Monoprice Select Mini v2 FDM Printer – Long Term Test
This was my first foray into 3D printing, purchased via amazon.co.uk in March 2018.
My thinking at the time was “let’s see how we get on with a small/cheap one before investing in something bigger/better”, but it still gets regular use even two years later.
This long-term test is based on what I discovered was the Mk2 version, so some of what I’m writing about was later addressed by the manufacturer.
The original reason I bought a printer was this. I was building an electric helicopter and needed to produce a custom mount for a GPS module. I did look at getting something made up, or getting some carbon-fibre sheet and cutting that out, but then decided that route was going to be too much work for something quite small, so decided to utilise my engineering background and design something myself (in Fusion 360). The results of which are shown here.
What do you get?
In the box there’s:
a full-assembled printer; power supply; micro-usb cable; scraper; micro-sd card for models & manual; 5m of filament and a spool holder that slots into the side of the machine.
On the micro-sd card there’s the G-code file for the now infamous “Maneki money cat” (that I later found the original model of on thingiverse.com). There’s enough supplied filament to print that (10m), just about. The picture here shows how far 5m of red filament will go for something about 4cm high.
Is it any good?
To be honest, as it was £230, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was. It came supplied with the textured plastic layer on the heated bed, which did mean a lot of cajoling and scraping with the supplied scraper to get the models off of it. But yes, for the size and the cost, it’s actually pretty good. As long as you don’t expect to get really fast prints out of it. It does also have WiFi capability, if you can work out the gcode to get it to talk to your network. This web interface is pretty basic, and does time out if you try and send it a massive file (over 10Mb), but it does work.
Problems? Solutions?
The first problem I had with the printer was that the very thin clip that holds the bowden tube onto the top end of the feeder mechanism broke. This meant getting replacement adaptors and printing a different mounting to hold it on. Yes, some clamping was involved in that process!
The second, and one that really could have been avoided by a better design, was that the wires for the heated bed went through a hole in the case under the bed. This meant they were subject to the stresses and abrasion of rubbing an electrical wire against the edge of a metal hole, so eventually one of them broke. Which left me without a heated bed for a while (which wasn’t too bad for the smaller items).
This was solved by buying another bed and routing the cables outside of the case, along a squared-chain link for them to pass through safely. I read that this issue was fixed in a later edition of the printer. So if you’re buying one second-hand, that wear will be something to look for.
The other thing that was quite annoying and was obviously going to end in tears at some point was the difficulty in removing the prints from the original bed. This was mitigated somewhat by having to take that covering off completely once pieces came off, then cleaning that build plate and using the blue ‘painters’ tape. But that tape itself needed replacing every couple of prints and so didn’t seem very economical…
So the long-term solution for that was buying a borosilicate glass plate of the appropriate size, which is something I would recommend for any printer – all of mine have them and it makes getting the prints off a lot less likely to end in blood. For this printer, that time was September 2018, so it took about six months of learning (from knowing nothing about 3D printing) to realise this was the best solution.
How is it now?..
I also relatively recently discovered a feature not mentioned in the manual – you can offset the printing temperature once it has started but pushing the encoder wheel and turning up the value. This is useful if you wanted to use a single model/gcode file, but print with different filaments that work best at different temperatures.There’s quite a large and active community for this little printer, with upgrades available consisting of an all-metal hot-end (for printing quicker) and even a longer print bed, which gives the printer almost twice the capacity on the Y-axis.The only issue I have with it is that when I was moving it downstairs, I managed to knock the micro-usb socket that connected it to a Raspberry Pi for OctoPrint (I didn’t remove the cable) so I can now only print small models over WiFi, or by taking the micro-sd card out and copying files onto it. I did try attaching a standard Type-B USB socket onto the circuit board (complete with new case panel) but so far this hasn’t been successful (I’m not sure if the data connections are all working). So I may or may not end up getting a replacement mainboard. Given that it’s nearly two years old, it appears to have survived pretty well. It’s not my ‘main’ printer (I now have four) but it does still get regular use for smaller items (under 120x120x120mm) that don’t need to be printed too fast.
Conclusion
To be honest, given that there are more aftermarket upgrades I can install to make this little printer better, I don’t see myself getting rid of it. Sure it’s small, but not everything needs a 30cm square print bed (my TronXY X5s in comparison will do 330x330x400mm). For smaller test pieces, or components of something larger (whilst those pieces are being made on another printer), it’s perfectly fine.
If you want an introduction to 3D printing that isn’t going to take up a lot of desk space, I’d still recommend it, even two years later.
The header image is a picture of the “world’s smallest violin” made on the Monoprice Select Mini printer – “just because!”. This one being about 15cm long. I have actually since made a full-sized one (in colour-changing green-yellow PLA) that I’ll post out once it’s all assembled and working.
If you have a project that may need something 3D printed, feel free to contact us to find out how we can help.