Last year, in the Spring of 2023, we announced and started to ship the successor to the MK3, the Original Prusa MK4. The MK4 quickly became our fastest-selling machine ever, which also meant that we spent a good portion of the last year boosting our production to fulfill all the orders. We have nearly 200 new colleagues and our manufacturing runs like never before. This is why we now have MK4 printers, both kits and assembled, in stock!

To celebrate MK4’s first birthday, we prepared a special bundle with the iFixit Mako Driver Kit and a Limited Edition PEI Sheet (more details below). Also, during the first year of its existence, the MK4 gained a lot of new features including Input Shaper and Pressure Advance to double the printer’s speed, and G-code streaming for instant network printing (and much more). Furthermore, we’re now releasing the new 6.0.0 firmware that brings even more features – it enables touch controls on the MK4 (and MK3.5/3.9), adds Stealth Mode and a new Load-Cell-based clogged nozzle detection system, and other useful improvements. Below is a summary of all the major news from the past 12 months. But first: the gifts!

Gifts with MK4

On the occasion of MK4’s birthday, we have prepared a special offer featuring Original Prusa MK4 with two awesome gifts! When you get MK4 as a kit or assembled printer or in a bundle with Original Prusa Enclosure (add it on the MK4’s store page in the right panel), you will receive the following items for free:

• iFixit Mako Driver Kit – the ultimate driver kit for all makers out there
• Limited Edition Smooth PEI Steel Sheet with a special design – you will get two sheets in total: one that comes with the printer by default and one Limited Edition sheet

Please note that this promo ends on Tuesday, 30th April, 11:59 p.m. PST (or May 1st at 8:59 a.m. CET).

iFixit Mako Driver Kit

We love to assemble, build, and repair stuff as much as you do! Besides, one of the most important aspects of our printers is that their maintenance is a breeze thanks to their easily accessible parts, so you can tune or repair anything you need. This kind of job is even easier with the right tools, so we reached out to the team from iFixit. They are well known for their ongoing community support and for strongly voicing their opinion that access to parts, tools, and repair information should be fair and affordable. We can completely relate to that! iFixit has joined our Printables Brands section, and we also offer their superb toolkit in our e-shop. To celebrate the first anniversary of MK4, we have decided to add one of these amazing toolkits to your MK4 order for free.

The MK4 assembly kit continues the MK3 tradition: it’s immensely popular because with our easy-to-follow instructions it allows you to build the entire printer from scratch. It’s the best way to learn how a 3D printer operates, you can then easily carry out any sort of maintenance… it’s simply a joy to build (you can even build it with your kid) – and with the iFixit Mako set even more so! 🙂 Once you’re done building it, with 64 bits inside the box, you can tackle any project requiring precise work. From assembling a 3D-printed car to disassembling a retro videogame console! Plus, You can download a ton of accessories for iFixit products at Printables.com, including the official Mako Driver Kit Box Frame.

Limited PEI Steel Sheet with MK4 Design

We also wanted to do something special just for the first anniversary, so we created a limited edition of 2,000 print sheets with a unique design featuring the MK4 blueprint.

This print sheet has the same properties as our proven Smooth PEI Print Sheet. It’s perfect for materials such as PLA or composites and since it’s chemically resistant, you can easily apply a separation layer onto it, so you can print PETG, ASA, PC Blend, and many others.

Feature-packed firmware 6.0.0 out now!

And there is one more birthday gift – this time it’s something for ALL MK4 owners. 🙂 We have recently released a new 6.0.0 firmware version and it’s absolutely jam-packed with new features and various improvements. We’re preparing an article that will cover everything in detail, so just a quick summary:

• Vastly improved Cancel Object function
• Load-cell-based stuck filament detection
• Cold Pull wizard (MK4 only)
• Touchscreen now enabled
• Stealth Mode
• MMU3 firmware auto-update
• …and more! We’ll publish an article covering the details in the upcoming days.

This is just another addition to an already great list of features of the MK4 – we support our products years after they are released. For the MK3S+, we kept releasing firmware updates adding new features and capabilities (print sheet profiles, Thermal Model Protection, Hardware checks and more) for six years. Let’s look at some of the things we added to the Original Prusa MK4 so far.

MMU3 for MK4 Now Shipping

The MMU3 (MK4 version) left the final testing phase in March. We started shipping a couple weeks ago and you can get it from our e-shop here.

