Highest quality print you have seen with a Prusa i3?

Hi folks,

I'm curious. What is the highest quality print you have seen from a Prusa Mendel i3? Can you post pictures?

Cheers!

I'm curious as well! I've tuning up my i3 at the moment, and constantly wonder whether I'm chasing something that the basic design just isn't capable of acheiving. I'll post some pictures of my prints tonight, lets see how they compare...

Have you folks seen the 3d printer special of make magazine? They do a side by side comparison of the print quality from 12 different 3d printers. Some of the quality is quite good.

Of course, the RepRap is left out.

I would love for us to show the world what sort of quality the reprap is capable of!

Also I would like to see a comparison of the i3 plate vs i3 box vs einstein vs mendelmax vs mendel90. (Whew, did I forget any variant?)

Of course there are a ton of variables as well, like motor type, firmware, etc.

This might turn into a project to collect an extensive amount of data, where people post pics of the best quality items they have printed, with motor types, reprap type, etc, etc, and we put this into a database. Once we do that, we can do analysis on the data, like attempting to estimate what motor types might give better results, etc.

Currently the quality of my prints is just as good if not better than any of the brand name machines that are available. I have a prusa I3 (plate) that has been modified with a bowdens dual J-head configuration. Print speeds are upwards of 100mm/s (depending on the part of the print).

The quality of print available on an i3 is completely up to the operator.

This is a slower print, but shows it's operation..

[www.youtube.com]

There are quite a few different designs capable of producing good prints. I like my Mendel90. The Prusa i3 seems capable of similar quality as do a few others.
Long prints with a low layer height will look better. Maybe post an stl file for a detailed print and offer a prize for the best?

The contest is a cool idea. I'd offer up a craft beer if I could be certain of the legality of shipping it.

Anyone got any nice pics to share in the mean time?

Here's some samples from my i3 box frame. Printing 3mm PLA with an E3D hotend. These are a mix of 0.3mm and 0.4mm nozzles, printed at 0.2mm and 0.3mm layer height. I generally keep my speeds pretty slow (30-40mm/s, and 60 for infill/support).

Not 100% happy, but generally pretty pleased. I do like the inside of the cup, this was printed upside down so that entire layer is bridged, and is completely flat and bonded to the next layer up.

(Sorry, phone pics so not the best quality)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2014 09:48PM by Opus.

Here's the comparison I saw:
[makezine.com]

MendelMax is in the "buyer beware" category...ugh.

From looking at the results of their comparison, the Ultimaker 2 looks like it has the best print in my opinion:
[makezineblog.files.wordpress.com]

Of course, we don't get to see variation between individual prints, etc.

Let's see if we can print that robot model and see if we can get even better quality with our RepRaps.