3d printer review - Original Prusa i3 MK2 _ Crash Test _ I Like To Make Stuff

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob but I like to make stuff today we're going to check out the original Prusa i3 mark 2 3d printer so why are we checking out this printer a lot of people ask me in the comments or through email what printer they should get and honestly I've never really had a very good answer I have a couple of other printers that I really like but they're also both very expensive so they're not really ones that I can recommend to someone who's looking to get their first inexpensive printer I've heard really good things about this printer both in quality and cost and so I reached out to ask if I could try they were nice enough to send me one to try out but they did not pay me they did not ask me to make this video I'm making this video to share the information with you in case this printer is a good option for you okay let's look at this printer in-depth there's two versions of this printer that you can get you can get the kit or the fully assembled version and that's what this one is it came fully assembled in the box there's just a couple of 3d printed clips that are there that you have to remove they're just there for shipping there's a few other things in the box including a free spool of one-point-seven-five PLA that's what was in mine anyway it also comes with a couple of pieces that you can clip on here to hold the spool above the printer it comes with a little strip of paper that has all the test results from when they tested the printer before they shipped it to you which is really cool because that means a human actually tested this printer to make sure it was ready to go it comes with this piece of paper which gives you a little bit of instruction and tells you where to download the drivers for your computer it has a full manual that comes with it which is also online but it comes with a nice full-color printed version it's got a glue stick a sample print is already on the bed when you get it and it even comes with a bag of gummy bears which is awesome because I love gummy bears thanks Joseph alright so a little bit about the printer itself it's got an LCD down here which is nice and bright it's got some really simple controls a click button and a dial and then a reset button right below it you get the power supply back here with on-and-off switch power plugs in the glass build plate is 20 centimeters square it's an auto leveling bed which is really nice so it has some test built into it that will check to make sure that everything is level and everything is square the nozzle is a point four millimeter nozzle it uses 1.75 millimetre filament it can print in lots of different types of materials the standard abs PLA but then a bunch of other things as well which are really interesting I'm actually planning on printing some ninjaflex on this machine it works pretty well on these because the extruder is right next to the hot end it's trying to push it through a tube like it would on an Ultimaker now all the parts that you see on here that are orange are 3d printed parts and that's one of the interesting things about the i3 it's built on the RepRap idea which is basically a self-replicating printer this printer prints parts to make more of this printer so a lot of these pieces are 3d printed on the same model machine that we're looking at here and even just from looking at them you can see how high-quality the print parts are so I got the whole thing out of the box set it up and it came with a micro SD card in an adapter it's already got some models on it so plug that right in went to the first couple ones and printer to mount the first thing I printed was a Batarang of course this is a really simple 2d shape that was extruded so there's not a lot of real three-dimensional detail it's very flat but looking at it up close it's a really nice print the surfaces are really solid all the lines are really clean and it's printed well enough and sharp enough on the ends that I could actually use it as a Batarang so I wanted to try something a little bit more complex scroll down through the list and I found a model of joseph´s dog and I printed this one out this didn't take very long to print I was really surprised with the quality of this the build lines are visible but they're not big at all and all of the lines are really nice it's a very smooth print it's very very pretty and actually better quality than I expected for this machine to be honest I haven't test this out yet but I did notice on the card that there's actually some files for multicolor prints one of the cool things about this is that it comes with some software that'll help you print in multiple colors based on layer height which is exactly how they did the test print that came on the board the bottom layers are orange and then the printer stops you change the filament color and then it continues printing so you can have dual color that's pretty cool I really love my Alta maker too the print quality is fantastic so I was curious if I could compare the prints from this to see how they turned out so went to Thingiverse and I found a simple model that I thought was kind of interesting it's not overly complex but it does have some overhangs and a lot of nice detail to it so I printed out Yoda on the Ultimaker 2 in a PLA this is an excellent print it did a very good job and so I decided to print the exact same thing out on the i3 Marc - this is what came off the i3 mark - and honestly if these were the same color I wouldn't know which one is which the quality on these is almost identical they handle the overhangs of the chin and the ears and the exact same way both fantastic prints so if