The Prusa i3 MK3 is, for lack of a better word, inescapable. Nearly every hacker or tech event that I’ve attended in 2018 has had dozens of them humming away, and you won’t get long looking up 3D printing on YouTube or discussion forums without somebody singing its praises. Demand for Prusa’s latest i3 printer is so high that there’s a literal waiting list to get one.

At the time of this writing, over a year after the printer was officially put up for sale, there’s still nearly a month lead time on the assembled version. Even longer if you want to wait on the upgraded powder coated bed, which has unfortunately turned out to be a considerable production bottleneck. But the team has finally caught up enough that the kit version of the printer (minus the powder coated bed) is currently in stock and shipping next day.

I thought this was a good a time as any to pull the trigger on the kit and see for myself what all the excitement is about. Now that I’ve had the Prusa i3 MK3 up and running for a couple of weeks, I can say with confidence that it’s not just hype. It isn’t a revolution in desktop 3D printing, but it’s absolutely an evolution, and almost certainly represents the shape of things to come for the next few years.

That said, it isn’t perfect. There’s still a few elements of the design that left me scratching my head a bit, and some parts of the assembly weren’t quite as smooth as the rest. I’ve put together some of those observations below. This isn’t meant to be a review of the Prusa i3 MK3 printer, there’s more than enough of those already, but hopefully these assorted notes may be of use to anyone thinking of jumping on the Prusa bandwagon now that production has started really ramping up.

Bed Selection

Before going any farther, I want to address what is surely the biggest question for anyone looking to buy the Prusa i3 MK3: which bed surface to choose?

Prusa continues to struggle to produce enough of the powder coated PEI beds to keep up with demand, and as of this writing, there’s an additional three-week lead time on the beds themselves. In other words, the kits are ready to go right now, but if you want the upgraded bed, which comes at no additional cost, your kit may end up sitting in a pending status for up to three weeks while you wait in line to get the bed.

The main difference between the standard and upgraded beds is the surface texture of the printed parts. The standard bed leaves a bottom which is shiny and almost mirror smooth, while the powder coated bed gives the bottom of prints a matte textured surface. While the textured bed in theory should have even better adhesion thanks to an increase of surface area, it’s largely an aesthetic distinction.

So should you wait? Personally I didn’t, and received the standard bed which …read more

Source:: Hackaday