Monoprice Mini Delta Review

Was my birthday last week - I'm now officially an old fart, kinda lol

One of the things I've been lusting after since I first saw it at tct 2017 is the mono price mini delta.
It's a super cute, compact little printer that has some great features.
It only has a small print volume: 110x120 mm But does pack some really cool features.
https://www.mpminidelta.com
Hows that for a website :-)
Beats the non-existent manual and information I didn't get with my other 4 printers !

Wifi - just set that up - took about a minute.
You set it up for usb connection, then send two gcode commands: M550 'your-ssid' and M551 'wifi-password'.
That connects it to your wifi network.
Alternatively you can put those commands into a gcode file, load onto the sd card and run it from the print menu. Now that's easy !

An ip address then shows up on the lcd screen, type that into your browser and this screen appears:
Attachment 12141
pick a gcode file and it uploads it - presumably to the mini sd card. Takes a few minutes, but there is a way to speed it up I'll try later.

So I am currently doing my first ever wifi print on a 3d printer :-)

I've downloaded profiles for simplify3d, and changed tham around a bit lol.

So while my trolley key prints, lets roll back a couple of days.
The printer comes very well packaged.
Three pieces of polystyrene hold it all together.

Once out of the box, you remove the polystyrene holding the print head in place and she's ready to go.
This machine is genuinely plug and play.

I plugged her in, inserted the minisd card she came with and pressed print.
And low and behold she started to print a chinese waving cat !
First auto levelling the build plate. The plate has three sensors by each bed connector. So it levels by pushing down on the bed with the print nozzle, first retracting filament.
Very clever.

I have come across my first issue.
The power supply is woefully underpowered, 12v and 5 amp.
My workshop is cold in winter - currently just 15c.
Because of this the heated bed takes a VERY long time to get t 60c.
In fact i gave up and reset the print to 50c.
It's also fairly noisy. It is my first delta with bearings rather than wheels - so maybe that;'s normal. I'll wipe the rods with some lithium grease in a bit and see if that quiets her down a bit.

Looking at it working I reckon the bowden tube could be a few cm's shorter as well.
But when all's said and done - this is a genuine plug and play machine.
Oh yeah it doesn't come with any filament, so if this is your first printer make sure you also order some pla.

I'll add pics later - but once I've got her dialled in I have high hopes :-)

You wish it saved the gcode to the SD card. That looks like the same thing we use on the MP select mini. Which is a rebranded mylan 200 machine. Damn reliable but 120x120x120 build envelope. Anyways, so there must be a small amount of cache on the mainboard that will hold a few lines of gcode, but go ahead get something printing and then disconnect from the printer and see what happens. This is an extremely unstable way of printing. Because you are printing from usb just using wifi as usb cable. No the whole file never gets saved anywhere on the board. Or so it is for the mp select mini. Let me know if that has changed for their delta. And if so, I strongly recommend you print from sd. It is still the most reliable way to print with the fewest links in the chain to fail.

pretty sure you're right.
So while I'll still play with the wifi, I bought one of these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LANMU-Exten...micro+sd+to+sd

As the mini is sitting on top of the k200, this not only means I don't have to muck about with micro sd cards, but also that the normal sized sd slot can be attached to the k200 within easy reach.
I'm going to get one for the ctc i3 as well.

Just changed the nozzle from 0.4 stock to a copper 0.25 one.
Actual measured extruded is 0.26 !

here's a diagram to illustrate how much smaller it is. The big circle is 0.4 and the cutout is 0.25:
Attachment 12218
Currently having a go at a half size chinese balls model I did. So far haven't managed to print the full size one, so this will be interesting.

currently looks like this:
Attachment 12219

Given that I've totally guessed the settings - not looking too bad.
If this works, I'll go down to half the size again.
well I'll do that anyway :-)
Actually the next one will be a mere 10mm with three shells. That will be interesting - looks good in the slicer :-)
The current one is 33mm

I actually also have a stainless steel nozzle at 0.15. But that's probably a 10th of a mm too far.
I'm currently using crap 6 year old esun filament. So that's not ideal. Once I've got it working really well with that I'll try it with some decent filament :-)

I dropped the retraction speed and distance and other than telling it the new nozzle size and measured width - haven't changed anything else.

Very nice. Mine is I the mail i can't wait to play and hopefully this Noob get my first successful print. I to am curious how it can do on some really small stuff like micro servo gears which i am going thru allot of learning RC 3D helicopter piloting. My little mini strips the gears when it crashes instead of breaking other parts. A hastle but easier to fix than busted rotating parts.

I will take your advice on turning up the bed temp while printing to get it closer to 60c. And hopefully i can add to the good reviewand post a pic of a success.

hot diggity !
the retraction/temp needs a little tweaking - and I thibk I'll adjust the z-height slightly to make things easier to remove from the bed - but damn !
printed a chinese ball style with three shells, whole thing 10mm across. Came out fairly clean and all three shells move freely !

