Over Hyped & Priced or Worth The Money? - Prusa Mini +

so i reached out to parusha to see if they were willing to work with me in my channel and they sent me this which is their prusa mini plus so let's open it up put it together and see if it's worth all the hype that everyone gives these machines and just so you know i've never used any of the products from prusa so this will show my first hand experience and what i think of it all so this is something i've never seen with other printers it's a printed quality control test list and when it comes to the parts inside the box everything is nicely packed inside of its own bag and it's labeled and it did come with some sample filament which with most printers it's the cheapest pla they can get but this is their own brand which i know is pretty good there's also a bag of all the tools and parts you're going to need to assemble this along with some spare parts they've also included some gummy bears to snack on as you're building the printer there's also a handbook assembly manual and there's an absolute ton of pages in this compared to other printers i've gotten along with some stickers in the back and this is the build surface for this printer and you might notice it is pretty small but it is a nice steel sheet with pei on both sides and this is only 180 by 180 millimeters or 7x7 inches but anyways back in the box it comes with its own usb drive and then underneath this cardboard flap there's the lcd screen along with the first bits of foam and i'm kind of surprised this whole box wasn't just filled with different layers of foam in it and it's actually nice to see that it's mostly cardboard especially the foam being kind of hard to get rid of but underneath all that we have the main 3d printer parts and they're just housed in a thin layer of protective foam and with everything out of the box i actually start putting this thing together and surprisingly the only assembly i have to do is about four bolts along with some little foam feet that just stick on the bottom there's five of them in total they're going to use and four of them go onto this piece on the ends of the aluminum extrusion and just one over here in the hole that is shaped like it on the other side of this piece you do have to remove a bolt to get this cover off because we're gonna have to get in here to plug some stuff in and here's a closer look at the main board after it's all opened up so here's the display and the ribbon cable for it that we're going to plug into the main board and this is not a touch screen you're going to be using a dial for this for that ribbon cable just goes through the side of the box and plugs in right here and then it just kind of runs underneath this unit and then i could just line up the two pieces and bolt them together and this can be a little finicky seeing that the mounting points can move if they're not on the right spot you can move them with an allen key so with the entire machine flipped up on its side there's this connector that i need to plug in for the y-axis stepper motor and this needs to go up through this hole in the case and it's real tight in here so i'm using some tweezers to actually pull this all the way through but with all of it in the case i need to plug it in right here and again because it's pretty tight right here i'm going to use the tweezers to put it in place and it's just one bolt to install the display and just don't over tighten it and this is going to be pivotable and the only thing left for the display is to attach the ribbon cable to it and tuck it into the machine the last things we need to plug in are the connections for the bed and the larger one is really easy to plug in and the smaller one i just use the tweezers like i did before then just reinstall the cover and screw it back on and make sure you don't pinch any of the wires and the build surface is magnetic so it just kind of sticks in place and this is the spool holder let me put it together real quick and this is a simple little thing made out of bearings nuts and bolts and some 3d printed parts and it's also size adjustable so it should work with any roll of filament this just happens to be a roll of asa from prusa that i'll be trying out later in the video but for the first couple prints and the setup i'm going to be using the supplied filament and all i have left to do is plug in the usb and turn it on and it looks like it's working and now it's verifying and loading and i need to pick my language and this is definitely something i'm not used to a setup wizard so i'm going to work my way through this and i guess it's going to just test the machine overall and make sure everything's working which this is pretty interesting seeing i just normally home my printer to make sure everything's moving right and then have to manually test everything else it's also heating up the bed and nozzle to check those and with all of that done i can finally load up some filament and i'll be using the galaxy black stuff that they supplied with this and then just go to load and pick what material i'm using and as soon as i push continue it quickly loads up the machine and then starts heating up to do an automatic purge so finally after all that i can start doing sort of a print this is going to set up the auto bed leveling and my first layer so i can adjust my z offset and it'll just start printing and you have to use the knob to adjust it down to the right point and as you can see it started off way off of where it needed to be but it does this little zigzag pattern pretty slow so it gives you plenty of time to adjust and at the very end of the pattern it does a solid piece so you can see