About a year and a half ago I
purchased my first 3D printer which was the original Monoprice Maker Select 3Dprinter (Monoprice has release version 2 of this printer now). This printer was an outstanding printer for a beginner and I was
really impressed with how easy it was to setup and use. After using this printer for several months,
I purchased another printer from a different manufacture however I did not have
the best of luck with it. When I finally
gave up on making that printer work decently, I decided to go back to Monoprice
for my third printer. I ended up
purchasing the Maker Select Ultimate 3D printer and after using this printer
for several months, I can honestly say that I am very happy with my decision.
The Maker Select Ultimate is
a rebadge of the Wanhao Duplicator 6. It seems like the only difference between
the two printers is the Wanhao Duplicator 6 comes with an acrylic cover while
the Monoprice Maker Select Ultimate does not however I have not used a
Duplicator 6 so I cannot say for sure.
The first thing I noticed
about the Maker Select Ultimate was how easy it was to unpack and setup. I was printing within 30 minutes after receiving
the printer. All I needed to do was to
cut and remove the packing material, remove the accessory boxes and install the
filament spool holder. I have read other
reviews that say the spool holder was too small for their filament spools
however I use Hatchbox filament and I have found the filament spool holder
works great.
The second thing I noticed
was how quite the printer is. I have
always had my 3D printers in my loft and the previous two printers were so
noisy that we had a hard time watching TV in our living room while I was
printing something. With the Maker
Select Ultimate, I do not have this issue however this has not always been the
case. The first two Maker Select
Ultimate printers that I received had very noisy fans (I will talk about why I
had two previous Maker Select Ultimate printers later in this review) however
this third printer is incredible quiet. In
fact, the fans are so quiet, I can barely hear them.
The specs for the Maker
Select Ultimate says it can print up to 150mm/sec. I have my Cura setup with a general speed of
125 mm/sec and I have had excellent prints with that speed. I am using Cura 2.3.1 and have made several tweaks
to the various speeds. The following
image shows my current printing speeds:
The first Maker Select
Ultimate printer that I received shipped with a default acceleration of
800mm/sec2. This was way to slow and
other reviews have recommended that you change this within the firmware. I would recommend, instead of adjusting the
firmware, adjusting this setting within Cura.
By adjusting this within Cura you can adjust it for each print if you
want too. The latest version of the
Maker Select Ultimate now has the default acceleration set to 4000mm/sec2 which
greatly increases the print speed.
The build volume is good with
a 200 X 200 X 175 mm build area. Personally, I have only used PLA filament but
the heated bed means you can use most filament types. Leveling the print bed is also relatively
painless because the printer walks you through the whole process. The first Maker Select Ultimate printer that
I received I did have to re-level the bed after every third or fourth print however
with the new printer I have only had to level the bed once since the initial
leveling and this has covered over 20 prints.
The specifications say that
the Maker Select Ultimate can print with an ultra-high resolution of
20 microns. Printing at this resolution gives incredible
prints however it does take a while to print anything at that resolution. The image to the left was printed at 100
microns and took 32 minutes while the image to the right was printed at 20
microns and took 145 minutes. Both were
printed with the same silver filament using the print speeds shown earlier with a raft.
It is very easy to change the
filament with Maker Select Ultimate printer. By selecting the change material
option, the printer will heat up the hot end, eject the filament and then tell
you to put in the new material. You will
want to use the white tubbing that comes with the printer to protect the hole
that the filament is inserted into. The hole
on the first Maker Select Ultimate printer that I received was deformed within two
weeks by the filament rubbing against the edge of the hole. You will want to cut a small piece of tubbing
off and insert it in the hole as shown in the following image.
Another nice feature with
this printer is the ability to change settings while you are printing. You can increase/decrease the print speed, extruder
temperature, build plate temperature, fan speed, material flow and retraction
rate.
Everything isn’t perfect with
the printer. The one thing that I really
do not like is what is displayed when the printer is printing. Rather than giving you the completion percentage
and the x/y/z position, the display has a bar showing print progress and gives
you an estimated time to completion which is normally not very accurate since
it is based on the average print time per layer. Unless you are printing a solid cube the time
it takes to print each layer can vary significantly.
As I mentioned earlier this
is my third Maker Select Ultimate printer.
The first two printers that I received had problems with the hot end
thermostat. To be up front, I use my 3D
printers a lot. The first printer I had
lasted 28 days with around 200 print hours. When I tried to print anything, it
would display an error indicating it had problems reading the hot end
thermostat and would not let me print anything.
Not sure what was wrong but I suspect it was something with the main
board because I did not see anything wrong with the wires or the thermostat
itself. The second printer I had lasted
35 days with around 250 print hours.
This time the wire coming out of the hot end for the thermostat
broke. In the following image you can
see how it broke.
This next image shows how the
wires are supposed to look
The wires are held together
with wire ties and I believe the wire to the thermostat wiggled lose and
dangled down a little too low and got caught on my print which caused the wire
to snap. I suspect this because of the
sound the printer made just before it stopped working. For the third printer, I used some tape to
hold the cables up higher as shown in the following image.
You may think with the
problems I had with the first two printers that I would not recommend this
printer however the customer support at Monoprice was so outstanding that I
comfortable recommend this product to anyone looking for a good 3D printer. Both times that I had issues with the printer
I contacted Monoprice via the online chat and had RMA numbers with 20
minutes. The first printer was shipped
out hours after Monoprice received my printer back. The second time I had to send the printer
back it was on back order so it took almost two weeks to get a new one but I
was fine with that because it appears Monoprice has made a lot of improvements
to this new printer.
Whenever you purchase items
like a 3D printer when it is first released, you need to expect issues and good
manufactures make minor adjustments to the products based on the feedback they
received. It appears to me that
Monoprice has listened to the feedback of users and made excellent
adjustments. The fans being much quieter
and having a higher default acceleration speed were excellent improvements.
If I had to rate the printer
using the standard 5 star system, I would give it 4.5 stars. With how great Monoprice’s customer support
was, and seeing the improvements made in this latest model I am overlooking the
problems I had with the first two printers with this rating.
My only two complaints with
the current printer is what is being displayed while the printer is printing
and I wish it came with an acrylic cover like the Duplicator 6 especially since
all the holes needed to install the cover are already drilled in the frame. Overall I would definitely recommend Monoprice Maker Select Ultimate printer for both the new and experience users. If the Maker Select Ultimate is out of your price range then I would recommend looking at the
