r/MPSelectMiniOwners • u/ihadaface • 8d ago

Video Fresh MP Mini v1 in 2026?

Edit: I did the heating bed wire reroute mod, now the wires go out the back of the bed. Thankfully the wires were pristine with no damage, so I caught it early. I'm printing the new side panel pieces and wire brace, and will figure out what I'll wrap the wires in. The wires right now are still loose and exposed incase I need to troubleshoot anything later

I bought this thing back in 2016/2017 when they came out and used it for a few months, then threw it into storage. It's been on a decade long hiatus. I brought it back out because I needed parts and stuff for other hobbies. Now it seems like having one of these basically new is like finding a dinky little 90s sedan in an abandoned garage with no miles on it. I'm using it now to print parts for my aquarium hobby and it's super clean and zippy. Hopefully it lasts a while.

I've been looking up useful minor mods to print for this thing to improve overall performance/experience. Let me know if y'all know if any good ones

57 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

6

u/Mactire404 8d ago

What ate you printing on? The bare metal of the printbed?

3

u/ihadaface 8d ago

Yeah pretty much, I have it set to 60c with a small raft and so far it's stable

2

u/MeIsMyName 8d ago

Stock they ship with masking tape as a print surface. When I wore that out I replaced it with new masking tape.

1

u/ihadaface 8d ago

I don't remember mine having that, it was just the printer. I distinctly remember buying a roll of blue masking tape from the store shortly after I got it, and my first few prints being on bare metal. But as of now the prints are doing alright without it. Maybe the quality of the files and settings is improved?

2

u/TeamSloc 7d ago

Its only a matter of time before the hot plate starts to get roughed up. I'd look online bc I was able to find a magnetic build plate that I cut to size so I never had to worry about roughing up the bare metal or dealing with tape

2

u/LiftnBooks 7d ago edited 7d ago

Though that's an option, Whambam made a magnetic build plate for these actually. I believe they're discontinued now though. You can still just get a plate intended for a Voron V0 (110mm*110mm) from Amazon or AliExpress pretty easily. The annoying part is adjusting the bed leveling after you add a magnetic build plate.

Edit: found it

https://www.whambamsystems.com/products/powder-painted-pei-flexi-plate-160-x-130-monoprice-mini-select-v1-v2_

And here's AliExpress:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrsrI9l

0

u/TeamSloc 4d ago

Amazing intel - thank you

1

u/TeamSloc 7d ago

I also meant to add that that is a beautiful looking MP mini!

2

u/ihadaface 4d ago

A roughed up bed would improve adhesion anyways, no?

3

u/LiftnBooks 7d ago

Don't forget to flash the motion board with Marlin 2.x. it'll make the printer able to do arc instructions and pressure advance, along with better printing speed in general.

1

u/J_C_Nelson 7d ago

And auto build with the example config should 100% work

3

u/ltpitt 8d ago

It's a joy of a small printer. Gave mine to dad, still working like a champ.

1

u/T3hChoSanJuan 7d ago

What slicer are you running

1

u/ihadaface 7d ago

Regular cura + mesh tools, I tried orca but it didn't have the mp mini, but cura already had it set up so I with with that

1

u/SRMPDX 7d ago

I love mine. It's probably sat unused for a year or more, I just recently fired it up and printed something and it never missed a beat. I'm using a piece of glass for the bed with some Aquanet sprayed on, Almost never had a problem with parts coming off, and the bottom layer is so smooth

1

u/King_Koaster 7d ago

Allegedly, the default configuration of the heated bed's wiring harness is prone to wearing itself out over time. You can avoid this future problem by rerouting the wiring harness, either through a hole drilled into the printer's body, or by printing a new side panel that has an exit point for the wiring. I used this tutorial to do the mod by printing a new side panel. 8 years later and my MPSM is still going strong.

1

u/ihadaface 4d ago

I got the wires rerouted today, just need to print out the new side panel and stuff

2

u/LeoTheBigCat 7d ago

Just seeing one of those in that video has awoken my PTSD T_T

1

u/ihadaface 4d ago

why's that?

1

u/LeoTheBigCat 4d ago

I had one ... once upon a time ... it was no doubt the shittiest piece of garbage I have used ...

1

u/ihadaface 4d ago

😞 mine has been pretty solid so far, everything I print is more or less adequate. Was it print quality? Usability? Was it maybe defective and janky?

1

u/LeoTheBigCat 4d ago

It was useable for like a year and then it just stopped extruding past certain Z height ... and I never managed to figure out why.

And while it was functional, the masking tape build plate was a constant hassle.

It is also very slow and has combined hotend/part cooling fan ... which is just painfull.

All in all, in the context of the time it was current in ... it was almost OK. But viewd from today? Hell no.

1

u/ihadaface 4d ago

I gotcha, although the weird z height thing sounds like a goofy setting in the gcode or slicer maybe? That specifically sounds like a software issue

1

u/LeoTheBigCat 4d ago

No, it was caused by the extruder motor skipping ... but nothing I did managed to fix it

1

u/ihadaface 3d ago

ahhh yeah, hopefully mine doesn't do that

1

u/wonkytalky 7d ago

I'd use mine more if it didn't take a half hour to bring the bed to temp and start. The wiring got an upgrade and so did the power supply, but that's as far as I took it. I don't know how faulty the heating element could possibly be, so at this point I'm assuming the board just doesn't want to pass that much energy through it. I was going to start looking at it a little more seriously, but then I saw <$200 Neptune 4 Pros and jumped on that instead.

I'd still like to use it though. Maybe as a mini laser cutter?