Monoprice Select Mini Gets Smooth

We’ve had a love affair with the Monoprice Select Mini since it came out. The cheap printer has its flaws, though. One of them is that the controller is a bit opaque. On the one hand, it is impressive that it is a 32-bit board with an LCD. On the other hand, we have no way to modify it easily other than loading the ready-built binaries. Want to add bed leveling? Multiple fans? A second extruder and mixing head? Good luck, since the board doesn’t support any of those things. [mfink70] decided the controller had to go, so he upgraded his Mini with a Smoothie board.

On the plus side, the Smoothie board is also a 32-bit board with plenty of power and expansion capability. On the downside, it costs about half as much as the printer does. Just replacing the board was only part of the battle. [mfink70] had to worry about the steppers, the end stops, and a few other odds and ends.

Luckily, the stepper connectors are compatible. Some of the motors were reversed, but the Smoothie board can handle that sort of configuration with a simple change to a text file. The end stops and most of the other wiring required connectors to come off (the Smoothieboard mostly uses screw terminals).

Of course, the new board won’t drive the old display, so he also replaced the display with an MKS touchscreen (driving the cost up to well over half the machine’s cost). The payoff, though, is you wind up with a wealth of expansion options.

There are plenty of other mods you can do with less expense, of course. If you are interested in our original review (of the first generation model), it is still out there.

19 thoughts on “Monoprice Select Mini Gets Smooth

    1. You should have submitted it on the tip line. We have a diverse readership and not everyone wants to/is able to configure an FPGA with a BBQ lighter after decapsulating it with fuming nitric acid.So we try to cover a little bit of everything. As for the title, we have to take our fun where we can find it. I guess we could have gone with…

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    1. Don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong with this link. WordPress automatically messes uo the link and the alternative way is a data hog anyways.
      We manually add the “www” and remove the “i” from the beginning to view it.

      Nice printer!

    2. Access Denied (content_filter_denied)

      Your request was denied because of its content categorization: “Media Sharing;Mixed Content/Potentially Adult”
      Based on mandatory information security and privacy rules access to this category is not allowed.

      Detailed technical information:

      URL: http://i.imgur.com/gQ3SPSC.jpg

      That’s my world, and welcome to it!
      B^)

    1. HackADay likes to keep us guessing as to _which_ article posted in a 24 hour period (which 24 hour period is a closely guarded secret known only to 3 of The Evil Overlords, and of course, the janitor!) is the “hack” for the day.

  1. El 9 may. 2017 9:00 PM, “Hackaday” escribió:

    > Al Williams posted: “We’ve had a love affair with the Monoprice Select > Mini since it came out. The cheap printer has its flaws, though. One of > them is that the controller is a bit opaque. On the one hand, it is > impressive that it is a 32-bit board with an LCD. On the other ha” >

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