Unboxing photos and first print: http://imgur.com/a/0pW2s

First Benchy: http://imgur.com/a/kCBh3

Quick Video of some printing action and me just rambling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXU3wV_ClHk&feature=youtu.be

Printer: http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=107&cp_id=10724&cs_id=1072403&p_id=15365&seq=1&format=2

~More Pics and further info in the comment section~

Edit: Gold! Thanks who ever guilded me. Seriously, feel free to ask questions regarding this printer. Its purely an extra/play thing for me so I don't mind messing around with it.

The cheap price point and promising design drove me to buying it. For those unfamiliar, yesterday monoprice launched what has to be the cheapest available assembled 3D Printer, just beating out the now unavailable Fabrikator Mini. If purchased directly from their site, you have plenty of shipping options (I went with UPS 2 day shipping, and Monoprice shipped it so fast that it arrived in under 24 hours. Kudos to UPS and Monoprice for that quick delivery!), or directly from their eBay for free US shipping, and reduced shipping costs internationally. I think everyone may be itching to pull the trigger on this bad guy so I thought I'd share my first impressions, post some pictures, and have a place that I can talk about the printer. Feel free to leave comments asking questions about it and my experience so far!

The packaging was excellent. The guide is basic, but suffices. Anyone who owns a Printrbot Play will instantly feel right at home. It has this wonderful glossy finished folded stainless steel. The screen and controls, while sufficient, are designed towards new users. Its tricky to use without the bed in its homed position, since the control knob is located directly under the bed. I feel a touch screen would do wonders. The options seem to be limited to moving the axis, preheating, and printing from the SD card. No guided filament loading. My printer had a dead level bed out of the box, and the bed seems as sturdy as the Printrbot Play (I'm going to compare this printer to the Play a lot, they're very similar feeling, sized etc). It has 4 bed leveling counter sunk screws with very tight springs. Comes with masking tape print surface, but its actually covering all the bed leveling screws. The guide explicitly tells you not to damage this tape, so anyone not familiar with manual bed leveling may get a little stumped here.

The X gantry(crane?) has a slight bit of vertical wobble, but absolutely no sag. This "would" lead to some Z backlash but whoever designed this printer knows what they are doing. The Z axis is the slowest I have ever seen in my life. I haven't cracked it open yet to take a look at the mechanics but going from full 120cm height to home takes around 60 seconds. I don't think backlash will be an issue but time will tell. The first issue I ran into, the micro SD card shipped with the test models and software (Cura 15.08, and repetier, only 256 MB!!) doesn't work with the printer. It just reads as SD card empty. I was able to read the SD card on my computer, but it seems the test models were corrupt and don't load properly into Cura. I also don't like the test models. I was able to analyze them using gcode.ws, and they're terrible for first prints. The two I have are of an elephant, and Baymax from Big Hero 6. Printed at .1mm layer height, on a raft. Estimated print time of around 4-6 hours. Ouch. Seems a little steep for a first print, so I loaded up a Marlin.

Second issue, the guide shows you how to set up Cura, but use illegible screenshots of the settings, which would leave the user guessing. I just plugged in some basic eyeballed settings, and changed the Baudrate to 250000, and printed via the USB.

Marlin, printed at .2mm layer height, and 50mm/s, came out great. There did end up being some X axis shifting (tried to get the best pic I could). I think this has to do with one of my X axis bearings. Feels like a tiny bit of slop. Can't tell for sure yet, but I'm thinking 50mm/s is a bit fast for it stock settings. I'm confident that replacing the bearing with a longer LM6LUU (or packing the bearing) would do wonders here, but new buyers should keep the speeds south of 40mm/s.

I'll edit this post, and leave additional comments as I become more acquainted with the printer. So check back!