridge between the microcontroller and the motor and improve the control algorithm with every release.
The typical H bridge has many failure modes and disadvantages which are handled by the controller ICs. Not to mention a lot less CPU overhead for the AVR running the show.
Yeah, you can get some feedback from the controllers easily (and then omit physical endstops).
I am waiting for a 3D printer that uses servo motors, though. So many failed prints come from not knowing where the extruder is. But you can just measure exactly where it is, rather than guessing based on how much current the motor used.
> 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.
I don't really agree with that argument from a humanitarian perspective. That would simply further increase the vast economic inequality between the west and the rest. Even with lower wages, people in China are better off with more jobs than fewer. People in the Czech Republic for instance have more safety nets, more alternatives and opportunities.
Let China put it's people to work. They have lots to do.
Making products locally maintains a higher standard of living and can limit dependencies on others.
Not doing that takes a nations to largely service economy status and when that matures the standard of living declines, infrastructure development slows or stops, tax revenue goes down, and demand for new products gets tepid.
In short terms, the boost from cheap stuff is nice. As wages flatten, that cheap stuff becomes not so cheap and improving income more difficult.
Price seems totally reasonable to me. Whenever I research the cheaper printers, I read about all the upgrades people have to implement. This ends up costing more time and $$.
Can’t agree more. I bought a Creality Ender 3, and added since: a new bed plate, a leveling sensor, a raspberry pi to control it
For the future, I know I’ll replace the fans, and probably the main board
That’s without adding my time: updating the firmware (overheating protection seems cool), calibrating and configuration of the various bit (like the probe position relative to the hot end), finding the correct slicer and config for it.
Now it works fine.
Still, it cost me way more than the list price to get to this point. A prusa mini would have been a better investment !
> we should strive to have more of our stuff produced in the west
Why exactly is it preferable to favor "the west" over other places? These types of statements read a lot like "us vs them" to me. What makes "the west" an intrinsically morally better source for products?
As j-pb mentioned in the immediately preceding sentences: "the west" comes with the assumption that people working on the product have reasonably good living and working conditions, protected by law that is most probably not too cheated on through corruption. Whereas for goods produced in "the east", the usual assumption seems to be that it's the opposite, that the workers are most probably being taken advantage of.
The price is great for what it does. I've had a Wanhao for years and love it, but all the features of the new Prusa aren't to be laughed at. I would love automatic bed leveling, because leveling is annoying enough that I would pay to have it done. All the rest is great too, mainly built-in wifi (though I'd probably run Octoprint anyway).
You aren't just providing jobs, you are also providing tax revenues. So I guess if you don't see any issue giving money to the Chinese government, then choose the cheapest.
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.
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:
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.
There's no FDM filament that you should be breathing around while printing, even regular old PLA, PETG, etc. ASA is about as bad as ABS is though, from my understanding.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 $300" I can get. The most common answer is something like "try not to scrimp and get the Prusa instead." That's a fairly tone deaf answer to someone truly budget constrained, though if the price is double their budget. But for an extra fifty bucks--that's a no brainer.
Print jobs can easily go 24 hours and fires are fairly catastrophic. I think Prusa just hit the ball out of the park with this pricepoint and approach assuming they are using their usual reliable, vetted components. I have never seen a report of a fire with a Prusa.
I own the model before this as well as Prusa Mk3. They are both wonderful. Now that Prusa Mini is out, it will probably be the printer of recommendation due to it being open source over the MP Mini.
> I have never seen a report of a fire with a Prusa.
Tbf, that really depends on the market share. In the interwebs, I've read a total of 3 - 5 reports of printers catching fire. Now, if 20% of the 3D printers are Prusas, then the rest are chinese ones, which come all with the same bad components. There is not much surprise here, at least for me.
Despite from that, the groups I know usually go like "Yeah, get a CoreXY printer instead. Moving the printbed constantly in XY direction isn't a good idea."
I agree it is hard to judge based on anecdotes, but we know Enders have had specific issues that increase fire risk. E.g. thermal runaway protection disabled by default, XT60 connectors with bad connections, defective MOSFETs.
I saw someone burn their house down with a high quality Weller soldering iron. Anything with a thermal control loop of some sort is potentially dangerous and should not be left unattended. Lest you get home to a pile of ash one day.