We made extensive changes to the MMU3’s hardware and firmware to further improve the reliability of the unit. It has full two-way communication with the printer and we also took a lot of the community’s feedback into account to add various improvements. The new unit is also less prone to assembly-related errors. Everything has been described in detail in our blog articles.

Input Shaper & Pressure Advance

Input Shaper and Pressure Advance are fully supported by the MK4 since the release of the 5.0.0 firmware last year. Thanks to these technologies, the MK4’s speed doubled while retaining outstanding print quality. In our opinion, print quality matters the most and we described this in detail in our comprehensive article with a “slightly” provocative headline: Original Prusa Printers — Now Printing at 20,000 mm/s!*.

Input Shaper is a feature designed to reduce ringing (also known as ghosting) by canceling resonance vibrations. It analyzes the printer’s movements and applies a filter to the input signals, improving print quality at high speeds. Pressure Advance improves the quality of printed parts by compensating for the pressure changes in the nozzle during printing. Together with Input Shaper, it enables the printing of better-looking models, reducing ringing, overshoots and issues with inconsistent filament extrusion.

*) The printer’s speed is directly affected by the model’s shape and also slicer settings, such as infill, layer height, the material used, the distance between models placed on the print bed, and more. Due to this, the speed difference between the MK3S+ and MK4 may slightly vary.

Prusa Connect: Instant printing

Prusa Connect allows you to manage your 3D printers from anywhere. This includes uploading print files, controlling and monitoring one printer or a whole print farm, monitoring the status of a print job using cameras, or tracking the printing history and detailed printer statistics, including filament usage. You can also connect this service to your communication app and receive real-time notifications. Prusa Connect has been in a public beta stage for some time now and we have released the initial public version with many new features, including Cancel Object support and plenty of quality-of-life improvements.

One of the recent additions that vastly improve network printing is G-code streaming. When you upload a G-code to Prusa Connect, the printer starts streaming the data from Connect to its storage. Once the first few blocks are in, the printer immediately starts printing – this is usually instantaneous, so this is why we call it Instant Printing. Another nice addition is the option to remotely update your printer’s firmware over the air (OTA) when a new version is released.

Touchscreen

We prepared a little surprise: a touchscreen layer has been secretly a part of the MK4 from the very beginning, however, we didn’t advertise it anywhere. Now, with firmware 6.0.0, we’re enabling the support for touch controls as a little bonus. 🙂 For years, the main control device for our FDM printers has been the physical knob alone – and it’s great! It offers snappy and precise controls and you still easily control your printer when you are, e.g., wearing gloves in your workshop. We spent a good amount of time optimizing the touchscreen controls to make them a worthy and useful addition to the existing control scheme. Don’t expect an extremely smooth smartphone-like experience, but I’m happy to say that the current implementation is really good.

The option is available in the User Interface menu where it can be turned on or off. Even with the touch support enabled, you can still control the MK4 with the physical knob, so you have the best of both worlds. Some features are accessible faster with the knob, others with a touchscreen. Simple gestures are also supported (e.g. simply swipe left to go “back”).

Cancel Object

The MK4 supports the Cancel Object feature – during a running print, you can open a special menu where you can select which object(s) should be skipped. This is great for, e.g., situations where you print dozens of objects at the same time and one of them detaches from the print sheet. Instead of stopping the print, you can simply skip printing the selected object. With the latest 6.0.0 firmware and G-code generated in PrusaSlicer 2.7.4 (or newer), you even get a nice graphical interface for Cancel Object in Prusa Connect.

As always, you can download the firmware either from prusa3d.com/drivers or GitHub. Please note that the new 6.0.0 STABLE release is available for the MK3.5/MK3.9/MK4 and MINI. For the XL, the 6.0.0 firmware is available as a Release Candidate 3 build – pretty stable but some small bugs may still be present.

More Things Coming to the MK4

It has been a pretty busy year since we launched the MK4, and our devs didn’t stop for a single day. We have published many firmware releases (see above) and we will continue to update the MK4 as often as possible.

We have some more things planned for this year, so we will definitely keep you updated. You can meet us in the meantime at various places around the world – including Australia! Check out our event schedule to see where we’re planning to go. We’ll be happy to meet you in person! 🙂

Happy Printing!