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.

Damaged PEI sheet

While some small prints seemed to do great, I soon found that they stuck too well. Well enough that I had to pry the print off. Be very careful when printing with ASA to make sure that it's squished with your Z offset, but not enough to turn it white. I later learned that when it goes white, it's under stress, which causes a bond too strong, and leads to damaged PEI sheets. C'est la vie. I picked up some large kapton sheets, and swapped out the PEI sheets on both sides with that, and have been printing ever since. It doesn't stick nearly as hard to anything, which is both a plus, and a minus. It's a tradeoff I'd like to have as long as I have both PEI and Kapton available. If you ever damage a sheet too badly, order a new one, but save the old one for Kapton or painter's tape. Never know when it'll come in handy.

Back to printing!

With the sheet switched out, I learned a few things, and some were quite conflicting. The glass transition temperature of PolyLite ASA is apparently 97.5c, so you would want to run your bed temperature under that, as stated on the spool. However, my prusa mini lacks an enclosure, and should stay that way being built out of PETG, so putting the bed temperature at 100c and using a brim allowed me to get quite a strong grip on prints while printing, but it released instantly after cooling down without fail. If you are on PEI, I'd recomment trying without a brim, and keeping temperatures down, as well as bringing up your Z offset a bit to ensure that prints don't stick too well, but with Kapton tape, the settings I've listed seem to work great. When in doubt, print small objects, or calibration tests to test before you make the mistake I did.

Conclusion

This is not the "don't think, and just press print" that PLA has gotten me used to, but it's wonderfully strong, doesn't smell bad like ABS, and prints pretty reliably after getting it set up for your specific printer. I don't think I'd make ASA my default, but when something needs to be strong, ASA is my new go-to.

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.