I'm legitimately regretting my Ender 3 purchase after seeing this printer. It should decimate the Ender 3 if there's a real future to FDM...
My Ender 3 Pro cost 230$ and came with a magnetic bed.
Added about 30$ for Automatic Bed Leveling.
Adding a 32-bit board would cost at least what? 50$? (
The stock Ender 3 board has so little memory I had to remove LCD support to get Unified Bed Leveling working)
Max quoted hotend temp is 280 °C so unless Prusa is condoning heating up PTFE to life threatening temperatures it has an all-metal hotend, so another 30$ for a middle of the road one?
Adding steppers... I think we've hit what the Prusa costs, except you hacked together this kit so now it's on you to support it, and also the prices I listed are not for high quality parts.
Then there's just the fact, Prusa will make a 3d printer that just works, and if it doesn't just work, they'll make it right. Good luck if that 50$ Aliexpress-sourced 32 bit board conks out, and have fun tearing it down and returning it to stock if Creality wants to help you out.
This printer represents careful design and good support, I'm going to try and get rid of my Ender 3 immediately and get one of these.
I wanted a Prusa originally but didn't feel like sinking the money into a proper printer when I didn't know I was going to use it. Instead I ended up with something I'm not using because it never works correctly and has actively damned my enthusiasm for FDM...
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.
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?
I make a lot of stuff from scratch and a 3D printer is an excellent way to quickly test if something is going to work or not in practice. Also: musical instrument parts, prototype machinery, replacement bits for old gear that you can't buy anymore. It's the sort of thing that you use more and more the longer you have it because you see applications that you never dreamed off before getting it.
You won't be using it make your own chair (or at least, you probably shouldn't) and you won't be mass marketing anything 3D printed nor will you compete in the marketplace with anything that can be injection molded or stamped.
But for a quick one-off part if beats whittling out of a piece of wood by quite a distance.
On another note: soldering irons and hammers are also not for everybody, some people will never get the hang of fabrication. But once you are in the group that likes to make stuff 3D printers are just one more option in the tool arsenal.
I’m using mine to produce enclosures, replacement parts and new mechanical parts for my other interests. As well as printing things for the kids who have an endless stream of ideas. It turned into an unexpected family activity. Finishing and painting stuff is fun too.
Genuinely if you are a creative person it’s an excellent tool to extend your abilities.
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.
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.
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.
Everyone does not need a printer. A creative professional like an architect, engineer, electrician, decorator, wood worker, they absolutely need it.
Mass marketed are always cheaper and most of the time better. True.
So why creative professionals need it? Because not everything they need its mass marketted. In fact, one of the best uses is joining two mass marketted things together to create a system.
3d printing is fantastic for joining the gaps that exist between what exist in the market and exactly what you need.
Imagine you are an engineer creating a flight simulator hardware machine, or a driving simulator with VR. You probably will buy the chair, but then you will have to adapt it some way to your structure of soldered beams.
You can spend like 600 euros mechanizing and soldering little metal pieces and wait something like a month for those that make it to make it. Or you could print them and spend like 25 euros and have it ready at the end of the day, look at the problems in the design, iterate.
PS: Another very important thing is that when you talk with an artisan to make your pieces it is craftsmanship.
You need to explain to the artisan what you need done. This person has to understand you. This take time and money.
The effort I make explaining what I need to an artisan is completely lost if I change the artisan.
With a 3D printer, you create a design that is a product in itself. It can be repeated ad infinitum. The work I do today improving the design is work I will not have to do tomorrow.
I routinely send designs to people living 2000 miles away. They print it and can play with it the same day.
There is an ancient and effective standard interface for artisans. It's called technical drawing. If you spend the time defining your part in those terms you can scale manufacturing and have redundant suppliers. Further, these days to many fabricators you can send 3D models instead of the drawings. For product design exceeding tiny quantities, such an approach offers benefits over non-scalable self-fabrication with unprofessional tooling that will ultimately limit your access to a broader range of fabrication processes and materials. I've banned 3D printers in our office for that reason. We occasionally 3D print outside, but more often these days just get metal CNC'd.
I don't think everybody _needs_ one but they're extremely handy to have, especially when you want something very particular, like a missing part of a cheap tool, a new handle for a particular broom, a doorstop that works with your weird door, plastic feet that fit your specific furniture or a desk organizer that's the specific size needed for your desk.