if everything is sticking together or if you still need to go down a little bit more and once this is all finished it'll give you the option to go back and redo this so you can get it fine or tuned or you can go on and that's pretty much the end of the entire setup process and we can finally start actually using the printer so i'm just going to go to print and there's a bunch of pre-sliced files on here i'm just going to go to the benchy one and it's really nice to see that it shows a picture of it this is going to take a little over two hours to print so we'll start it now and here's a quick time lapse of the entire process nothing special but here it is and here it is all done it has the tiniest bit of stringing on it that i wouldn't even count as stringing but it looks like it came out pretty good and to get it off the build plate i'm just going to flex it and it should just pop right off and here's a look at the text underneath the boat and on the back and a quick tip to get rid of those little stringy bits just use a tortoise heat gun on it real quick and they'll pretty much just disappear so i'm going to use some pla from mater hackers and pick a different test print and see how this turns out seeing that the settings for these are probably sliced for their own pla but here's the finished frog and it looks pretty good until you look a little bit closer at the finish there's a bunch of little bubbles or under extrusions all through this but i don't think it's actually the printer's fault this filament has been sitting out for a couple months and it's been really humid so i think i might have a little bit of water in here so i switch the filament out to the other supplied one and reprinted the frog using the same g-code and you can see it came out flawless so it's definitely a problem with my filament so i'm going to throw it into a dehydrator for about six hours to make sure to remove any of the water that could be stored in it and while i'm doing that i might as well check out the prusa slicer seeing that i've never used it and it was pretty easy to slice this model nothing is in the places where i think it would be because i'm used to using cura all the time but it was easy enough and when it comes to printing this little battery box i'm going to use some silk copper pla and i'm going to use it in this dryer box and about nine hours later here it is and it looks really clean besides right at the top of this it has those same little bubbles or tiny bits of under extrusion but even with that it's totally usable and this was printed without support so there's a little bit of droopage right here but everything else looks great so now i'm going to try out the asa and see how well it's going to print seeing that it prints at a much higher temperature and it can also warp and it's not the easiest thing to print without an enclosure to keep all the heat in so for now i'm just going to print something small like this clip and i'm also printing it from the heated dryer box and the print quality of the clip came out really nice and it's flexible to a point and i'll have to do more printing with this once i get an enclosure setup so after all this what do i think of this printer it's actually a lot better than i thought it was going to be to be honest it probably has one of the best user experiences that i've experienced with a 3d printer and i can see why people use these for business there's no real fiddling with it it just kind of works out of the box and all the controls are extremely simple so it kind of reminds me of the whole iphone situation where they're so simple and easy to use anyone can do it but they also come with a much higher price tag and you're basically trading the time savings for money because the partially assembled version of this printer is 459 dollars and with shipping it's 508 dollars not including any tax which is pretty pricey for the small build volume you're going to be getting with this and to put into perspective you can buy three enter threes for the same price but you're going to run into quality control problems and to get them up to the same printability as this you're going to have to learn how to tinker with them and mess with settings to get everything just right which means buying new parts and after doing a bunch of upgrades to these you're going to end up spending about the same amount of money just over a longer period of time and i say this from experience because i have 6 ender 3 printers that cost about the same as the mini after all the upgrades and now i totally understand the people that swear by the purusha brand and i'm gonna have to be very careful if they send me an mk 3s plus because it might make me want to sell off all of my other printers and replace them with these but those are just my thoughts on everything if you're looking for anything i used or talked about in this video i'll have links in the description and let me know in the comments what printers you have and what you're using them for well that's just about it for this video so i'll see you guys next time bye

Channel: Randy May

Views: 62,622

Keywords: diy, tech, rgb, led, Arduino, DIY, 3d printed, prusa mini review, prusa mini, prusa mini plus, prusa mini vs ender 3, best 3d printer, 3d printer, 3d print, 3d printing for beginners, prusa mk3s, prusa mini unboxing, prusa research, 3d printing time lapse, prusa 3d printer mini, best 3d printer 2022, best 3d printer for beginners, best 3d printer under 500, best 3d printer for cosplay, best 3d printer 2022 for beginners, diy halloween decorations, prusa mini assembly

Id: Oh_JzTCJOSs

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 25 2022