Printing the Prusa Mendel Plastic Parts

I've decided to put together a Prusa SAE (my second Mendel). I'm thinking of printing the full Prusa SAE plate from Github in ABS on my existing Mendel with a heated bed. I checked in the forum but I didn't see much discussion on printing the plastic parts. So, I have some questions that might benefit others as well.

Is this a good idea or should I just print the Makerbot plates?

What layer thickness works best?

I notice that Nophead prints gears at a higher resolution and higher filling than the other plastic parts. But in the Mendel plate everything is together. Are the gears separate in the Makerbot plates?

Any other tips you'd like to share?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2011 10:50AM by brnrd.

AFAIK no one has printed the "prusa on a plate" plate. It is not the best way to print because you will have to separate the parts and that will leave some scars. Also, your machine will have to run for ~17 hours (depending on your print speed) without any sort of hiccup. If you do this, please post pics. It would be some sort of achievement.

I assumed that it had been printed before so I used Skeinforge with a layer thickness of 0.4 mm and a width ratio of 1.5 (0.6 mm width). First of all, I had to set the skirt feature to have gap over perimeter width of 0 so that it fits within 200 mm. After printing the skirt, I quickly pulled the printed filament off the bed. Then on the first layer, I realized that some parts are fused together since they are too close. I aborted that job and I'm running Skeinforge on it again with a layer thickness of 0.3 mm. I don't know if I'll be printing the full plate but I'm not giving up yet.

I'm also still not sure about separating the vertices that are stacked on top of each other. If anyone has done this successfully, please let us know.

Are there other plates out there where the parts are not stacked together or do people just arrange the individual parts on their own?

I have 6 "builders plates" in my prusa fork. to make reasonable duration prints in the order you need them for assembly.

plate1=vertices
plate2=y brac, bar clamps
plate3=z mounts
plate4= x ends
plate5= x carriage and z couplers
plate6=extruder

[github.com]

For my first set (which I just finished) I printed one big part at a time, and used skeinforge multiply for the small parts and vertices.

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-Nudel
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Thanks Greg! The stl files weren't included. So, I was forced to download OpenSCAD and figure out how to use it to generate STL files. After going through that, I just realized that some things that I've been doing with SolidWorks can be easily automated using OpenSCAD.

Nudel: I think the multiply feature in Skeinforge still does the old habit of printing the nearest part after moving the z axis instead of going at it in round-robin style to give parts time to cool. So, I don't use it when I need to print multiple parts. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in version 41 or not.

brnrd Wrote:
> Nudel: I think the multiply feature in Skeinforge
> still does the old habit of printing the nearest
> part after moving the z axis instead of going at
> it in round-robin style to give parts time to
> cool. So, I don't use it when I need to print
> multiple parts. I'm not sure if this has been
> fixed in version 41 or not.

Yes, it does print the objects first to last, then last to first. But I haven't had any trouble with it, after all it's only a single layer, and the parts aren't that small. I've printed all the small parts one a a time successfully, except the pulleys.

Often I print a single row of objects, and it would amass some extra travel time and potential stringing if it did it round-robin style. Though I don't disagree with you, and in several cases it would produce more consistent results if it did all the layers in the same order.

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-Nudel
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