nothing else you can take away that the print quality between the ultime kerttu and the i3 mark - is basically identical so let's talk about price there's a few things to consider here like I said before you can get this in two different configurations you can get it fully assembled or as a kit the kit is $6.99 and the fully assembled version is $8.99 but I also want to point out that that fully assembled version has been tested by human being and been configured so it's ready to go when you get your first 3d printer you have to decide if you want to put the time in to build it and get it all tweaked and set up correctly or if you just want to pay to have it done that's entirely up to you everybody has a different set of interests but I want to point out the difference because this one for $200 more was ready to go now the kit is fully documented it has everything you need to know to put it together yourself and they have tests built into it that will help get it all configured and tweaked once you get it assembled I'm not going to show you the process of putting that kit together but Tom from Tom's 3d recently did a full build it was a live stream and he built the entire thing and I think it took him about 14 hours I'll put a link to that down in the description in case you want to go check out Tom's video and if you're interested in 3d printing you should be watching Tom anyway we talked about the cost and the different build options but I want to point something out this design is open-source so a lot of other people have made machines based off this exact same design that's one of the important things about this system is that it's open-source and people can improve on it because of that there are a lot of clones of this machine out there that you can buy for a cheaper price point but I'd like to make the distinction that those aren't necessarily tested they're not necessarily configured all of those different clones machines are downstream from this original so just be aware that if you're going to spend less money to get a clone it's maybe not going to have all the features or all the setup or all the support that the original comes with and they probably also won't come with gummy bears so to do a quick recap you can get it as a kit or fully assembled it's got a heated bed with Auto leveling fantastic print quality that so far seems to be on par with the ultime kerttu and I would give it a thumbs up if you're looking for your first printer and I would I recommend this as a good option so I hope that was a helpful review if you have any questions leave them down below I'll do my best to answer them but also if you have answers to those questions go down there and help people out if you want to see some other 3d printing stuff I've got a few things here and don't forget to subscribe I'll be back later in the week with another project video thanks for watching guys I'll see you next timehey I'm Bob but I like to make stuff today we're going to check out the original Prusa i3 mark 2 3d printer so why are we checking out this printer a lot of people ask me in the comments or through email what printer they should get and honestly I've never really had a very good answer I have a couple of other printers that I really like but they're also both very expensive so they're not really ones that I can recommend to someone who's looking to get their first inexpensive printer I've heard really good things about this printer both in quality and cost and so I reached out to ask if I could try they were nice enough to send me one to try out but they did not pay me they did not ask me to make this video I'm making this video to share the information with you in case this printer is a good option for you okay let's look at this printer in-depth there's two versions of this printer that you can get you can get the kit or the fully assembled version and that's what this one is it came fully assembled in the box there's just a couple of 3d printed clips that are there that you have to remove they're just there for shipping there's a few other things in the box including a free spool of one-point-seven-five PLA that's what was in mine anyway it also comes with a couple of pieces that you can clip on here to hold the spool above the printer it comes with a little strip of paper that has all the test results from when they tested the printer before they shipped it to you which is really cool because that means a human actually tested this printer to make sure it was ready to go it comes with this piece of paper which gives you a little bit of instruction and tells you where to download the drivers for your computer it has a full manual that comes with it which is also online but it comes with a nice full-color printed version it's got a glue stick a sample print is already on the bed when you get it and it even comes with a bag of gummy bears which is awesome because I love gummy bears thanks Joseph alright so a little bit about the printer itself it's got an LCD down here which is nice and bright it's got some really simple controls a click button and a dial and then a reset button right below it you get the power supply back here with on-and-off switch power plugs in the glass build plate is 20 centimeters square it's an auto leveling bed which is really nice so it has some test built into it that will check to make sure that everything is level and everything is square the nozzle is a point four millimeter nozzle it uses 1.75 millimetre filament it can print in lots of different types of materials the standard abs PLA but then a bunch of other things as well which are really interesting I'm actually planning on printing some ninjaflex on this machine it works pretty well on