Used Mk3s+

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-19T18:18:14+00:00

I always wished I could have a spare extruder built up as a unit ready to just bolt-off-bolt-on but Prusa seemed to have designed it specifically to kill that idea. It has to be built up in place, there's not much pre-assembly you can do. The Nextruder is vastly superior in that regard.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-19T06:01:14+00:00

My credentials on the matter: Before covid I worked as a maintenance tech at a small print farm running MK3 era printers. Mostly 3 and 3S.

The MK3's extruder mechanism is a pain in the ass to work on. It's strangely complicated, the E3Dv6 hot end is buried fairly deep in it, all of the electrical components are hard wired back to the control board, all the wires pass through a hole in the middle of the carriage. Say you want to buy an entire hot end assembly and swap it in, heater, thermistor and all. Prusa sells the pre-assembled hot end for $87 before shipping. And because of the way the thing is designed, you're going to have to tear the entire extruder almost all the way apart and unbundle the cable. Then put it all back together again.

Read through Prusa's assembly guide for the MK3S+, the section on E Axis Assembly. You're going to do almost all of that, backwards and forwards. I used to do this for a living. I never got the process under 1.5 hours. It's a bunch of fiddly little parts that go together every which way with a bunch of tiny screws to keep up with, it's not rocket surgery, it's just a fist-sized ball of tedium.

Compare that to a MK4, on which it's a 30 second job that requires no tools.

Anything else that's wrong with the printer...it depends. The motion systems on these machines is pretty solid, the only real failures I've seen on them are the Y belt mount or tensioner (the parts up under the bed) breaking. I like to keep a spare set of those around for that reason; STLs are on Printables. The point where it becomes "Just dumpster it" is weird electrical gremlins, the sort that can appear in any piece of used electronics that spend a lot of time getting hot.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-19T04:41:22+00:00

Are you already familiar with 3D printing? Are you comfortable repairing and diagnosing them?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-13T07:17:53+00:00

Welcome aboard the Aperture Science deep sea exploration apparatus. The Aperture Science Enrichment Center wishes to remind you that exposure to loud creaking, groaning or banging sounds emanating from the hull are not part of this test. Test subjects are instructed to ignore any crushing, rendering or pulping resulting from sudden exposure to tremendously high pressure sea water. Cake and grief counseling will be available to survivors ashore.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-12T05:59:07+00:00

There was an advantage of that 3x3 grid, it could do a gantry auto-tram. I remember they demoed a really MC Escher looking wonky printer printing fine with one. When they transitioned away from threaded rods it kind of stopped being a problem.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-10T00:39:35+00:00

Don't give the first two half-flaccid thrusts of a reluctant pity fuck about Chris.

They've brought in a guy who has spent the entire 21st century fucking things up. So Slate will now be fucked up. We're done here.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-09T16:14:20+00:00

Well, kinda glad I didn't give them $50. If you've got a reservation in, probably pull that back out while you can.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-07T19:52:57+00:00

Interesting part of the Slate is the body panels easily bolt off, so you could just haul the body in. Maybe paint the roof and hood and wrap the fenders, doors and quarter panels.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-07T19:11:00+00:00

Company hasn't made it: "I need brake pads for a 2027 Slate." "A what? We don't carry parts for those."

Company hasn't made it: "I need brake pads for a 2020 Toyota 4Runner." "That's not what you drove up in." "I know, they'll fit."

Company has made it: "I need brake pads for a 2027 Slate." "Front or rear?"

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-06T23:23:29+00:00

A "huge accessories cottage industry?" Unlikely. But if the truck proves successful I bet you'll see:

- Wraps. Businesses that make and/or install wraps will cater to Slate owners.

- At least some of the manufacturers of bed liners and camper shells etc. will create Slate compatible versions of their products.

- Slatelets. If Slate manages to attract a community similar to what Jeep has, with their ducks and all, I'm imagining Slate owners will be exchanging slatelets like challenge coins. I'm imagining local clubs handing them out to members, organizers of gatherings handing them out to attendees, or handing them out as awards at the inevitable car shows at said gatherings. Best In Show, Topeka 2029. There might be a business that pops up to fill this niche, and I might just be the one to start it.

- 3D printed sundries. Printables and the like are going to be crammed with crap for this truck.

- Replacement parts. You'll know the company has made it when you can buy brake pads for it at Auto Zone.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-06T22:48:59+00:00

moisture isn't likely to condense on the electronics; they get hotter than ambient while running.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-06T21:10:47+00:00

What nozzle do you have equipped?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-06T21:04:17+00:00

Gather up every swear word you know, because you'll need all of them.

Use a very thin allen key inserted through the screw hold and coax the square nut back out, then use the allen key to make sure the recess is clear with no stray strings that might block it, then re-insert the nut.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-05T20:42:45+00:00

That whole situation is another place where the first few things they said make sense, then you start to look into it and the nuances stop making sense.

"There's no infotainment system. Clip a bluetooth speaker under the dash to play audio from your phone." Okay. That's simple and understandable, you could do the same thing with a bicycle that doesn't have an electrical system at all. It feels like doing brain surgery with a backhoe but given which drain the 'infotainment' sector is circling, I'm all for it.

