Monoprice Releases Their Mini Delta Printer (On Indiegogo)

Around this time last year, Monoprice quietly unveiled a small, $200 3D printer. At the time, a fully functioning printer at this price point wasn’t unheard of. A good 3D printer at this price point was. It turned out this printer was actually fantastic and completely changed the value proposition of desktop 3D printers.

In the year since the release of the MP Select Mini printer, Monoprice has been hard at work bringing costs down, reworking designs, and creating an even less expensive printer. Now, it’s out. It’s available for pre-order on Indiegogo right now. Is this still a $150 printer? Not quite: the ‘early bird’ price is $159 with free shipping and August delivery, and a regular price of $169 plus $10 shipping with September or October delivery. There’s also a bundle for $279 that includes the printer, 2kg of filament, and a software package.

The first time we saw this tiny printer was way back in January at CES. It looked to be an extremely capable printer; the only question was if Monoprice could produce it and get it out the door. This would be a tall order; this printer comes with NEMA 17 stepper motors, a heated bed, a 32-bit controller board, and has WiFi enabled.

Here’s what we know about the capabilities of this printer. It’s a fairly standard delta printer with Bowden extruder and a heated bed. PLA and ABS is supported. The printer has auto bed leveling that measures the bed by ‘tapping’ the nozzle against the bed in about a dozen places before printing. From what we saw at CES, the hot end appears similar to the first revision of the $200 MP Select Mini — possibly opening up the door to E3D hot end installations.

Is this printer worth it? Every 3D printer released on a crowdfunding platform should come with the standard warnings, but Monoprice says this machine is in production right now. This raises the question: why release it on Indiegogo when Monoprice already has the whole ‘taking orders for products online’ thing in the bag? I suspect this crowdfunding campaign is just building a buffer; a year ago, the MP Select Mini was perpetually out of stock, and demand far outstripped supply. The same thing will happen with a 3D printer that’s even deeper into impulse buy territory.

In any event, the printer we’ve all been waiting for has been ‘released’, for varying values of ‘released’. The first units will start making their way onto desktops this summer, and we’re going to pick one up and put it through its paces. You can check out Monoprice’s video of this printer below.

56 thoughts on “Monoprice Releases Their Mini Delta Printer (On Indiegogo)

    1. Indeed, we’ve been hovering waiting to check it was working when the article went live, but it seems their scheduling isn’t as exact as ours! We’re working on getting the link when it appears.

  1. I am so pleased I don’t own a 3d printer, I was impressed at $300 even if it did occasionally catch fire, but at $160 I now have no excuse to not own one, oter than the lack of a use for 3d printed tug boats.

      1. Genuine question: why did you pre-order something that has not touched the hands of a single reviewer, and probably doesn’t exist beyond a prototype, from an extremely established company that shouldn’t have any trouble launching a product?

        Why doesn’t HaD call out companies on using crapstarter campaigns when they’re not necessary? Crapstarter is for when you’re 5 guys in a garage, not when you’re like a major PC peripherals company.

        1. They will either learn the hard way or end up ecstatic that they got what they wanted.

          Anyone smart enough to operate a 3D printer should be smart enough know they are taking a risk, or at least understands the “fine print”. HaD doesn’t need to harp on this point.

        2. > Why doesn’t HaD call out companies on using crapstarter campaigns when they’re not necessary? Crapstarter is for when you’re 5 guys in a garage, not when you’re like a major PC peripherals company.

          This might be a legitimate use of an already existing product on a crowdfunding platform. Let’s just assume this printer is going to be a hit (reasonable, given last year), and Monoprice doesn’t want to deal with constant out of stock issues. They make a crowdfunding campaign, which both serves as a buffer for the initial spike of orders, and can also be used to determine demand. Now, stock issues are pretty much taken care of and they have a really good idea of how many printers they should order from the manufacturer.

        3. My suspicion is they are using crowdfunding to make sure the first units go to enthusiasts, who are more likely to post reviews of the product and provide feedback on bugs before the ramp up production for prime time.

          It’s a soft launch.

        4. All the Monoprice printers work well and good bang for buck so there’s little chance you won’t get a decent deal on the offer.

          I do agree it’s a misuse of fundraiser site as their using it more like an online store than fundraising :-(

      1. From their website:

        “The lowest priced professional quality 3D Printer in the world.”

        Should read:

        “The lowest priced professional quality 3D Printer in the continental US.”

          1. It does in this case, really. If I were to ask “what’s the cheapest 3D printer in Belgium?”, it’d only make sense to include 3D printers you can actually buy in Belgium. Cheapness implies people can actually buy it. This is just the cheapest (possibly) one in the USA.

    1. The inconsistencies are rather annoying. For example, the Indiegogo site lists the print area as “120×120 mm”, while elsewhere it’s listed as 110×120. Also, the linked video says 100 micron, but the site shows 50 micron.

  2. DAMN YOU BRIAN! Order #223 placed. I’ve been putting off getting a cheapo 3d printer forever, never use the the fleet of printers I have access to, but for $159 I had to have one.

  3. Jeez, that thing is TINY… So happy it’s not available in Europe right now, or i could seriously not resist to buy it right away even if i already have enough delta and cartesian printers sitting around at home… :-D

  4. I’ve got the MP select mini and am generally happy with it. It does look like they’ve stuck with some of the same deficiencies though: those hateful little spring clips for the fan, and the Guaranteed-to-Break plastic extruder arm. The extruder is probably as easy a replacement as on the MPSM, but I wonder if the hot end will be as easy to change out.

  5. Anyone know what method/tech they’re using for auto-level? For a mass-produced “just works” product, I’m guessing it’s good, and a lot of the Reprap current solutions are still meh.

  6. “this crowdfunding campaign is just building a buffer”

    Or to provide a bunch of hype. The standard capitalist solution to a problem of low supply and high demand is to reduce the demand by increasing the price. Works every time, but the risk is that it works too well and the demand is gone.

    1. There’s a non-linearity in the S-D curve here. There’s value in buying a printer with strong community support, and if MP can deliver the cheapest good printer, they’re likely to build that community. An incremental increase in price would probably drop most of the demand.

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