And even if mass a produced version of these things would be cheaper/better, often you just won't be able to find it.
This will sound frivolous and ridiculous, but I have a toddler with constantly changing tastes and it's a nice way to be able to engage with and encourage their interests. For example, cars have been a huge deal lately, and being able to 1) print a bunch of logos for room decorations and 2) put the logos in areas that the kiddo finds onerous to encourage them to go there (e.g. How many cars can you name while we get changed for preschool) has been a life saver.
Plus it's nice to be the hero around the house when I can solve random maintenance problems with a quick search on Thingiverse or a couple of hours of designing and printing. Not sure it has literally paid for itself since I got one, but it has definitely be more useful than I expected and I would say it has been borderline indispensable for my household.
"Everyone" doesn't. If you don't make things, don't buy tools.
Metaphorically, you're comparing buying a radio to buying a piano. If you just want to listen to music, buying a piano is a very inefficient step to your goal.
I'm a sculptor who specializes in math and physics visualizations, I have two Prusa printers and they are invaluable tools for me. I 3D print a lot of sculpture parts and things like sculpture bases that would be difficult and time consuming to make on a milling machine (grids of tapered square holes, etc), in addition to lots and lots of tooling like jigs for setting the back stop on my model railroad chopper to precise lengths.
I love my two printers. They enable me to achieve the kind of computer precision my artwork requires in a way I don't know I'd be able to achieve otherwise, at least not in such a short amount of time.
Not everyone needs a printer - but an easy to use, reliable and relatively affordable printer is more suitable for "everyone", not just people that enjoy "fiddling with my 3D printer" as a side-hobby or can/want to afford expensive ones. I interpret the article as meaning it that way.
E.g. a 3D printer can be great for all kinds of creative hobbies.
There are a ton of online services that allow you to order 3d printed parts from your own designs. The quality will likely be much higher than what you can print at home as well.
Even as a person with zero 3D modeling skills, I like making a printer because it lets me make little knick-knacks of things that aren't popular enough to warrant actual toys but someone bothered to model and put up on Thingiverse.
I bought a 3d printer when I got a hiring bonus for referring a friend. I had played around with one before but a nice turn key one was the real trigger I needed. I bought it without really knowing what all I'd do with it.
I make all sorts of things:
I work for twitch (built bits product initially), so I print a few hundred bits to give out at twitch con for my coworkers, it's a fun thing for them (I expense the plastic).
I needed to replace a bunch of boards on my deck and the dimensions of dimensional lumber have changed. So I could either pay $400 + cost of lumber to get boards cut correctly, or I could pay $175 for the lumber and print abs Shims to make the lumber the correct thickness. Shims at market price were around $75. I was able to iterate on a design and print the 80 shims I needed for about $3 worth of ABS plastic.
I also really enjoy solving problems with the printer in a pretty clean way compared to getting out in the shop. I can, in between matches of dota or pubg, iterate a design and hit print. A match or 3 later I've got a part, or a sub part (mating surfaces) done.
They're also amazing for coming up with templates for making parts out of more time consuming materials like well anything. I can cad a design up in seconds to minutes and hit print. That will get me a part that I can see if it fits. Even wood takes as long as the cad step. And you can iterate a ton.
Another good use case is enclosures and mounts for arduino and ESP32 projects. Lots of little lego parts of eletroics that need to be wired together. Getting them into a reasonable form factor usually requires hot glue and tape to make a shitty ball that's hard to work with, or leaving it on a breadboard which isn't a great form factor, or making a printed enclosure which can hit most of your needs. These can take longer, like 10 hours of iteration but that's amazingly faster than most other methods.
My friend makes furniture. I bought him a printer and he prototypes pieces on the printer. Makes full mockups of living room parts to give to potential customers.
My son does dnd, we print figurines all the time, they're fun weekend projects. He made and painted an infinity gauntlet over the summer which looks pretty sweet.
Have I gotten the $2k out of the printer in absolute value and replacement over mass produced products? No. Maybe about $700 worth of savings there. If you add the DND figures maybe $1000.
If you add the cost of learning, hobbies, time with family, and offsetting iteration and time spent with turn key manufactureres working on a prototype, yes, prolly at least $10k of value (that I wouldn't have spent otherwise).
