I don’t have a great deal of time to write elegantly — I’m too busy playing with the printer — but if you will pardon the brevity I will just dump the facts & approximate prices:

The Purchase

I put in an order on January 31st 2021, for a MINI+ with both steel sheets + a filament sensor; (£347) also 1Kg of Galaxy Black filament (£18) and a spare steel nozzle (£19); shipping was listed at £23.

The estimated ship date for MINI+ was around the middle of March. I followed the relevant blogpost, daily.

The purchasing process felt a little odd, but I am pretty sure that one can ascribe this to the Prusa website only just having re-opened to UK orders after sorting out some Brexit paperwork.

If you (like me) are/were buying something substantial — above a cap of £135 — then you won’t be paying VAT up-front to Prusa, instead you will pay the VAT and Duty to their shippers at some random point during shipment. In this case: my shippers were DHL. You will pay VAT on the shipping costs, too, plus a “fee”.

I found the website a bit confusing on the checkout form – some bits being marked as “tax paid” and other bits not so. In the end I decided to just “go for it” and would sort out any issues, later. I started a Reddit thread for discussion, and in it u/AStrangeStranger supplied some useful links:

• https://www.prusa3d.com/price-quote-request/
• https://forum.prusaprinters.org/forum/english-forum-general-discussion-announcements-and-releases/uk-orders/paged/4/
• And especially https://help.prusa3d.com/en/article/orders-to-the-uk_205772

…the latter being the official Prusa UK shipping page.

Using this information I calculated that I would likely be paying DHL approximately £90, comprising 20% VAT on the applicable items + shipping, and a further £11 “surcharge” (“£11 carrier surcharge if the VAT amount is less than £440 or 2.5% of the VAT value as a surcharge if over” by @moojuiceuk)

The Delivery

Timeline, adjusted for UK timezones throughout

• Thursday 1009: Prusa generate a shipping label
• Thursday 1020: I receive a email shipping notice from Prusa
• Thursday 1654: The parcel arrives at DHL Prague
• Friday 0817: The parcel departs DHL Prague
• Friday 2029: The parcel arrives at DHL Brussels
• Saturday 0430: The parcel departs DHL Brussels
• Saturday 0942: The parcel goes through UK Customs in Leicester (East Midlands Airport)
• Saturday 1425: The parcel arrives at DHL Leicester
• Sunday 0600: The parcel is at DHL Leicester, awaiting fees and clearance
• Sunday 1200: The parcel is at DHL Leicester, awaiting fees and clearance
• Sunday 1800: The parcel is at DHL Leicester, awaiting fees and clearance
• Monday 0600: I receive an email from DHL, with fees/payment details for £87 — this is basically what I expect. I finally see the email and pay it ASAP (logged at 0754)
• Monday 1200: The parcel is at DHL Leicester, awaiting clearance
• Monday 1926: “Clearance processing completed”
• Tuesday 0430: The parcel departs DHL Leicester
• Tuesday 0743: The parcel arrives DHL Reading
• Tuesday 0918: The parcel is out for delivery
• Tuesday 1152: Parcel Delivered

The above belabours the point a bit, but the in summary the parcel made it to the UK in less than 48 hours, and then it took an further 72+ hours to get to me, courtesy of Brexit and the all of this wonderful “control” that we’ve ostensibly taken back, with so many more middle-men and damn fool bureaucracy. Perhaps the cards could have landed differently (eg: arriving in the UK mid-week)

ps: props to DHL for getting it from Leicester to me in the space of a morning; I was fairly sure that I would have to wait another day for shipment from Reading to be arranged.

The Build

• Assembly went as expected
• It’s worth watching both the build and first-print videos before starting
• Took me about 90 mins to build, because I ran into a few minor snags which surprised and worried me, so I kept stopping to research them. All of these are attributable to the assembly manual being slightly out of date, but cross-checking against the online manual helped
• The MINI+ uses a 20mm screw to affix the LCD unit, not a 12mm screw
• A 20mm screw is properly supplied, but that it didn’t match the printed manual, caused mild panic
• Driving the LCD-mounting 20mm screw required a proper hex-driver, the supplied Allen key was simply not strong enough. Take care not to over-tighten, you’re essentially cutting a screw-thread into plastic as you go
• In the MINI+ there is a new hole for the Y-motor cable to pass through; you need the online manual for this.
• Getting the Y-axis cable to pass through the MINI+ hole is a tight fit, but does not require force, just persistence and very careful alignment
• Wow, the propanol wipe supplied for cleaning the bed, is sopping-wet with IPA, not what I was expecting at all
• Thank heavens for Gummi Bears

First Print

• Alignment and first print went perfectly. I went through a moment of confusion attempting to follow (I think) the video, to force a firmware update from the flash drive, but nothing happened.
• I printed a whistle. It worked. I was rather amazed. Then I put it to bed.

Second Print

• This morning: I decided to try printing the nut-and-bolt, starting with the nut
• The USB stick died, after about 30 minutes. Apparently this is a thing. Can’t resurrect it, my Mac won’t recognise it, it may be pretty but it is fried. Might request a replacement, but if this is so prevalent then why bother?
• Consequence or the USB stick dying: the printer would not read any other USB stick until it had been rebooted. Apparently having a stick die mid-use, confuses it.
• Also: I learned that the cutout “button” on the LCD, which I had barely noticed, is actually a reset button. I was otherwise reaching around to the one on the side.

Conclusion

Overall: I am very happy. I have had much worse experiences with hardware assembly. The manual is very good, very detailed, and only slightly out of date. I’m happy to recommend this experience… except for the Brexit bits.