There's no stringing, but there are a few little blobs.
Could just be the filament.

Next up I'm going to see how small a wheel with bearings I can make.
This kind of thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2146143
I'm thinking I should be able to print my own 2020 frame wheels.

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Being printed:
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here's where she lives:
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This is the wheel file I've been using: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:53451

Hey CA, have you ever heard of linear advance or played with its settings? From what I read it has to do with the pressure in the nozzle and when it is set correctly you should be able to reduce your retraction to 0 or near 0. This is what I found and have been reading about it: https://mattshub.com/2017/10/02/linear-advance/ I am going to start playing with this tonight I think.

looks interesting - but the only machine I have with marlin is the ctc i3 - and it's hands down the worst firmware on all 5 machines. You can't even load filament with it. Have to do everything through the simplify3d control panel.
Not sure what firmware is on the mini, it's pretty basic, but works well. Also apparently the version of marlin someone's made for the mini delta doesn't yet work with the mini's wifi.
Which I will occasionally use for small, quick prints.
sailfish and repetier are my favourite firmwares. Just give you a lot more choice of things to do directly from the control panel.

I like repetier also. It is my fav. software to use. I bought S3d a few months ago. I made the plunge. I cant get it to work on my printers. I am not transferring settings right or missing something somewhere, but when I start a print with s3d it just crashes the head into my printer while homing which makes no sense to me. But it only does it with s3d. Not by printing from sd and not by printing from repetier. I feel like I wasted the $150.

Also do you know what version of marlin you are running on your ctc?

I used to play with the Arduino controllers long before 3d printing came around. For car functions. Like I used an Arduino nano and a few 5v relays to make an autolamp module for my car. And I even used a mega to make a full bcm(body control module) for my old Honda. So I was already familiar with the Arduino environment and writing sketches and when I saw marlin I just identified with it. There are newer versions of it that you could use for your old ctc machine. I actually like marlin. I think it is really cool how everything is there and you just uncomment things to activate them or comment them to de activate them. But you never really have to write anything. maybe just change values.

yeah 0.9 - and so far utterly failed to update it or change settings.
I do have a spare mks gen 1.4, but unless I can figure out some way to plug 2 z-motors into it - it's not much use for the ctc.

so if you slice a model with s3d and stick it on a sd card it works ?
but not if you use direct usb ? (which you're not going to do much)

That doesn't make any sense - but it sounds like your startup gcode isn't configured properly.
You're using the same boards and extruders, bed levlellers etc, on all your machines aren't you ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

yeah 0.9 - and so far utterly failed to update it or change settings.
I do have a spare mks gen 1.4, but unless I can figure out some way to plug 2 z-motors into it - it's not much use for the ctc.

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There are actually 3 different ways for you to achieve this. First if you only have one extruder then you have an extra unassigned stepper driver that can be assigned to z2. If you have 2 extruders and no unused stepper driver sockets on the board then you can wire the 2 z steppers in parallel with the one driver and they will both work together. This can only work because the z axis sees such light load that the stepper can handle driving 2 motors. And finally you can add an extra stepper driver add on board. These are universal and can pretty much be added to any 3d printer mainboard and then configured in marlin. I think marlin is up to 1.1.9, now.

looking around the net - it looks like the firmware can be updated.
I'm pretty sure I've tried all the things I've seen that supposedly work.
Who knows.

not an old ctc machine - this years latest model - why they used such an out of date and utterly useless firmware is beyond me.
It's not like decent firmware would have cost ctc any money.

My mini died the other day and wouldn't communicate with the PC or the SD card. Monoprice gave me a refund but no new printer to replace it. So i replaced it with a larger 240x280 Delta printer. Well see how it works out and if its portable enough for me or not. I did like my mini tho while it lasted.

nothing stopping you dropping another motherboard in the mini.

touch wood - mines still going well.
wasn't yours a refurb ?
Or Am I thinking of someone else.

been using the tiamat ultra filament - the stuff with nano diamonds. And been making fidget cubes with print-in-place-hinges.
So A LOT of retractions.
Been using them to fine tune the retraction settings.
I can now print a fidget cube with zero stringing and very clean hinges.

The tiamat ultra is also very tactile and a little denser than standard pla.
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Based on this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1752508
I have increased the gaps between surfaces by 0.2mm. As it stands, wothout modification, the thing just solidly welds itself together into a single lump. Not sure what tolearances the chap used, but it's got to be under 0.1mm.
I also printed one at 75% size that also worked perfectly. None of them have needed any post processing.
A quick wiggle to free the hinges and they're good to go :-)
So I'm goiung to reduce the added gaps and see just how small I can make one :-)

50% reduction in all directions - so 8x smaller than the normal size cube.
Also dropped the gap down to -0.1
Attachment 12412
Attachment 12413

Printed a 25% one out, looked good but fell to bits when you tried to move it.
Going to work up in 5%'s till I get the smallest one I can make :-)
here's the 50% in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qUL...ature=youtu.be