Prusa has announced a 3D printer with a 180 x 180 x 180mm build volume.

The firm, based in Prague, has walked-the-walk for several years, using 500 of its own filament deposition printers in a farm that prints the structural plastic parts of those same printers – of which it has shipped ~130,000.

As such, the larger existing design, called the i3 and currently at mk3, is thoroughly debugged with a reputation for working out-of-the-box and repeatedly producing quality parts.

The new model, shipping for €369, is the Prusa Mini.

Like the i3 Mk3, Prusa is marketing the Mini as a production machine as well as a printer for prototyping and makers.

“The Mini was designed to be a 3D printing workhorse and it offers the same level of reliability and quality as the rest of the Original Prusa family,” according to Prusa. “While a large [i3] print platform has its advantages, you can produce a higher number of parts when you utilise parallel printing. Run the print job on two-plus [Mini] 3D printers to maximise your production.”

To support this, it predicts printing 35x of a nominal part every 24 hours on an i3 which costs €900, or 40x parts every 24 hours on a pair of Minis.

Shipping will start in late November.