I am thinking of buying a finished printer.

3D Printing
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1

I am thinking of buying a finished printer. Which one would you recommend, the anet a8 or the fabricator mini 2 ?

The fabricator mini has been a great tiny machine for printing small high detailed objects. Now they sell it as a version two with a complete aluminum body, sd-card support and wifi for about 180€.

Everything I have heard from the a8 is that it is a great machine for it’s price but comes with defects by design.

2

I would choose the A8 for the larger print volume.

3

A8 is kit and not build

4

@Nadav_Mavor ​ but it is finished and one wouldn’t have to bother about which parts to choose except for tuning/repairing.

5

Your question is too generic, it’s like asking what car you should buy without saying whether it’s for a commute or traversing the Sahara. What do you want from your printer? What are you willing to put up with?

6

@Lars_Clausen ​ because it is based on opinion whether to spend money on one or the other machine and what other people think of the machines.

7

I love my Mini Fabrikator v1 and got the v2 because of it. I don’t like it at all. It’s not an upgrade, just a cheap rebranded printer with multiple flaws.

8

@Thomas_Balu_Walter ​ what are the flaws ?

9

The hotend looks like the one on the MP Select Mini (Malyan M200).
The software to setup Wifi is called “Malyan Link 1.0.1 Setup”.
The German translation of the product pages lists it as “Fabrikator mini II BLUE M100”.
=> This is a rebranded Malyan M100, not an upgrade to the old V1.

  • My bed has about 0.15 mm height difference betwen the center of the bed and the sides. With a layer height of 0.2mm that’s quite a bit IMHO and probably the reason why in some video HK mentioned they print with a raft most of the time.
  • People have reported problems with clogged Malyan M200 nozzles. And getting it out of the printer does not look to be a simple task.
  • The manual is supposed to be on the SD-Card, it wasn’t.
  • The extruder lever is not metal like on V1 and has no adjustment screw.
  • It is not based on an open source firmware like the V1.
  • Z is slow
  • People have reported broken (but fixable) Z axis’ after unboxing
  • Hotend was completely touching the bed when homed (might have been shifted in transport)
  • bed leveling / Z adjusting is way more fiddling than on V1
  • Filament cooling fan is always on when hotend > 50°C
  • Software on SD-card is windows only. Features like Wifi connection won’t work on a Mac since there are no drivers.
  • It makes a loud “hissing” sound when the motors are enabled.
  • Y home is behind the bed. You can even see it in the HK product video when he uses the piece of paper to calibrate the first point of the bed at around 4:19
10

Doesn’t sound too good. I’ll be probably better with building the V1 from the Github repo and upgrade it.