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.

Prusa Mini Base

I printed parts of this including the legs, some trays, and the PSU holder. The legs in theory offer better prints as the printer is more stable on the right side than it is stock. There's space for the spare bed under it, as well as room for a spool if I wanted to use that to keep it compact. Overall, I'd say that this is a pretty good upgrade, but was mostly printed to get used to the carmine red PETG.

Can be downloaded here

If I were to print this again, I would look at this lowered base, but I'm not really in it for the looks. It was a good learning experience, and took a bit of plastic, so I'll leave it as is.

Raspberry Pi case

With octoprint on board, you'll want a place to put your pi. Why not as part of the printer to keep it easy to move, store, and just generally clean? This works great with the base mod above, and was really easy to print. My only complaint is that the top took ages to print as it's a ton of z hops, but once it's printed, it's fantastic. Would recommend this to everyone.

Can be downloaded here

Blade duct

The cooling on the mini is fine as is, but I wanted to test the heat deflection on the PETG again, so I printed this. I did seem to get better cooling, though there was an issue with it hitting the bed at the far back. Luckily, there was someone that already noticed, and fixed that. If you don't need every last mm of the bed, the main part is amazing, and cools better, but if you want to just not think about it, I've also linked the mod that I also have now printed. I found no issues with PETG for this use, but printed the mod in ASA because I had it loaded in case you wonder why they aren't the same calour.

Can be downloaded here Fixed part here

Kapton bed

While I was printing PLA just fine on the stock smooth bed with PEI coating, unfortunately ASA had another thing to say about that bed, and fell in love with the sheet enough that it would never let go. Thus far, it seems to print PLA and ASA quite well, but doesn't grip as well as stock bed, which is both good for ASA, and bad for PLA. Overall, I wouldn't directly recommend this if your stock sheet works as intended, but in place of replacing a dead bed, they are a good value. Getting the PEI off was as easy as freezing the sheet, and pulling it up. The glue on the other hand, I'll leave for you to deal with, and won't even talk about, let alone recommend what I did to get it off.

Kapton sheets for Prusa mini

After thoughts

You can see the list of parts I don't use in front of the printer. The stock cooling bracket, the top of the electronics cabinet got replaced by the pi case, the Super Pinda mount was replaced on the new cooler, and the stock orange screen was replaced simply because I needed another test print for PETG, and it matched slightly better. I need to get a better way to mount my camera as opposed to a Nintendo Switch box, but it did the job while I look for something to print. If you have any other mods that you recommend that are printable, let me know and I may try them out. If I do, I'll be sure to update this page to include other mods.

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.

Printing quality

rinting quality on this has been absolutely fantastic. I've been printing almost non stop on it since I've had it with the exception to over night. More on that below. I've printed a stand for my mac mini, a stand for my mouse, under desk cable hooks, countless calibration cubes, low poly pokemon decorations for my desk, keyboard stands, a corne LP case, I can go on and on. Things look absolutely amazing coming off the printer with little to no cleanup needed depending on the model. If I want something fast, 0.25mm in the slicer looks "good enough" and for keyboard cases, or other desk things, 0.15 looks amazing. Bringing it all the way down to 0.07 though, and the detail gets unreal at the cost of this printer.

Printing speed

If you set your expectations reasonably, this printer is more than fast enough. My corne LP case was printed in ~5.5 hours per half, at stock prusa settings with their Galaxy Black PLA, and it looks incredible. That's not long at all to wait for something that looks like this. I have gotten a need for speed due to the sort of person that I am. I can't ever just leave anything at stock settings and be happy, but if I didn't have the option to change them, I would still say that I absolutely would still own one of these printers. I'll make a follow up post explaining how I am tuning the printer for speed though for those interested. For now, have a pretty corne picture.

Noise

This is by no means a loud printer. Many would be fine sleeping right next to it, and not being bothered. I, unfortunately am not that type, but I do run it on a table right next to my main desk while I do other tasks all day, and even have open back headphones and it doesn't bother me at all. If you start raising the speeds as I have, you'll probably want to get some anti-vibration feet for your printer/desk as it can get loud, but if used "as intended" it's more than acceptable to work next to unless you are one who demands absolute quiet. Chuck it in a closet and close the door, and you'll never know it's there though.

Software UI

Out of the gate, I used PrusaSlicer mixed with the on screen display to select my prints that I saved to the included USB drive. It worked about as well as anyone could ever expect.

• Built in wizard to help you get set up and running
• Change filament list with predefined options
• Auto bed leveling
• Easy Z offset adjust for when changing beds out
• Ability to speed up/slow down prints live, or even change filament on the fly

The slicer was also super easy to get started with, and tuned directly for Prusa printers, not that it won't work with other slicers, or the slicer with other brands, but it was a fantastic experience sticking in the ecosystem. Very few issues, and when I finally had an issue, customer support was great, and helped me out for hours to the best of their ability.

