Mini 2 Desktop 3D Printer

I've put about 200 print hours into this printer (printing all day for a few weeks now) and not had a single failed print. I haven't had to babysit it, adjust anything, or fuss around at all. What a beast! I upgraded from a Printrbot which required constant babysitting, and would fail constantly. This printer is a joy to use by comparison, and such a load off the mind. I've printed more on this machine in the short month that I've owned it than I did in all the years I had my old printer. The confidence that a print will "just work" without having to think about it has completely changed the 3D printing game for me.The build quality, the manual, the support, open source, auto leveling, self cleaning, built in the U.S., SD card support, built-in LCD, etc. The thing is a tank and worth every dollar.There are only a few minor downsides of the Mini 2. I'll spend time enumerating them here. They aren't deal breakers, but more like "notes" for other buyers so they know what to watch out for to make their experience even better. 1) The build volume, being only ~160mmx160mm, can be restricting. Obviously there's the larger Taz 6, but the Taz 6 is missing some nice features that the Mini 2, being a newer model, has. So getting the Taz 6 instead can be a "downgrade" in other respects. Hopefully they release a Taz 7 soon... 2) The hotend assembly is designed to handle flexible filament, which is _great_ and it's a great hotend overall, but because of this it has to have really tight tolerances. That means it's more prone to getting filament stuck during filament changes unless you're very careful. Now, don't take that the wrong way. Once I got the proper procedure down for removing old filament I haven't had any issues. But if you don't remove the filament the "right way" the filament will deform slightly and get jammed requiring some serious finesse to extract. Overall not a huge deal, but it's not the fool-proof "just works" of the rest of the machine. 3) It uses 2.85mm filament. Ugh. Everything is 1.75mm now, which means it's hard to find 2.85mm filament. So even though a big plus of this machine is that the hotend assembly can handle a wide range of filament types, you'll be hard pressed to actually take advantage of that because of limited 2.85mm supplies. Bummer.Now I want to end my review with something positive. This printer is incredibly professional and well done. For example the package came with the factory QA checklist, so you know everything is as it should be. And they include a little tool kit with case that has all the tools and other things you'll need for running and maintaining the machine (not that much maintenance is even needed!). All of that professionalism really impressed me. But what impressed me even more was that for such a "commercial" product, the spirit of openness and open source ethos within Lulzbot the company is astounding. You can actually go to their website and download the guides that their employees use to assemble the machines at the factory. Crazy! It's all just ... right there. And of course all the CAD models etc for the entire machine. I've never seen such a professional product also be so open. And to me that's not just "well that's neat". It's also useful. I know I can replace parts in the far future if I ever need to, regardless of whether Lulzbot is still around or supporting my printer. And a huge part of owning a 3D printer is also designing parts for it to print. I've already had a few instances where I've gone "wow, how is this part on the printer engineered?" And I could download the CAD file and see! It's been a wonderful source of insight and a great teaching tool.I know a lot of 3D printing has its foundation in open source (ala RepRap). But I sort of assumed that the more "professional" 3D printers would shy away from that (and in general they do :( ). It's great that Lulzbot is able to provide such an excellent, professional machine _and_ keep it open source without sacrificing anything. Hats off!

This is a super long story but I bought this printer in December of 2018. Worked great at first. Then broke in summer of 2019 (with very moderate use). Contacted support. We determined it was likely the power support. Product was under 1 year warranty so support agent said they were shipping us a new power supply. Got our address and everything and said it was on its way. Nothing arrived. I then tried to contact them again and after many attempts (phone and email) no one ever answered or replied. I gave up. Bought my own power supply. Then in early Feb of 2020 I get a call to from someone saying "Lulzbot went bankrupt and they have bought the company". They said they saw that I had an issue... told them that I had just bought a power supply (with my own $) and was going to try it out. They said go for it but if it doesn't work call us back. Well, it didn't work. Power supply is identical but after replacing same issue occurs (printer shuts off after a few minutes of printing)... so probably the mother board. Tried contacting the new owners back several times... no response. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY

Absolutely amazing printer. This is the first one I've called my own (well, technically an M3D Pro was my first but it hardly worked at all), but I've used a few others, and I must say this is not disappointing especially at its price point. Great prints, great customer service, my only complaints are:1) There's no (easy) way to put on a dual extruder. The aerostruder does great with both rigid and flexible filaments (I've tried PLA and NinjaFlex), but if you want partially flexible prints or water-soluble supports, this might not be the best choice. At the very least you're in for a LOT of hacking, and spending what you probably would on a built-in dual like the TAZ series anyway.2) The ratio of build volume to footprint seems a bit dramatic (eats up about 450x400x600 mm of space for just 170x170x185 mm build volume, and they recommend an additional 300 mm of breathing room in all directions totaling about a cubic meter of space). However, it fits nicely on my shelf and works fine even though it's nearly up against the wall. I even used it to print a tool rack that I designed to be mounted to it - this can all be seen in the first picture.It is very quiet like everyone says, BUT still far from silent. I can do overnight prints with it in my bedroom and sleep through it, but my light-sleeping sister next door is sometimes woken up. If noise is an issue, just be mindful of the acoustics of its environment - i.e., it will make significantly more noise on the surface of a wooden desk up against a wall than it would on a flexible mat with no easy path for sound to travel directly to walls, like I have in the picture.Other pictures are of 1) a robot arm I'm working on (all body parts came from this printer) and 2) a solid made mainly by cut-combining a truncated icosahedron with a sphere, which I designed by accident in highschool and have been using as a benchmark test for things ever since - it printed essentially flawless.I even used it to print keys to my work's paper towel dispensers (not shown for potential liability reasons), which work as well or better than the professional ones, and my boss agreed to buy them from me instead of our supplier since I can charge him less than half what we pay for the pros and still be making over 400% profit for myself. We always seem to lose them, so... Win win!Highly recommend this printer, at least as a beginner! Only had it a few months and I'd say it's already worth what I paid for it, so I can't wait to see what else I can do with it!