Monoprice Select Mini

In the short time I've had this printer, it has only had a few hiccups but prints really well. It's not perfect but allows for an easy learning curve into working with 3d printers.

I got this as a gift and I have been having fun making small prints with this machine. Most of my prints come out looking great  and the ones that don't just need a small adjustment in temperature to fix the issues.

got this as a gift, but it goes on sale for 100 - 125 bucks. absolutely worth it for such a good little thing

it's max volume is 120mm cubed, and that is totally fine for a ton of things! now you won't be printing any full sized statue things (without cutting them up first) but it is big enough to print most of the stuff you can find on thingiverse. as reference it can print nearly an entire mason jar, cuts off the top 10 millimeters.

thing is reliable as anything and i left it for an overnight print on basically the third print and it worked fine (but i would not recommend doing so before getting it dialed in)

overall, a very very good for the price starter printer.

Plan to rebuild this printer if you purchase it. I originally bought this printer as a low cost replacement for my solidoodle.  I got one successful printer right of the bat with this printer and its set up and first use was simple. I was able to get repetier to and cura both to make good prints on this machine. However, I bit the bullet and bought simplify3d software in my opinion best money i've spent increases quality of prints 10 fold in my experience. I got about 15 average size prints on this machine before running into my first clogged nozzle and the nozzle is a bear to clean with this machine. Yes the nozzle is simple enough to dismantle but I classify the nozzle and hotend on this as a cheap chinese knockoff. Which means the nozzle immediately needs to be dismantled or replaced. Now I know it sounds like I am dogging pretty hard on this machine. However, its a budget machine and you get what you pay for. If you print an adapter available at almost any repository you can use a larger range of hotends. This is a most you want to replace the nozzle asap. Fortunately my Solidoodle which has printed all its own upgrades over the years so I was able to use it to rescue the monoprice.  of coarse that is the best thing about a  3d printer you can use it to upgrade itself. in conclusion its worth the money, especially if you buy bargain or rebuilt. however if you can afford a better rated higher quality machine  you'll save yourself future headaches.

It's Grrrrrrrreat!

So far so good.  What problems I have had have been mosly my own fault.  I have had some strange failures that I attribute more to software than the printer.  Several instances of losing communication with the Octoprint computer.  The strange part is the failures repeat in exactly the same place.  The same parts print OK when done in Slic3r rather than the original Cura.  This has been a good enough experience overall that I am already considering getting a larger printer.  I am currently usin a glass bed.  After I buggered the original bed coating getting parts off I worked for a while with blue tape.  That worked fine but having read reviews of the glass bed I had to try.  I am not using a z-axis spacer.  There was enough slack in the bed adjustment that I was able to level OK by just turning down the settings.

good value and low learning curve.

Getting it to interact with Cura program is difficult. Once I get a file into the printer memory it prints fine but that is not straight forward yet

This is a great printer!  Easy to set up, and well designed.  You do have to manually level the bed, which I'm finding is a little tricker than I would have imagined.  But for the price I can live with it.  I am new to 3d printers, so I've got some stuff to learn.  Learning about slicing software, I saw that I just needed to use the slicing software on the SD card that came with the printer.  Unfortunately, the file was corrupt.  So I downloaded Cura, which works fine.  However, Cura does not list this printer, so I'm not sure if it knows the size parameters for it.  I guess we will eventually find out!

it is the best thing that has ever happend first printer and i love it