It’s chocolate!
Fresh out of a 3D printer!
That’s kind of amazing, but I’ve got questions, like can the Mycusini 2.0 provide more than
just amazement?
Will it fall apart like the Mycusini 1.0 that I unboxed?
Is it actually practical to 3D print with chocolate?
How expensive is it to run?
And, the most important one, am I going to miss the shoutout to today’s sponsor, JLCPCB?
Definitely not!
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their 3D printing service where you can order custom parts printed in high-detail resin
or even out of full-color Nylon.
If you have an application where your own printer can’t quite deliver what you need,
this can be a great backup to extend your capabilities.
Of course, they still offer their fantastic PCB prototyping service and SMD assembly - starting
from $2 plus shipping for 5 PCBs, and no setup fees for SMD assembly.
Check them out at the link in the description below.
So this is the Mycusini 2.0 from Print4Taste, a German company that’s actually less than
an hour away from me.
They’ve been around for a while.
At first they’ve been making “prosumer” or “professional” level machines with
the “Procusini” lineup, which they still make an they’re on Gen 5 of their Printrbot-esque
platform, it actually used to be real modified Printrbots, but those don’t exactly exist
anymore, so they’re now making their own.
But what the Mycusini is, is a venture to home and, let’s say, pastry enthusiast users
with a machine that has a stronger focus on ease of use and, of course, a lower price.
Let’s start with the disclosure, Print4Taste sent me this machine and the materials for
review, they didn’t charge me anything for it, but I will need to send it back when I’m
done testing it.
As always, no money changed hands, there’s no requirement for me to cover the machine
at all, and Print4Taste are not getting any influence on the content I do make on the
Mycusini.
Okay, that should cover that.
The way the MyCusini and Procusini work is with these plastic-wrapped “Choco” sticks
as your print stock.
They make them in dark chocolate-color, white, blue and pink, for the Mycusini you cut the
sausage packs in half and slap them into this stainless steel syringe shell, which then
goes into the heater element, and that gets coupled to the printer itself.
So in here, the only thing that your chocolate material ever touches is the very bottom of
that stainless syringe core, further up, you’ve got a plastic plunger that presses down, but
because you leave the plastic wrapper around the Choco sticks in place, that creates an
additional barrier, and ideally, once it’s used up, you can just pull that wrapper clean
out, plop a new half pack in and you’re ready to go again with minimal cleanup.
Unlike in a filament-based, plastic printer, where you’re only heating a very minimal
amount of your feedstock right before you use it, in the Mycusini you’re always heating
up the entire load to an even temperature before you can print with it.
For the actual printing, the machine comes with over a 1000 pre-sliced and pre-tested
files on the included SD card - the extra booklet is a really nice touch, these are
all real photos of those prints and it’s just a lot nicer to browse through that and
pick out a file than having to click through the touchscreen menu.
You can absolutely slice and process your own files for the Mycusini, not only are all
these files totally standard gcode, so you could super easily create your own slicer
profiles, but there’s also a set of simple online tools that let you generate your own
letterings or slice 3D files like with any other 3D printer.
It’s all web-based, so you don’t need to install anything to your system, but it’s
also very toned down to just the bare essential settings and tools to get prints done.
It works and it’s pretty easy to use.
The rest of the printing process is actually super simple, too - you wait for the cartridge
to heat up, then prime the nozzle, and then there’s no leveling or anything, it just
prints.
You get these silicone baking mats to print onto, and they’re both tacky, so “bed
adhesion” like in normal 3D printers isn’t a problem at all, but also, they’re flexible,
so removing the rather fragile prints without breaking them is totally possible, which I
don’t think it would be with a rigid bed surface where you’d have to chisel them
off.
So, prints?
They’re pretty good!
For what this is, with a syringe-style extruder and a 1mm nozzle, I think the parts come out
rather nicely!
Look, I tried to grab as many video clips as I could before the parts got eaten, but
you know, that’s kind of their purpose, so I don’t have too many prints left to
show off on the bench today.
