When I first got started in 3D printing, I was well aware of the trend for enthusiasts in the field to quickly find themselves with an entire flock of them. I can confirm that stereotype, as now I am in the possession of (most of) five printers.
My first printer, a Monoprice Select Mini, was still functional but due to its limitations I had not used it for many months. I had been contemplating taking it apart to reuse its parts. When I talked about that idea with some local people, I found a mutually beneficial trade: in exchange for my functioning printer, I traded it for a nearly identical but non-functioning unit to take apart.
My second, a Monoprice Maker Ultimate, has experienced multiple electrical failures with an infamous relay, and I suspect those failures had secondary repercussions that triggered other failures in the system. It is currently not working and awaiting a control board upgrade.
My third printer, a Monoprice Maker Select, was very affordable but there were trade-offs made to reach that price point. I’ve since had to make several upgrades to make it moderately usable, but it was never a joyous ownership experience.
Those three printers were the topic of the tale of 3D printing adventures I told to Robotics Society of Southern California. One of my parting advise was that, once we get to the ~$700 range of the Maker Ultimate, there were many other solid options. The canonical default choice is a Prusa i3 and I came very close to buying one of my own several times.
What I ended up buying is a MatterHackers Pulse, a derivative of the Prusa i3. I bought it during 2019’s “Black Friday” sale season, when MatterHackers advertised their Pulse XE variant at a hefty discount. Full of upgrades that I would have contemplated installing anyway, it has performed very well and I can happily recommend this printer.
Why would I buy a fifth printer when I had a perfectly functioning Pulse XE? Well, I wouldn’t. I didn’t get this printer because it was better, I picked it up because it was free. I have some motion control (not 3D printing) projects on the candidate list and a retired partial Geeetech A10 printer may prove useful.
New Screwdriver 
Roger, are all of these machines currently set up as Bowdens? Thanks.
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The Monoprice Maker Select and Maker Ultimate are direct drive printers.
The MatterHackers Pulse XE has a Bowden tube from the extruder to the print head.
The Monoprice Mini and the Geeetech A10 designs use Bowden tubes, but as they are both currently disassembled, the pedantic answer is “neither”.
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Hi Roger,
I’m also a Monoprice Maker Ultimate owner and despite my enthusiasm for its ruggedness and speed I, too, believe it is probably time for a board upgrade. Have you gotten around to it in the last half decade? 🙂 What did you end up using, and did you keep the original Ultipanel OLED? For my salt my printer moves properly but the extruder stepper driver refuses to run for more than a couple seconds, alas (I haven’t ruled out an overheating issue but I’m not really sure how I’d check). Either way, I hope to hear back cause there’s precious little information about the Ultimate I haven’t already looked at and I haven’t seen mine running in over a year ;-;Yours,Cassandra
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Hi Cassandra,
To answer your question, I never did get around to it in the last half decade. As a follow-up to the post above: I’ve been using only my Pulse XE for five years. Then this past Black Friday I bought a Prusa MK4S printer and I’ve been very happy with it. Technology has moved forward during this time and old printers can’t match the faster performance and higher dimensional accuracy of a MK4S. So I doubt I would revive my old printers.
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