Monoprice Mini Delta Review

[curious aardvark]

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:

mini wifi.JPG

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 :-)

[AutoWiz]

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.

[curious aardvark]

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.

[curious aardvark]

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:

0-25in0-4.png

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:

0.25 balls.jpg

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.

[curious aardvark]

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.

chinese balls1_520x480.jpg

smallone_520x480.jpg

smallone2_377x480.jpg

Being printed:

smallone3.jpg

here's where she lives:

both deltas_270x480.jpg

This is the wheel file I've been using: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:53451

[AutoWiz]

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.

[curious aardvark]

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.

[AutoWiz]

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.

[AutoWiz]

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

[AutoWiz]

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.