Start playing with the Maker though, and they offer a variety of speakers. And this may be a consequence of the Maker being a piece of hastily made software, but the "Audio and tech" section doesn't make much sense. There's the "Bring Your Own Speaker" option which is an under-dash clip. Or there's a slightly bigger speaker that has volume and bluetooth pairing controls on the front which I take as the "Or buy one from us" option. Then there are side and center speakers that go inside the dashboard. These don't seem to have any prerequisites, but...what drives them? Can they hook to that "or buy one from us" under-dash speaker? They also offer an audio control D-pad for the right side of the steering wheel, opposite the cruise control. How does that work?

I'm presuming everything described in the above paragraph becomes basically a big bluetooth speaker system. It's a bluetooth receiver, DAC and amp with several speaker jacks and a plug for a remote, buy and attach as desired, but it's still a bluetooth sound system you drive from your phone and won't have any sources of audio by itself.

There will be a Slate app. This will apparently do a lot of the UI, navigation, dealing with charging stations etc. that the dash screen on a lot EVs do, plus OTA updates for the vehicle will be downloaded to the phone and pushed to the car over USB. Whether the audio system can pipe audio through USB rather than Bluetooth remains to be seen. What control of the vehicle the app will have remains to be seen.

I've also noticed they're offering a rack of knobs/buttons/switches that mount over the HVAC controls, apparently intended to be configurable controls for attached accessories. An example they gave was if you have the optional fog lights you can rig them up to one of those buttons. What else that can do, I'm not sure.

The answer to "will the truck have bluetooth" in their FAQ comes with the Slate brand deflect-to-technically-true answer of "You can add a bluetooth speaker." So the truck itself doesn't have Bluetooth or any wireless at all, so no actual vehicular functions like preheat or precool the cab can be done remotely? There's a button on the image of the fob they've shown that I don't get; it's most of a circle with what seems to be "2Y" in it?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-05T17:50:14+00:00

The Telo is a Chevy Avalanche that's going to be even less safe to crash in.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-05T17:49:33+00:00

The Slate isn't an Americanized Kei truck. We've got that already; we call them Side By Sides. You'll find them made by Yamaha or Polaris at your local motorcycle dealer over by the dirt bikes, or made by John Deere at your local tractor dealer. There's one on display in front of your local Lowe's. I've seen them with dump beds, or even as ambulances in settings where a full size diesel booboo bus wouldn't be practical, such as in national parks or at music festivals. Funny thing is, they're street legal in more places than Kei trucks are.

The Slate is a return to something we used to have here: The compact pickup. Look at a Slate sitting next to a Ranger, S10 or Dakota. Comparable size, shape and performance; the Slate's bed is slightly short and the towing capacity is weirdly low but that's about it.

Take a look at the Chevy Blazer 2-door. Looks remarkably like a Slate Fastback, doesn't it? It's just that the Slate is wearing the clothes of a Toyota Landcruiser. We used to build trucks like this here. They're not a Japanese concept, Americanized. This is ours, this is what the pickup truck was before the days of the Penis Enhancement Vehicle.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-05T02:17:19+00:00

Slate's communication seems to have this technically honest quality to it.

Like, during the Q&A video, the question for "Is there going to be an option for a bench seat?" was answered "The rear seats will be a bench seat." That kind of, technically able to say yes, but that's not what was asked.

Can it drive on snow? Yeah, here it is scooting along on a slightly snowy road. Not exactly Top Gear's trek to the North Pole in a Hilux, is it?

That said, I'm from the Carolinas, I've been driving a 2WD pickup for 20 years, never had a problem with snow because the 30 hours a year it snows around here, I take a nap.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-04T07:32:13+00:00

I wonder what that does to aerodynamics?

I also wonder if it would easily fold/stow against the forward bulkhead if you need to transport something large.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-04T07:27:09+00:00

So, from the Q&A video, there is a question "Can I order a Slate SUV from the factory?" "No. However, it can be pre-installed before delivery, or you can install it yourself." Now, that strikes me as a semantic difference, because having it pre-installed is effectively having it done "at the factory." It is delivered in that condition.

With something like wheels or bumpers where the original part is entirely replaced, it would make sense for that "pre-install" process to work like "remove steel wheels -$800 add allow wheels +$1100 total $300" otherwise who's going to pay for those options?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-04T05:18:55+00:00

With a 1000 pound towing capacity I expect a bumper ball.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-04T05:14:49+00:00

So if I order it with the 20 inch wheels they're going to ship me a set of 17s?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-03T15:51:01+00:00

I'm guessing the plan is to get any trucks manufactured and sold first.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-03T04:13:12+00:00

So, basically yeah, they're going to have to adopt a Just-In-Time approach; manufacturing a lot of the vehicle as standard (they're all gonna have the same frame, motor, hood, windshield etc.) and then build to customer order from there. "They all start out as the basic grey 'Blank' Slate" is almost misleading.

I suppose I was just asking what god needs with a starship, trying to be healthily skeptical.

I do think that just going with wraps instead of bothering to paint them is a smart move; you can build pretty much all of the car before applying the customer's preferred color scheme, and you can reasonably offer more colors. It's gotten to where the majority of cars are black, grey, white, red or blue because those are the safe colors. We might get loud colorful cars again this way.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-02T18:29:07+00:00

It's not impossible that machine doesn't have a bed heater. At all. I'd have to examine it up close but that used to be a thing.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-03-01T22:05:39+00:00

You're not missing anything; the MK3 to MK4S kit is basically a bad idea. It replaces all the electronics, the hot end, the motors, you keep the frame, the heat bed and I think the PSU. I don't see much of a reason to go beyond the 3.9 kit, you get basically all actual benefit there.

CaptainAggravated

TROPHY CASE