Prusa Mark III - Mark Iv - Mini

[charles meyer]

Hi all.... Our library system may be able to buy a new Prusa for each of 3 of the branches and maybe also the mini for outreach demonstrations.

Would you recommend the Mark III or the Mark IV we would use at each branch? What influenced your decision?

Is the mini a good investment for demonstrations or might there be a better option?

I wondered if any of the Prusa's sold had educational discounts?

Thank you!

Charles.

[kroppr]

I consider myself a "heavy user" of Prusa printers (over 300 days print time on a Mk3 upgraded to Mk3S+, over 100 on another Mk3S+, and 80 on a Mini). I have not tried the Mk4 yet.

The Mk3S+ is a solid work horse of a printer that is relatively easy to use but lacking some modern features. There is a huge community of people who can help with any printer or print quality issues, it uses commodity hardware, so things like replacement nozzles, print beds, and hot ends are readily and cheaply available. The PrusaSlicer software they provide is top notch, easy to learn, and quite capable, even with printers from other manufacturers. It can need some tweaking to get dialed in, but this is still a solid choice for a high-use printer.

I am less impressed with the Mini. It is fine for making nice looking decorative parts but struggles to produce anything that needs to be dimensionally accurate. Software development to improve the printer seems to have fallen by the wayside. The small size makes it seem like it would likely make a decent travel printer, but the mechanical design is not super robust and could require pretty careful transport.

I am a big fan of what Prusa has done, but for the price of the Mk4 you could get a much more capable printer from Bambu Labs with native multi color (or material) printing, built in video monitoring, and higher print speeds.