Prusa Mini: My Sanity-Saving Upgrade

Posted on in 3D Printing

I finally snapped last month and rage-bought a new 3D printer after my Ender 3 S1 failed on me for the billionth time. The final straw? Coming down in the morning to find what was supposed to be a detailed bracket had somehow transformed into a modern art piece I’m calling “Plastic Spaghetti Monster #7.”

The Ender 3 Experience: Pain and Suffering

Look, I tried with the Ender 3. I really did. For nearly a year, I:

  • Leveled the bed so many times I could do it in my sleep
  • Replaced nozzles like they were disposable razors
  • Watched about 200 hours of YouTube “how to fix your Ender” videos
  • Joined three different Ender 3 Facebook groups full of people having the exact same problems
  • Upgraded parts that shouldn’t need upgrading on a relatively new printer

Despite all this, I was lucky if 6 out of 10 prints actually succeeded. Not great odds when some prints take 12+ hours. I learned a ton about 3D printing through all the troubleshooting, but at some point you actually want to, you know, print stuff instead of constantly fixing your printer.

Why I Went With the Prusa Mini+

After much research (and reading way too many Reddit threads), I landed on the Prusa Mini+. Yes, it’s smaller than my Ender 3 S1, but honestly, most of what I print doesn’t need a massive build volume.

What sold me on the Prusa:

  1. It’s completely open source! If something breaks, I can literally print replacement parts on the printer itself (while it’s still partially working). Try doing that with proprietary hardware.

  2. The Prusa community is incredible. There are thousands of mods, upgrades, and tweaks available, with detailed instructions for everything.

  3. The reliability factor. I kept seeing the same comment over and over: “I just press print and walk away.” After my Ender experience, this sounded like witchcraft.

  4. It can handle any material I’d reasonably want to print with, from basic PLA to more exotic stuff like PETG or TPU.

First Impressions: Where Have You Been All My Life?

I’ve had the Mini+ for about two weeks now, and the difference is night and day. Setup took maybe 30 minutes, including calibration. My first print came out perfectly. Not “pretty good for a first try” but PERFECT.

The most shocking thing? I can now start a print before going to bed and not have nightmares about waking up to a house fire or a failed print. Last night I printed something that took 8 hours, and I literally didn’t check on it once until it was done. It still feels wrong somehow.

What’s Next: Actually Making Stuff

Now that I have a printer that actually, you know, prints things reliably, I’ve got a whole backlog of projects:

  • Storage solutions for my newly renovated workspace (more on that in another post)
  • Some custom camera mounts for a project I’ve been putting off
  • Replacing all those little plastic things around the house that break and are impossible to buy separately

I’m genuinely excited about 3D printing again, rather than dreading the inevitable troubleshooting session that used to come with every print attempt.

Is the Prusa Mini+ perfect? No. The smaller build volume is occasionally limiting, and it’s not exactly cheap compared to budget options. But the hours of frustration it’s already saved me have made it worth every penny.

I’ll post an update once I’ve completed some of my workspace organization prints. For now, I’m just enjoying the novel experience of pressing “print” and actually getting what I designed.

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