This is it, Make:’s best overall 3d printer for 2017, the Prusa i3 Mark 2.
You might be surprised that this is our first pick - it doesn’t have the refined looks
of an ultimaker, nor the structural rigidity of a Lulzbot.
But we were consistently impressed with the quality of the prints that came off this machine,
and the reliability with which it kept printing them out.
And we haven’t even mentioned the best part of this printer - the price.
The Prusa i3 Mark 2 can be had for $899 US.
That’s the printer that comes to you fully assembled, ready to print as soon as you take
it out of the box and set it up.
But, if you prefer to take delivery of your Prusa printer in its classic fashion, you
can still purchase it as an unassembled kit for $699.
The Prusa i3 is spun out of the RepRap community - the open source movement dedicated to building
self replicating machines.
Open source is still fully embraced by Prusa Research, and you can see plenty of telltale
marks in the printer’s construction - many of the structural parts of the printer are
3d printed - and while this look might not please everyone, it’s tough to argue that
this isn’t a refined piece of machinery.
The LCD interface is spartan, but provides easy access to filament loading and unloading,
preheating the nozzle and print bed, and manually moving the print head.
Untethered printing is achieved using an SD card, and there’s a USB port for tethered
printing - or other controllers.
There’s a lot on offer here with the Prusa - the all metal e3d hot end of the print head
is one of the best in the business, and is able to achieve temperatures of up to 300
degrees celsius.
This enables the Mark 2 to print with just about any filament available today - flexible
filaments, nylon, polycarbonate, and plenty others.
The printer uses 1.75mm filament, which leaves you with no shortage of options to choose
from.
One of the other big evolutions to come with the Prusa i3 Mk 2 is the heated print bed.
It uses three different power zones to compensate for cold print bed corners by heating up the
edges just a bit more than the center.
The bed also houses an array of magnetic calibration nodes.
The probe on the print head will look for these before every print, which allows the
printer to not only auto-level before each print, but also compensate for any alignment
tweaks - in any axis - that might happen to the printer.
Prusa Research are so confident in this feature that that they believe that a kit built printer
will print every bit as well as one that arrived pre-assembled.
The other highlight of the print bed is the PEI printing surface.
This should all but effectively remove the need for any printing surface adhesive helpers
like glue, ABS juice or painters tape when printing with traditional materials.
Just print away, and remove the print once the bed has fully cooled.
Give it a swab with alcohol to remove any residual grease or dust every few prints,
and you’re ready for perfect first layers.
You will still need some adhesion helpers when printing with more exotic materials like
PET, Nylon or Flexible Materials.
While you might be tempted to dive right in slicing models using Cura - and the printer
is fully supported in that software - you’re going to be much better off using Slic3r to
prepare your prints.
The profiles for the Mark 2 are updated and optimized by Prusa Research on a much more
rapid cycle, and their own fork of Slic3r ships with the printer.
Your print quality will be all the better for it.
If you’re splitting hairs, you could argue that the horizontal surface finish and retraction
performance of the Prusa aren’t as top class as some other printers out there - we found
the same in our comparison.
But when you look at everything else that the Prusa i3 Mark 2 brings to the table, and
the cost of entry to get started, it’s easy to see why this printer earned our top marks.
You can see our reviews of all the 3d printers, laser cutters, CNC Machines and more in Make:
volume 54: Our ultimate guide to desktop fabrication for 2017.
I’ll be on newsstands soon, check it out.