We’re going to get into the print quality and what it can and can not do in a bit, but
I first want to get into usability a bit coming from both my perspective of someone being
quite familiar with the tech and my mom’s perspective, who watched the unboxing livestream
and immediately went “mine, mine mine”.
So she’s not quite as tech-savvy, but still knows her way around stuff pretty well, so
the feedback I got from her intensely using the Mycusini 2.0 over christmas was really
valuable.
The bottom line here was: It’s a great tool, it does exactly what it says it does, but…
there are a lot of super obvious things that just could be better and would make using
the Mycusini more efficient, easier, or just more fun.
I’ve got a couple of points that fit the “this is great, but” scheme, so let’s
do that.
Starting with the new interface with a touchscreen and print previews - this is a lot better
than the clickwheel and text LCD setup they had in the previous Mycusini 1.0.
And it does a great job of giving you just the tools you need to run the machine and
leaving out everything else, but it’s super obvious that this isn’t a very polished
interface yet.
Scrolling through print folders with the 1000 pre-sliced parts is tedious, especially since
there is no quick “reprint” button after a print has finished, and all the files print
one part at a time instead of a full plate.
And details like priming the nozzle before a print are mildly confusing as it’s not
clear whether you’re supposed to tap the prime button or hold it, and then because
the firmware has a command buffer, there’s a noticeable delay between you doing something
and the printer responding, it can be quite confusing to understand what you’re actually
doing on the printer.
Oh, and the touchscreen menu also randomly froze a couple of times, requiring a hard
reset - it never affected a print, but that’s something that shouldn’t happen in a finished
unit.
Then, the printer’s hardware.
The Mycusini 2.0 is a massive step up from the 1.0.
It now feels sturdy and intentional instead of being a super generic plastic cuboid.
The extruder mechanism was working well for me, and the machine even has some nice touches
like the easily removable print platform that slides in the frame itself and is coupled
to the Y-axis motion with a magnet.
Makes cleaning a lot easier, though you probably still shouldn’t drop the platform into your
dishwasher as the bearings of the OpenBuilds-style rollers won’t quite be the same after that.
And as far as the hot pink outside goes, I like this color, but it’s also available
with a more muted black or grey shell, if you don’t love this look.
But the new hardware isn’t perfect - the fitment on the individual plastic panels is
not spectacular, and honestly, that isn’t a huge deal, but what I find is a huge deal
is this power plug that uses the same power supply with an inline switch that the older
Mycusini was using, but then it’s got another power switch in the machine itself, which,
to me, is also wired backwards, where you press in the side that does not have the power
LED to turn the printer on.
The real problem, though, is that the power plug is not locking, and on more than one
occasion I’ve caught it just before it fell out.
If you move around the machine or the cable at all, this plug will work itself loose and
sooner or later ruin a print.
My solution was some simple gaff tape, but this just shouldn’t be necessary.
Then, the chocolate extrusion system.
Or, I guess technically, the “fat glase”, “Fettglasur” extruder, since the “Choco”
sticks do contain cocoa powder, but no cocoa butter, so technically, they’re not actually
chocolate, but when used as intended, you’d be hard pressed to notice the difference.
Like, you’re not going to take a bit straight out of the refill stick, it’s always going
to be used as fine, printed text as decoration or in another way where you’re not going
to be eating it by itself.
But back to the extrusion system - I think it’s a good setup!
All but the very basic printer package include an extra one of these syringe sleeves, so
you can keep two different materials loaded up without having to take out a partially
used sausage pack, or you can chuck one in the dishwasher while you use the other.
Remember, these and the removable silicone baking mats are the only things in this printer
the “Choco” material touches.
The way you load new material is by taking one of these sticks, cutting them in half
and them slugging one half into the syringe sleeve.
The “Procusini” printers take a full stick as far as I can tell, but the Mycusini have
a smaller extruder that can only take half of that.
You leave the plastic foil on, and once the stick is used up, that’s all that’s left
to be pulled out of the syringe sleeve.
What I did run into as a downside of using half sticks is that there is not mid-print
refill option at all.
