jmtd → log → Prusa Mini

In June I caved and bought a Prusa Mini 3D printer for home. I bought it just before an announced price hike. I went for a Prusa because of their reputation for "just working", and the Mini mostly as its the cheapest, although, the print area (7"³) is large enough for most of the things I am likely to print.

To get started, at the same time I bought some Prusament recycled PLA to print with which, unfortunately, I've been a little disappointed with.

I was attracted to the idea of buying a recycled material and Prusa make a lot about the quality of their filaments.

The description was pretty clear that the colour would be somewhat random and vary throughout the spool, but I didn't mind that, and I planned to use it for mainly functional prints where the precise colour didn't matter. The colour examples from the product page were mostly off-white grey with some tint, typically green. There are not a lot of reviews of the recycled PLA that comment on the colour of their spools, but in a couple of youtube videos (1, 2) the spools have looked a grey-ish silver, sometimes with a greenish tint, pretty similar to the product page.

The colour I got is quite unlike those: it's a dull brown, with little flecks of glitter, presumably originally from recycling something like Galaxy Black. That's totally within "spec", of course, but it's a bit boring.

Brown recycled Prusament PLA on the right

In terms of quality, sadly I've ended up with had at least one tangle in the spool wind so far. There's at least two reviews on their own product page from people who have had similar difficulties.

Edit:

I realised after I wrote this post that I hadn't actually written much about the printer. That's because I'm still in the early days of using it. In short I'd say it's a very high quality machine, very pleasant to use. Since I also went on a tangent about the recycled Prusament, the tone of the whole post was more negative than I intended. Watch this space for some more positive Prusa news soon!