these because the extruder is right next to the hot end it's trying to push it through a tube like it would on an Ultimaker now all the parts that you see on here that are orange are 3d printed parts and that's one of the interesting things about the i3 it's built on the RepRap idea which is basically a self-replicating printer this printer prints parts to make more of this printer so a lot of these pieces are 3d printed on the same model machine that we're looking at here and even just from looking at them you can see how high-quality the print parts are so I got the whole thing out of the box set it up and it came with a micro SD card in an adapter it's already got some models on it so plug that right in went to the first couple ones and printer to mount the first thing I printed was a Batarang of course this is a really simple 2d shape that was extruded so there's not a lot of real three-dimensional detail it's very flat but looking at it up close it's a really nice print the surfaces are really solid all the lines are really clean and it's printed well enough and sharp enough on the ends that I could actually use it as a Batarang so I wanted to try something a little bit more complex scroll down through the list and I found a model of joseph´s dog and I printed this one out this didn't take very long to print I was really surprised with the quality of this the build lines are visible but they're not big at all and all of the lines are really nice it's a very smooth print it's very very pretty and actually better quality than I expected for this machine to be honest I haven't test this out yet but I did notice on the card that there's actually some files for multicolor prints one of the cool things about this is that it comes with some software that'll help you print in multiple colors based on layer height which is exactly how they did the test print that came on the board the bottom layers are orange and then the printer stops you change the filament color and then it continues printing so you can have dual color that's pretty cool I really love my Alta maker too the print quality is fantastic so I was curious if I could compare the prints from this to see how they turned out so went to Thingiverse and I found a simple model that I thought was kind of interesting it's not overly complex but it does have some overhangs and a lot of nice detail to it so I printed out Yoda on the Ultimaker 2 in a PLA this is an excellent print it did a very good job and so I decided to print the exact same thing out on the i3 Marc - this is what came off the i3 mark - and honestly if these were the same color I wouldn't know which one is which the quality on these is almost identical they handle the overhangs of the chin and the ears and the exact same way both fantastic prints so if nothing else you can take away that the print quality between the ultime kerttu and the i3 mark - is basically identical so let's talk about price there's a few things to consider here like I said before you can get this in two different configurations you can get it fully assembled or as a kit the kit is $6.99 and the fully assembled version is $8.99 but I also want to point out that that fully assembled version has been tested by human being and been configured so it's ready to go when you get your first 3d printer you have to decide if you want to put the time in to build it and get it all tweaked and set up correctly or if you just want to pay to have it done that's entirely up to you everybody has a different set of interests but I want to point out the difference because this one for $200 more was ready to go now the kit is fully documented it has everything you need to know to put it together yourself and they have tests built into it that will help get it all configured and tweaked once you get it assembled I'm not going to show you the process of putting that kit together but Tom from Tom's 3d recently did a full build it was a live stream and he built the entire thing and I think it took him about 14 hours I'll put a link to that down in the description in case you want to go check out Tom's video and if you're interested in 3d printing you should be watching Tom anyway we talked about the cost and the different build options but I want to point something out this design is open-source so a lot of other people have made machines based off this exact same design that's one of the important things about this system is that it's open-source and people can improve on it because of that there are a lot of clones of this machine out there that you can buy for a cheaper price point but I'd like to make the distinction that those aren't necessarily tested they're not necessarily configured all of those different clones machines are downstream from this original so just be aware that if you're going to spend less money to get a clone it's maybe not going to have all the features or all the setup or all the support that the original comes with and they probably also won't come with gummy bears so to do a quick recap you can get it as a kit or fully assembled it's got a heated bed with Auto leveling fantastic print quality that so far seems to be on par with the ultime kerttu and I would give it a thumbs up if you're looking for your first printer and I would I recommend this as a good option so I hope that was a helpful review if you have any questions leave them down below I'll do my best to answer them but also if you have answers to those questions go down there and help people out if you want to see some other 3d printing stuff I've got a few things here and don't forget to subscribe I'll be back later in the week with another project video thanks for watching guys I'll see you next time\n"