I enjoy tinkering and doing hands-on projects, so I’ve been looking more into upgrade options recently. While browsing around, I came across a Prusa MINI+ Dual Z-axis upgrade kit on Printables, with a full parts list and an assembly video. It caught my attention mostly because I’ve been enjoying DIY projects lately.
Personally I’d rather build a second printer from scratch instead of making that mod. It sucks having a nonfunctional partly disassembled printer, and then needing to print a part for it that you did not expect.
While cantilever printers can be an annoying honestly converting your Mini to direct drive will improve print quality more than dual Z motors.
That said have fun it’s your machine.
Totally fair point 👍Direct drive was actually the first thing I looked into, especially for TPU and cleaner extrusion. The dual Z idea is more about experimenting with stability on taller parts than expecting a night-and-day upgrade. For me it’s more of a “learn-by-doing” project than chasing the single best mod.
Try building yourself a magpie instead of breaking your working machine.😺
Honestly, part of why I’m even considering this is because I like tinkering a bit too much. Worst case, I learn something the hard way. Best case, I get a slightly more stable Mini for tall prints.
Tbh, by now I would recommend against DIYing a printer.
I spent so much time on my fully-modified Ender 5 and it still doesn’t print nearly as well or fast as a cheapo A1 Mini.
When modifing your printer is the end goal, it’s a good way to spend your time. Also Ender is just bad and a1 is an insanely good machine.
There’s not a lot left from the original Ender 5.
I kept the frame and the steppers, belts and lead screw.
The wheel are replaced by MGN rails. The mainboard is now an Octopus v1.1. The print head is replaced with an E3D toolchanger with E3D v6 hotends, direct driven with TBG-Lite extruders. The toolchanger does bed levelling with a simple endstop mounted to the toolchanger in a way that it can reach the bed if all tools are parked.
The only remaining hardware issue is that I’d like to have a second Z motor.
I don’t really consider my printer an Ender 5. It’s more of a Ender-of-Theseus. It’s basically a DIY design built on top of an existing frame.
But the real issue is software tuning. It’s just so complicated and time intensive to tune all the dozens of parameters (speed, acceleration, linear advance, retraction, input shaping, auto bed levelling, tool offsets, …).
Modern budget printers like the A1 are so amazingly good that matching their out-of-the-box performance and calibration takes a huge amount of time if it even is possible.
I easily spent 100+h reconstructing and tuning my printer, troubleshooting problems so obscure that I couldn’t find anyone on the internet who talked about them before. Been working on this printer for about 4 years or so.
And the other day a friend of mine who received his A1 a week ago shows me the perfect quality multicolor prints that his cheapo A1 did after half an hour or so of setup.
same and it prints ok but i dont have the time to tune it further and tune all my filaments
Same here. I really should spend a few hours to finalize the tuning, but it prints ok enough that it’s not really worth doing it.
I agree with this.
That said, if the person who is asking for recommendations loves to build, then a half DIY printer is a good option. Something like a Voron which can be built “to stock” or modified as desired. I just got a 2.4r2 up and running. The software tuning wasn’t bad thanks to SuperSlic3r and the default profiles.
But if the person just wants a printer? Yeah, I’d direct them to one the more finished products available now like a Bambu or the Elegoo Centauri Carbon.
Yeah, fair, I just wanted to make sure nobody has wrong expectations. Back when the Prusa Mini was new, off-the-shelf printers were much worse than they are today, and DIYing a printer could actually be a good deal if the goal was to have a good printer (and not specifically something to tinker with).
Nowadays, if you DIY a printer it’s going to be more expensive while performing worse than an off-the-shelf printer.
I think in most cases that’s true. I basically never recommend anything that needs major assembly. I don’t think the average person wants a hobby, just a way to make things they see online. And that’s totally fair. I wanted the hobby.
What would dual Z axes on the mini achieve? The existing cantilever design is plenty stiff in my experience, I’m skeptical you’ll get any significant increase in print quality or speed, and I suspect at the cost of having to fiddle around a lot tuning settings to get it back to where it started as the existing firmware has a lot of tuning for the mechanical behavior of the exisiting design. So, if you’re not happy with the mini as is, I would be looking at a different printer rather than a dual Z mod.
Having myself indulged in the temptations of homebrew 3D printer mods, I came to realize that not all mods out there actually improve performance, especially this type of serious mechanical overhaul of what is already a fairly sophisticated and optimized design. A decent part of the mini’s secret sauce is in the firmware, and this is going to break that.
The same amount of fiddling, accompanied with the uncertainty of the success or practicality of the mod, could be spent assembling a new printer and then printing and assembling new mods for the new printer that aren’t as essential or structural. The appeal just depends on how much focus and patience you have.