At the end of the day, for not much space, it makes a lot of physical projects feasible mostly relying on just the computer for the design space.
I use mine for designing and building robot parts. I can design, print, and test like 5 different component designs per day. The difference this makes in quality of construction is insane. Even if I had a full tool tool shop I wouldn't be able to iterate like this. It's truly incredible.
No everyone needs a 3d printer for sure. A big part of what stopped the idea that 3d printing would be this magical revolution is that designing plastic parts is actually fairly hard.
I don't use my 3d printer to 'fix' things around the house that often because it's frequently cheaper to work around it or buy a replacement. The times a high-value item breaks in a way I can fix with a printed part are rare enough it certainly doesn't justify owning one.
That said, if you really like designing mechanical things or working on electronics projects or similar, a 3d printer is a total blast. I'm currently using mine to make molds for real ceramic parts.
It's a pretty straightforward, the same technique that's used industrially for most common ceramic production. I 3D print mold positives that then get cast in plaster. That plaster is used as part of a 'slipcasting' process:
I'm using standard high-fire (cone 10) ceramic slips that I mix from raw powder. They are fired to ~1300 C in a small electric kiln (although it's a particularly well insulated one so it can go all the way to cone 10 without too much trouble).
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.
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.
The vast majority of housefires caused by 3D printers are caused by the budget printers coming out of China. It's a real issue, and it's cost people their homes and their possessions. The Anet A8 in particular has been very bad about this. The Creality CR-10 had some issues as well. The Ender 3 that several people have referred to in here has some additional protections, especially with the newest firmware, but I would be hesitant with the track record and huge lag time on putting thermal runway protection into their devices.
I don't think anyone is saying that China is incapable of creating high quality products - they very obviously are. But being capable of doing something doesn't mean that that is the product strategy being employed, or that if it is being employed, that it's the only or most popular one.
I would absolutely trust a 3D printer manufactured in China from a company that used quality component and put thought into safety from the start. I've put my money where my mouth is, and own a Milkshake3D (granted, it is an SLA printer and not FDM.) But I wouldn't purchase one of the budget FDM printers manufactured in China at this point in time. If Creality's printers look to hold up well with the new protections, I might reconsider them in the future.
I made a comment referencing Chinese companies on this page...
It has nothing to do with racism, there's an obvious strategy most of them shared in the 3d printer space, and that was slap their name on a random 3d printer using the cheapest possible materials to get to a feature list
Search and see how many no-name printers are using exactly the same displays and various bits from the "named" Chinese sourced 3d printers.
There are definitely companies in China being more selective than average now. Creality printers started off looking just like no name copies with slight changes, but they've been starting to innovate a bit more of late.
But it's not at all shocking, or racist, that people would group a market that operates in a certain way.
It's no more racist than saying SV tech companies vs Eastern European tech companies, we know they have differing cultures
"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."
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.
> 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...
>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.
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...
> We outsource to China because they're damned good at manufacturing.
They are now. They were not when outsourcing began.
And that amazing "supply chain" relies on the fact that the West consumes large amounts of expensive consumer goods continuously. Consequently, the parts flow continuously and are consumed without need for inventory. If manufacturers start moving out of China, the parts flow will stop, inventory will back up, and the supply chain will dry up and blow away post haste as everybody heads for the door to avoid being the one holding the bag.
Many things in manufacturing rely on flywheel inertia to keep going. When the flywheel hiccups, the stuff upstream crashes to a halt.
This comment misses the point I made entirely. People are making gross over generalizations about "The Chinese". I made no statements about consumerism, authoritarianism, or capitalism. Apple products could come out of anywhere (but they don't, they come from China), I use that example as a counterpoint to people talking about "what The Chinese" are capable of. Your quotes around the text are supposed to be done in my voice? No thanks.
If Uganda or Bangladesh or Libya could make and export vast quantities of cheap consumer electronics, they would. China exports lots of cheap crappy 3d printers because they're the only country on earth with the industrial capacity to make lots of cheap crappy 3d printers. Most of the expensive non-crappy 3d printers are still made in China, because China is really good at making stuff.
Oh, I agree - I don't think Chinese companies make cheap crappy things because they can't make good things. There are clearly many world-class Chinese companies (DJI springs to mind, their stuff is unmatched.)
