PRUSA i3 MK3S newb

So this arrived today



I'm a CNC milling enthusiast first, but 3D printing has always interested me. I have built a number of large format (4'x4'-8'x16") 3-axis milling machines in the past and I use and maintain my own home machine. The problem is I live in the great white north eh? and the shed the CNC is housed in gets quite uncomfortable in the winter, not to mention what it does to the machine. With the winter approaching I decided to buy this kit to build, over the winter, and start printing, perhaps even combining it with the CNC mill in the future.

I am also a high school teacher and one of the subjects I teach is tech design. I am looking to incorporate this into my program and print models students create. I have experience with solidworks, sketchup, and tinker CAD.

Additionally, I have experience using a stratasys Uprint SE but that was turn-key and a rather foolproof, high end 3D printer.

Any tips or suggestions for building the machine or printing with it, for the uninitiated?

I am in the ender 3 camp, but what helped was following the ender3 and 3dprinting subreddits. At least for searching for issues, upgrade recommendations, etc.

I would think the 3d printing and prusa3d would be good for you.

The Prusa MK3S is one of the best 3D printers on the market. They supposedly have good customer support too. If you have Facebook I'd join their discussion group if it were me. The community is good I hear.

A couple years ago I built the i3 MK2S after leaving it in the shipping box for a few months. The parts were bagged nicely to line up with the major sections of build steps and it was easy enough to follow along though for that model there were lots of nuts to put onto all-thread in the right quantities/places; things seem easier in the MK3. The gummy bears were in there for a few months too, probably would have been better fresh...

Later I did the upgrade kit from MK2S to MK2.5 but that was somewhat confusing because there wasn't a good consensus on which version of printed parts to use so I printed all revisions and copies I could find to have a backup...and now that the MK3S (and MK2.5S) versions are out some of the kits changed, so it's not easy to keep up. Overall the included documentation is good, but the pace of improvements/design changes might make the online references confusing if you wait too long to start your build.

Anyways the i3 MK3S has the build steps online at: https://help.prusa3d.com/en/tag/mk3s/

Tim_axe said:

A couple years ago I built the i3 MK2S after leaving it in the shipping box for a few months. The parts were bagged nicely to line up with the major sections of build steps and it was easy enough to follow along though for that model there were lots of nuts to put onto all-thread in the right quantities/places; things seem easier in the MK3. The gummy bears were in there for a few months too, probably would have been better fresh...

Later I did the upgrade kit from MK2S to MK2.5 but that was somewhat confusing because there wasn't a good consensus on which version of printed parts to use so I printed all revisions and copies I could find to have a backup...and now that the MK3S (and MK2.5S) versions are out some of the kits changed, so it's not easy to keep up. Overall the included documentation is good, but the pace of improvements/design changes might make the online references confusing if you wait too long to start your build.

Anyways the i3 MK3S has the build steps online at: https://help.prusa3d.com/en/tag/mk3s/

Click to expand...

I failed to follow the instructions for dividing the gummy bears up and having a few after completing the construction of each axis.

Well it’s coming together slowly but surely.

I am really impressed with the print quality of this machine. I really didn’t have to do much calibration in order to produce prints which surpassed what I was doing with the Stratasys UPrint SE a few years ago. The crazy thing is UPrint SE + wash station was ~30k CAD when my work purchased one.

This is what we made with ours.

After calibrating the machine I decided to give it a big job. It just finished this full size part of bane mask it took 38 hours exactly.

I really should have paid closer attention to the dimensions of this before I printed it (14.41" x 20.67" x 17.24")... but it turned out amazing. It took weeks to print all the parts for the hydralisk but it is finally complete. There are some issues on part fitment in the tail, which I will address before I prime and glue everything together before paint.

That's just freaking beautiful! Really nice. Thanks for sharing that.

Now add the MMU2S to it if you want a challenge that is so so rewarding at the end