Prusa i3 3d printer

Hi,
There are a lot of variation of prusa i3.
My question is what type/version/s is/are most used by people?
And what type/version/s is/are the most supported by community ?

Thanks.

Supposedly the latest and greatest Prusa I3 is the Prusa I3 MK2 by Prusa [shop.prusa3d.com] . I have not seen one myself, but it got a lot of praise in reviews. It goes for $699.99 US and has a waiting list of 5-6weeks.

I, myself, have four homemade Prusa I3s built on P3Steel frames (Versions 2.x and 4) using Iduino (Geeetech's version) Mega2560 boards and Geeetech Ramps RAMPS 1.4 boards and various printer heads and displays. They all give me solid results.

Be aware that some companies have their own standards which make swapping parts and upgrading difficult.

Hi mclaren!

Well, I am rather new to the 3d printing topic, but I can share an information I collected while choosing printer of my own. These are not rules carved in stone, but rather my own notes and founding.

First of all I have to admit that nearly all Prusa i3 clones are nearly identical and running same components, with only couple differences between them. The only exception seems to be the original Prusa i3 (see link in the post by Lymphomaniac1)

The differences I mentioned are:

1. Frame material. In most cases your printer's frame can be made of acrylic or aluminium. I saw printers made from stainless steel and wood, but these are rather exotic modifications. As far as I know aluminium frames are better in terms of resisting vibration, which appears when printing is in progress. This positively affect quality of the output print.
2. Board. On the market you can find printers running on different boards - RAMPS, MKS board, Smoothiebaord, RUMBA, Megatronics etc. If you are newbie, just as me, I would recommend choosing RAMPS 1.4. Seems that so far it's the most common version of a board, it's easy to upgrade and there is a lot of information on it. RAMPS is also relatively cheap. I had a HICTOP MKS clone, but it died and I decided to replace it with RAMPS 1.4. There is tremendous amount of information about this board, covering, presumably all possible questions.
3. Number of extruders. I assume that for the beginning it will be OK to go with one extruder, unless you specifically want to work with different materials/colours filaments
4. Printing area space - obviously the bigger the better, as you would by able to print large prints in one piece, but it comes with a price. Also I have 200x280x230 mm large space, and so far I never needed anything bigger than that.
5. Extruder type - I am still a bit lost here. I know that Geetech MK8 extruders are kinda good.
6. Bed auto leveling. I never tried printing without auto leveling. but many people actually insists that this one is a must-have. Otherwise you will have to adjust printing bed yourself, which is time consuming and annoying.
7. Extra features - heating bed (I suppose you will want to have this one), touchscreen (nice, but absolutely unnecessary), stop/resume (would be nice, but I assume also not required). These are smaller variations which in fact provide quite a few difference.

I personally have Prusa i3 copy by CreatebotTech (here you can find a link to it). Honestly speaking I am not sure whether I would recommend purchasing a product from them - as I said board died quite fast and they claimed it's not a guarantee case. But it seems to be the common problem with any Chinese printer manufacturer.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2016 02:03AM by Le_Nya.

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Currently using Prusa i3 by CreateBot Tech