From what I can see, the issue seems to be lack of trust between companies. If you never know whether you're going to get what you paid for, then the only way to distinguish between suppliers is price and it becomes a race to the bottom.
This lines up with the fact that most high end Chinese companies seem to be vertically integrated monoliths, which own the entire supply chain and so can control quality.
These threads are always a strange and uncomfortable bridge between valid criticism (many products made in China are cheap and break easily, the Chinese government uncomfortably authoritarian) and actual racism ("the Chinese" only make cheap shit, Chinese don't care about freedom).
...your "valid criticism" will never escape the constraints of orientalism. racism is not a phenomenon of the individual, it's a class phenomenon owing its modern form to imperialism. racism is the crystallization of chauvinism among those classes who benefit from imperialist policy. words like "authoritarian" are taken for granted even though they have a priori definitions and they absolutely come out of the hegemony of these racist classes. sober study of the real is counterproductive or even impossible for these classes. instead, the labor aristocracy (to which all the users of this site belong) speaks from the soul: "the chinese way of life is incompatible with our democracy." nothing new here. the imperialist class proper happens to agree (https://twitter.com/chinfo/status/1182610604353376257)
Damn I never thought I would run into a tankie on HN. Neat.
Your criticism isn't totally invalid (if unreadable), but not everything is reducible to class. Stop reading weird blogs about how socialist China is and get outside and do some real activism. Sitting around hoping Xie is going to magically do socialism by 2035 isn't praxis.
it doesn't matter if china is socialist or not. no one here actually cares about that. posting anonymously on the internet is clinical for me just like it's clinical for you.
Why do you think I have imperial interests? Is it because you think everyone does? If everyone does, does that mean you do? In that case, what is the answer? Do we just wait around until China somehow out-imperials the US and not be critical of anything? Then, do you think that will really be better?
i come here occasionally to discover the ideological tendencies of programmers (particularly those in the first world proper) because i am objectively part of that globally privileged class. i'm trying to see if this helps me to navigate the day-to-day contradictions between trying to lead a reasonably comfortable life with my family while also working to sincerely study political economy and perhaps also protect those within arm's reach who are endangered by the US. if i post it's because i'm working something out with myself and just playing around with ideas. not a single person will be persuaded by me. but provoking people like you may be instructional, i'm not sure. like i said this is clinical
how about you? why are you spending your weekend telling anonymous tankies to go outside?
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.
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?
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.
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!
Having just built a MK3S and not having done much printing before, it was nice to see just what kind of things you could build. The level of detail, how to design the parts that need to be somewhat strong etc.
Another point is that it allows you to print spare parts for your own or a friends printer if something breaks, or print upgraded parts if they tweak the design.
I was interested in upgrading my 3d printer to a prusa model.. but... the having the parts being built to subpar-precision using a FDM printer in a Czech 3d printer cluster didn't seem super exciting in itself...
>having the parts being built to subpar-precision using a FDM printer in a Czech 3d printer cluster didn't seem super exciting in itself...
None of the parts need to have tighter tolerances or higher precision for the Prusa printers to work well.
The fact of the matter is, print quality on basically any FDM printer out there can be dialed in and be really damn close. Even on the cheaper ones. The differences are more on print speed, bed leveling, crash/out of filament/etc. detection, recovery after power loss, etc. And none of those are affected by whether or not the plastic was injection molded or 3D printed.
In exchange, they gain a lot of dogfooding on their designs, including through physical and software upgrades, etc. They get to do a lot of testing on how well things like their powder coated sheets hold up to extended workhorse levels of printing.
And yes, some of it is a bit of marketing - Our printers are so good, we print them on themselves! - and the adhering to the whole RepRap movement, but there are a lot of benefits that they clearly believe outweigh the downsides.
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.
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.
But,I will say that my creality has been a bucket of pain, to the point where I almost exclusively use my prusa these days. So perhaps that's reason to hope this is more than just a crappy bargain basement printer warmed over.
One of the ways Prusa gets the quality they have is that they run a massive print-farm of their own printers to print the parts so they get to see all the issues up close. Printing the parts also makes them upgradeable and home-fixable for end-users.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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...
I've literally never firmware updated my Prusa and it works totally fine. This is a bit of a bizarre nitpick. Hell, you can build your own firmware if you really care that much.
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!)
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.