Qatar is far away, but the 3D printer is next to me. I just printed a world cup lol.

Which soccer team is your favorite?
And which 3D printer do you like the most?​

I don’t watch sports, probably because I don’t like competitions of any kind. I only had 3 printers so far, the Prusa i3 mk3+ I have now is my favorite.

Played soccer as a teenager. That was OK. Watching soccer? Not so much.
My MK3S+ is also my favorite printer.

Post a picture of that world cup!

Cheers

What is the best thing about it? Speed? Accuracy? Automatic leveling?

What is the best thing about it? Speed? Accuracy? Automatic leveling?

@Amaya MK3S+ printers are not speedy, not really. The accuracy is good but not fantastic since they don’t have Input Shaper or Pressure Advance.
The Automatic Leveling is good. In fact, it’s very good.

But, the best thing about Prusa printers in general is that “they just work”. Prusa uses good quality components, and they test the components. And, very important, the firmware is very well configured. Everything is so well integrated that most owners are reluctant to mess with their Prusa printers. There are mods available, and people have done a variety of modifications, but I don’t believe it’s anywhere near as common as with Creality printers.

Well, prusa is just a working machine that meets the needs of most interested hobbyists, and a professor of mechanical engineering thinks that the Elyarchi 3Dprinter I use, which is too professional for me with only six months of experience, is very efficient and high speed, it does not require maintenance or debugging as often as other machines, and it is easy to use for beginners, isn’t it?

I can print miniatures at 50% more speed than my Ender and Elegoo could, plus the detail is better on my Prusa. I have not printed large items yet, so I can’t vouch for those.

Easy? Well, my new Prusa is broken since many weeks. They sent different parts to repair it twice. Both took 4 hands to replace and an hour each seriously, because once installed, it was dang hard to get the motherboard and superpinda back out and in with all that mini cable hell locked inside a small box on the printer. And it’s still not fixed, so the printer will most likely be shipped back as soon as hub can help me with a last effort test today, which needs his strength to do so. But they will repair it, that’s promised already.

Personally, I would never claim any printer easy to work with yet in 2022. I’m an industrial chemist engineer, hub is an IT expert, and I re-educated myself as an IT person too. We often wonder how people with no IT skills cope handling a printer.

But at least Prusa has a helpdesk with knowledgeable people, and one that is present at all times. Although live chat is instant and email response takes days. I can’t do live chat, as they often ask to use a hex key, which I can’t due to my disability. A functioning helpdesk is easy, and something many manufacturers lack. I have had a non existing helpdesk at Elegoo, and a totally useless one at Creality, so the difference is staggering.

That is also my experience with the Prusa Mk3. It took me 4-5 hours to assemble, and I never upgraded the extruder when they supplied the models to 3d print and upgrade because with many small 3d printed parts, the extruder/hotend is very difficult to work on.

I understood the idea three years ago about using a 3d printer to print the parts for a 3d printer, and this makes sense for low-volume prototypes, but the Prusa design is just too complex to maintain.

If you can afford a fully assembled printer, you get an excellent printer with great support; as long as any repairs are too easily accessible parts and not to the hotend/extruder assembly or the control board which is in a box that is just too small.

I am working on a review of a Prusa Mk3 clone called the Sovol SV6. I know Sovol has gotten mixed reviews over the years, but so far, I am pretty impressed. At $235 (USD), it clearly has lower-quality parts than the MK3, but my initial prints are great, and the architecture even improves on the Prusa in several ways. The assembly was about 10-15 minutes, and it looked highly maintainable. At that price, buy two and use one for parts if you are concerned about part reliability.

This video should be live by the end of the weekend.