Textured bed

Speaking of customer support, this is how I got there. Different plastics need different beds. I got both PLA, and PETG with my printer to start, and PETG does not get along with the flat plate. Actually, it won't ever let go of it, but you get the point. The textured bed was recommended for PETG, so I figured, sure, let's do this. I could not get anything to stick to this bed. After much wasted plastic, and frustration, I contacted support. They took me through bed leveling, sending pictures to have them suggest what could be wrong, sending me test files to print, and offering tips like to clean the bed with isopropyl alcohol of at least 90%. In the end, I let chat go cold, and gave up for a while. I must state right here, do not buy this textured sheet. Many many users report issues with it, and many of the clones work much better, and cost less. I hate supporting knockoffs, but when they are actually good, and the "real thing" isn't, I can't help but steer you to them. They can be found all over Aliexpress, or ebay, and those links never last, so give them a search. When you come back, I'll explain how I can sometimes get a print on this horrible sheet that I wish I didn't buy.

• Wash with soap and a soft scrub brush. Not metal, plastic only

• Bypass the built in Z offset for this sheet, and go directly to the paper test

• Prints will stick most of the time, but still not enough that I'd ever even think of walking away.

  The textured sheet is not needed for things like PLA, so if you can avoid the need of PETG or other materials that require the sheet, then you can just omit this entire rant as the flat stock sheet is incredible. I'll go more into PETG in a review of the filament in it's own article.

  Conclusion

  I absolutely would recommend this to anyone that has had a bad experience with 3D printing, wants a printer that they can trust will work every time, wants to get into 3D printing and doesn't know where to start, or even for teaching kids (with supervision) about CAD, engineering, ect. I'm more than addicted to 3D printing now. From the parts that I can print for my printer to upgrade itself, or drawers for my keyboard stuff, or anything I could imagine (that will fit on the build plate), is just a print away, and I haven't even learned any CAD to build my own things. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about this in the future, so I hope you like 3D printing as well.

What is a firmware?

3D printers are computers, just like most other things these days. They have to have some sort of logic to tell them what to do. This is where firmware comes in. The most common firmwares these days are

• Marlin
• Klipper
• RepRap

Most of the factory produced printers will most likely come with Marlin firmware, which seems to be the industry standard. Marlin is great as a firmware in many ways. It's well supported by slicers, most printers use it out of the box, it probably is tuned specifically for your printer to make life better, the list goes on. So why is the title of this "Klipper and you" if Marlin is so great?

Klipper

Klipper is an up and coming firmware for 3D printers with features that were never possible before. Unlike most firmware, it splits the duty of processing everything. The controller that normally runs marlin gets turned into a stupid device that only takes very basic low level commands to drive stepper motors, and that's it. So where does the real work happen? On a Raspberry Pi. A raspberry pi is much faster than anything you could ever build a 3D printer with, including the most expensive driver boards. Some of the most notable features of Klipper that aren't found on Marlin are

Pressure advance

Pressure advance is an advanced way to calculate the assumed pressure in the nozzle, and react accordingly. This prevents the oh so common oozing out of the nozzle that affects things like stringing, and other imperfections in prints, even when printing slowly. Not everyone only prints slowly, so comes in the next feature.

You can read more about it here.

Input Shaping

It's no secret that things moving fast will vibrate, and resonate. That resonance shows up in your prints if moving fast enough. The usual fix is to stiffen up your printer, which is always a great first step, but eventually you just can't get it better without changing the design. In comes this feature. It uses the massive processing power of the raspberry pi to predict the resonance of the device after calibration, and cancel it out before it gets sent as instructions to the printer. This lets you reach much higher speeds without seeing the artifacts in your prints.

You can read more about it here.

The bad part

Klipper is not all sun and rainbows. Prusa stock firmware at least had some nice features. A simple step by step Z offset tuning, simple filament change setting, and the screen on the printer actually did something (not a Klipper problem, just not supported on the Prusa Mini on Klipper). I think that it may be a massive step up for many on printers like the Ender 3 to get much better prints, even at stock speeds, but there is a learning curve. It's not hard, but it is a project. The kind people in the Klipper discord are wonderful, and the docs are stunning, not to mention the amount of YouTube coverage the firmware has on high end printers such as the Voron series of printers. If you prefer Marlin, it's not like you can't go back, so I would say that Klipper is worth a shot if you have the time, or like to tinker.

Conclusion

While klipper may not have features that your stock Marlin does, it's open source, always getting better, has great community support, and has multiple front ends, and isn't limited to Octoprint. I'll be talking more about my fore into my experience with this firmware in a future article about flashing it to my Prusa Mini to give it a test drive, and why I did it. I'll leave some notes below for myself, and probably others that stumble onto this, and wonder how to do simple things that you may need to relearn coming from a nice UI like Marlin on the Prusa series of printers at least.

Notes

I'll come back and edit this as self reference, as well as possibly helping others that are as confused as I was.

Z offset calibration

• Home the printer
• PROBE_CALIBRATE
• Do the paper test
• ACCEPT