The printer will tell you how much of the stick you have left and how much material
a specific print will use, but when it uses up a stick mid-print, it just aborts, so there’s
no way to complete a print that will use, say, 15% of a half stick when you’ve only
got 12% left, you’re going to have to throw out those 12% and load up a completely new
half stick.
Also, when you want to print something larger, that uses more than the half stick you can
load at a time, you just can’t.
You’re going to have to split that part into multiple separate prints.
What you get as far as print quality with this, or at least, visual appeal of printed
parts is quite impressive to me, I guess because they do look the right amount “imperfect”
and organic for being foodstuff while still being faithful and accurate to what you’re
intending to print.
The motion system is pretty good, too, and super snappy on travel moves, so stringing
isn’t much of a problem, but as you may have guessed, flow control out of a syringe
extruder like this isn’t the best, so parts with lots of small details are still going
to be quite a bit of a challenge.
Because the Choco doesn’t need to heated very far to become printable, the nozzle tip
and the finished print are always safe to the touch, you’ll never get burned if you
touch or handle any of the parts, but what is definitely missing on the printer is some
sort of a part cooling fan - especially given that the Mycusini comes with files that are
impossible to print without one or without some other form of cooling.
The Eiffel Tower, I guess, is the classic example for that, and while with a bit of
imagination you can still make it out, it’s not exactly a faithful reproduction.
One cool thing though, is that the entire printer needs no bed leveling or anything.
As far as I can tell, there’s no sensor for that, it just comes pre-leveled from the
factory and because it uses a rather large nozzle and that slightly textured silicone
mat, it doesn’t matter if the nozzle is a bit closer or a bit further away on the
first layer, the print still comes out great.
But, if needed, there’s a service hole on the side that still allows for adjusting the
nozzle distance.
The only reliability issues I’ve had were with the “Dark Choco” sticks, which repeatedly
had underextrusion problem, while the white, blue and pink were all perfectly fine.
I’m willing to write this off as a bad batch of material and I don’t think this is something
that everyone will run into, but as always with reviews, I never want to just sweep stuff
under the rug, because hey, maybe somebody else has the same issue and then we’ve already
got two data points.
Now, while all this about the machine might sound a bit rough, if we come to the core
questions of “does the Mycusini 2.0 work?” and “is it fun to use?”, I’d go with
a definitive “yes”.
Sure, there are plenty of rough edges and bits that feel unfinished, but when it comes
to the core functionality and the core use cases that you’ll actually be using this
thing for, it totally works!
And that took me a while to realize - you’re not going to use the Mycusini for the same
types of prints as you would one use a machine that prints with plastic.
So here, even though the Mycusini is advertised being able to do full 3D parts like the Eiffel
Tower or other intricate decorations, I think its strength and actual use case is going
to lie more in the realm of making simpler 2.5D decorations or letterings, maybe some
praline shells, which Mycusini actually make fillings for, but rarely, I think, would you
actually be doing full 3D parts, which is where the Mycusini does struggle.
So it’s really about knowing what you’re intending to do with it, and if the use case
fits, it does work great.
Lastly, a quick overview of what this entire experience costs as far as the machine and
the consumables go: The printer itself, depending on which package you get with extra materials,
is between 800 and 900€ with tax.
And then the Choco consumables are around 5€ per 100g.
And yeah, none of this is exactly cheap, but I also also don’t think it’s unreasonable.
You’re not getting this to print customized chocolate sprinkles for your morning cereal
- I mean, you could, and if you want to do that, I totally support you in that, but reasonably,
this is something for special occasions, special projects, or small jobs you’re taking on,
and for that, I think the Mycusini 2.0 is a already a good solution as-is, even though
there is still lots to be done to make it a great one.
That’s it for this one, I hope you found the review helpful or at least interesting
- if you did, I’d appreciate a thumbs up, get subscribed if you want to see more like
it, and if you really love what I’m doing, maybe consider supporting the channel through
Patreon or YouTube memberships.
Thank you all for watching, keep on making, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Bye!