I don't usually post negative reviews. My approach is to first let the company know of any issues I find, and if they can not be resolved, I move on, unless something is particularly dangerous or misleading, or there is a real risk of people being out of pocket.
This is the latter.
There has been a flood of cheap resin 3d printers hitting the market recently, so I thought I would take the plunge and buy one. Seeing as the Monoprice Mini was available for $200, and at Amazon, I thought it would be a low-risk purchase.
Yeah .... about that ...
When Amazon returns policy breaks down
Original Shipping
This printer should have been returned, but it turns out it will cost me a LOT of money to return it, even if the replacement actually works. That's because, bizarrely, and out of character for Amazon, they will only refund just $15 for shipping.
These things are small as 3d printers go, but shipping will be a heck of a lot more than $15 ...
So for that reason alone, I say buyer beware.
Monoprice MP Mini SLA 3D Printer Review
Seriously?
My MP Mini arrived broken in two ways:
- The auto-level did not work. At all.
- The Z coupler spring was borked.
Mitigating the second was a case of taking some of the tension off the spring, and if that doesn't resolve it will be a case of getting a fixed z coupler replacement, which is advised by some in the MP Mini Facebook group anyways. Shout out to Todd Swindoll for all his help troubleshooting.
Auto level issue was a strange one, and I took it apart several times until I found the problem.
Where are the magnets?
Turned out the magnets that inform the printer of the lock position were missing.
I found them stuck to the metal cover that protects the gears. When the magnets were in place without the metal cover, everything was good, but with the cover it failed.
Laser cutter to the rescue
Using the Glowforge "trace and cut" feature, I traced the metal plate on the Glowforge bed and cut a new one out of acrylic plastic - no more level fails!
What does it print like?
OK, not great.
My older model Kelant Orbeat printer beats it in every way, and that machine doesn't even have auto level.
Had I not been in Canada perhaps the refund/return situation would be different and I could replace for a working machine. Interestingly, the Amazon listing now says they don't ship here.
Perhaps the firmware will continue to improve and resolve the situation like below?
Other people (such as Todd mentioned above) are getting good prints, unfortunately I have yet to get a single sample.
View at Amazon
Monoprice MP Mini SLA 3D Printer
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://makerhacks.com/monoprice-mp-mini-sla-3d-printer-review/
That was a great review. I think that it's good to inform people of products that lack quality, especially when dealing with online purchases. That sucks that the return shipping would end up costing you money. That's kind of BS considering it's a quality issue. It's a good thing that you know enough about the machines to fix it yourself. I wouldnt have been able to figure all that out. I'm not mechanical enough for that
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You'd have better luck with a $200 FDM printer, and that's the low end of the price range even for those things. I came across a review for a $500 LFS (low-force stereolithography) machine, quite similar to the one you reviewed here, on YouTube while I was researching which machine to get for my own shop. It had most of the same problems you reported here (and I really wish I could find that video). Since LFS is a fairly recent development, the technology simply hasn't come down in price while retaining quality the way that FDM has. To put things in perspective, my first 3D printer was a Makerbot Replicator that I got back in 2012. At the time, they sold for $2500 (I got it as a graduation present, so I wasn't the one paying for it). Today, however, Dremel and other companies are selling FDM printers of nearly identical quality and capacity in the Micro-Mark catalogue for $500 - $1000. Meanwhile, I just dropped $3500 on a brand-new Formlabs Form 3 LFS printer, which I will take delivery of in about a month. I'll definitely be showing off and reviewing it before I start pumping out models. The Form 3 has only just been released, but the Form 2 has received widespread praise. I ordered the newer machine only because I need higher resolution.
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