It moves!

After much much failure, I have it able to move. The Y belt seems really loose, near impossible to fix, the gantry is a bit stiff, but it's moving. I'm not going easy on this printer, and going for Voron speed right out of the gate the first print. It's by no means done. Enclosure is still not on, y belt is skipping, parts are missing here and there, but it can at least print the rest of it's upgrades if I tame it in. There will be at least a few more follow up posts as I'm looking into some upgrades that can solve some issues. So far I'm printing the Y belt mod found here. That should help me get better acceleration, but I'll need to wait to see until belts come in. The parts are printed. I also printed a temporary solution to not wanting to solder the bed connectors, which I think looks nice enough for now.

It's getting closer!

This has truly been a learning experience in things that should be obvious, but aren't when you are in the middle of things. Crimping the connectors has been nothing but a pain, so for now, I soldered most of them on the toolhead, which I'm sure I'll regret later, and by later, I mean almost instantly. I've torn the entire toolhead down at least 10 times due to small issues here and there. The probe was installed too high, the extruder had a few issues once I looked at it, the list goes on, but with each teardown, I learn a bit about the toolhead, and it gets easier. Firmware is flashed, wired up to test, but I'm out of time, and I didn't bother to cable manage too much because I'm sure I'll have to rewire it all eventually.

Slowly but surely

I don't have a lot of time today to work on the printer, but I managed to install the toolhead. It's not really wired, but it's on the X carriage, which is also installed. I also got the drag chains on, display attached, and a few other things. Planning on hammering out wiring tomorrow to see if it will live or die. Time will tell. I'm bound to destroy something.

It's finally revealed

It's been a while since I've posted, and I'm sure you wonder what I've been up to. The Prusa Mini has been working overtime, printing every waking hour, failing a lot because ASA is hard to print on a Mini (for me at least), and it's time to reveal what it's all been about. Without further ado...

Your shell is bad, but doesn't have to be

I get a lot of questions on why I use a shell as opposed to a GUI for things. A shell is often annoying to do some basic things even if it's much more powerful and generally a tradeoff. Deleting all files ending in .txt is hard in a gui, but in a shell is just rm *.txt. Meanwhile, going up a directory in a gui is easy. Just hit the back button on the mouse. In a shell it's cd .. which is a lot to type for something so simple. Another common issue that I had was different operating systems or even Linux distros having different commands to do basically the same thing. On Debian it's sudo apt install <package> and Mac it's brew install <package>. This gets quite annoying to have to remember what system you are on, and understand the differences in them.

Hard to print, but rewarding

ASA is not at all like PLA. It's much stronger, resists temperature higher than 50c, and unlike ABS, it's even UV resistant. I wanted to start printing things that were able to be much stronger, and even mechanical. Gears, motor mounts, things near a printer's hotend, and much more will do much better out of ASA than they would out of something like PLA. ASA is much like ABS in regards to how it's harder to print. It has a tendency to warp when the surrounding air is under 50c because of the large difference between the printing temperature and the cooled temperature. Bed adhesion is also something to consider to help prevent warping. This is where I learned my first lesson with ASA. It really loves to stick to PEI sheets like the Prusa Mini has.

How I got here.

I'll be flat out here. Every one of these was done for fun. This printer is amazing out of the box, and while some can help print quality, done were done with the intent of getting better print quality unless otherwise noted.

Really pretty, easy to use

This filament looks absolutely stunning. I've printed keyboard cases, mac mini stand, mouse stand, and much more with this filament. It was absolutely perfect right out of the box on my Prusa Mini with settings available right in Prusa Slicer and there's really not much to say. PLA, as always, isn't great for mechanical applications, but is great at details on things that are used mostly for looks. If you just want something sitting around looking nice, this is a great choice.

Examples

Really pretty, hard to use

This filament has been the opposite experience of Galaxy Black PLA. Issues after issues getting it to stick, stringing was really bad, and details were lacking. That said, I did get some prints to work after much trial and error, and much of the issue with to do with Prusa's own textured sheet that was recommended for this. It is not safe to use on the smooth sheet as it will stick too well, but the textured sheet was the opposite. Prints not sticking, or breaking off constantly. Smaller prints normally needed to be fast, or use a brim, and large prints were able to stick if the first layer stuck. Once the print was done, on the rare print that did complete, stringing was rampant, and needed cleaned on every print. PETG is supposed to be better for structural components than PLA, but I found small pieces to break just as easily, and the heat deflection temperature is only 50c on PETG, so I can't recommend it. The main selling point of PETG was supposed to be that it was easy to print, and not give off toxic fumes like ABS/ASA and other similar materials, but it's been anything but easy to print. If you have tried PETG, and not had issue, and you don't have an enclosure for ABS/ASA, this may be a good option, but at least on the Prusa Mini, I can not recommend at least this PETG.

Examples

TLDR: Buy a prusa printer right now.

With that out of the way, let me say that this printer has been the best introduction into 3D printing that I could have asked for. The only experience that I had previously was at least 6 years ago, and it wasn't my printer, but one I was allowed to play with. That was a tinker toy back then, even retailing at over $1000 USD. Constantly having issues with prints not sticking, bubbling plastics, prints getting stuck to the nozzle, the list goes on. The prusa mini has been an absolute dream compared to what I was used to before. I'll do some mini reviews of different parts, and specific things like the exact filament brands, I'll do a full review of later, so look forward to that.