Wan't to build an original Reprap Mendel for the fun of it.

So just for the fun of it. I would like to build the original Mendel just for the nostalgia of it. Believe it or not,My high school Has an original fully assembled Mendel V1 that has bean sitting for several years doing nothing. I asked if I could take a look at it. I got all the axis's moving, except for Z. The integrated stepper driver was damaged and could not be replaced.Both the hotend thermistor and bed thermistor was displaying 0 Ohm's meaning it was shorted. Sitting in a humid machine shop for 5 years will do that. I could not believe the age of it. The hotend seemed to be a drilled out screw, The heated bed was heated with these ceramic heating elements placed inside metal housings that where then tacked to the button of a aluminum bed. The hotend seems to be heated with nichrome wire or something similar. This thing was the father of modern 3D printers. Knowing my school, They are never going to fix it and never use it again. Its bean long replaced by more modern printers. I keep wondering what the school would say if I asked if I coulds take it home since its no use to anyone and will most likely end up in the trash. If that fails I wan't to build the printer myself. Not that it would be any use to me. Especially with my kossel and Folger Tech FT-5. But it would be a cool item for me to own. I know that I can get most of the parts from my local hardware store or aliexpress, But the board and hotend is going to be a difficult thing to find/build. I wan't to make is as original to the design as possible. Where/ How can I make or find the original mendel electronics, hotend, motors, ect?

The reprap wiki would be a good start, or jumping back to the early pages of the forum. But why stop at the Mendel, if you really want to go old school build a Darwin.

[reprap.org]

Also just a nitpicking thing, be careful calling the Mendel or Darwin for that fact, "the father of modern 3D printers" Rapid prototyping has been around for a good 30 to 40 years, but industry held most of the patents. When the patents expired or were close too, the reprap project was able to start building these cheap machines so that everybody could have the technology. So really they are the farther of consumer or hobby 3D printers.

Perhaps a better phrase would be that Darwin was the first reprap, Adrian Bowyer is the father of reprap. Stratasys was the inventor of fused deposition modelling.

I like the idea of building a Mendel v1, which was a way before my time with 3d printers, but it will be hard to make things with what seems like bodgy, old-school, probably quite unsafe equipment when much better heatbed, hotends and electronics can be had for pennies. Good luck though it will be cool.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2017 05:54AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions