Spare parts for the mendel 90

I was wondering what are the most common printed parts to break from the Mendel 90? Luckily I do not have the experience of any parts failing or breaking, but just to be sure I thought it would be handy to print some spares. Any suggestions?

The only parts subject to wear are the extruder gears. The Wade's block and its idler block sometimes crack with stress fractures after a lot of use because of the temperature.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I built my Mendel90 last week and am really impressed with the quality of the build and the prints that it produces. So thanks nophead

I haven't printed any spare parts yet but I feel that the quality is good enough now to start the process. Before I start I assume the parts I have put together to make the printer is PLA but can you confirm this?

Also, I was wondering if there are any "plates" with the printed parts arranged on the bed in batches that I can download? rather than printing each part separetly I can do a single overnight job that knocks out most of the parts in one print

Given your answer above, it might be that I only need the extruder body and gears, if so, is there a "plate" for them?

I think its ABS...


If you print a full plate and something goes wrong during print, you throw away the full plate

Yes the kit parts are ABS. The extruder body, x-carriage and the fan duct probable need to be ABS because of the heat, the rest should be OK in PLA but I have never tried it. However it is only really the extruder parts that wear out. The gears wear out first and they should be OK in PLA.

I don't print many plates of multiple different parts. Those that I do are in the printed subdirectory of the stls directory.

The reasons are:
Skeinforge only does infill in one direction on each layer so it doesn't work well with different parts that need bridges.
I use different infill for different parts and in some cases different layer heights and again Skeinforge only has one setting for the whole build.
Because I print more than one kit at a time I can print lots of the same parts to fill the bed rather than different parts together and that solves the two problems.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Thanks guys, I'm keep that in mind. I'll have to get some ABS now

I'm trying to print some spare parts.
Especially the Wades block and X-carriage I want to have printed as quickly as possible.

Now the problem I'm having when I printed the Wades block it has more layers then it should have making all rounds oval and ofcourse making the piece thicker.

I had this with the Wades block, z-couplings and extruder spacer.
The only thins that came out allright are the Wade big gear and small gear.

I'm using slic3r and prontrface and the mendel files from github.

Any advice for printing.

Have you tried slicing in skeinforge? I have printed the block and carriage using that and they come out fine.

My fan cover melted a bit too....

If you're going to print replacement gears make sure you *use* them. If they're no good then you'll be unable to print more when the orginals have a problem

The STLs have the correct dimensions so If you get more layers than you should then either it is a bug in Slic3r or you have a Z scaling factor in the settings.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

If you use an E3D hotend with a cooling fan then all the parts can be printed in PLA without problems from my experience.
My ABS Wade block started fracturing after a few months but the PLA part I replaced it with didn't.
Also I have found it quite workable to fix stress fractures with epoxy glue. It could well be more durable than repinting the part even if a bit less aesthically appealing.

I noticed that some changes have been made to the build since i bilt my machine over a year ago,
should i pull it and take the old branch, or will the new parts fit together with the old machine ?

i have some cracks on the x idler and x motor bracket and want to reprint

Yes the new parts are compatible and are upgrades.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

My parts kit was from EBay (US maker). All parts except the extruder, fan duct, and I believe the X carriage ware all PLA. I plan to make replacements for all of them out of ABS so I don't have to worry about traveling with my printer and leaving it in a hot car in the summer. I already have printed out a spare X carriage designed for an E3d fan duct (I plan to upgrade from a J-head eventually), a set of standard gears, and a set of herringbone gears (which I am currently testing; looks good, thus far...), and an extruder block and idler block. I'd love to use a Wade's hinged extruder, but the motor is tipped at an angle and might cause interference in the Mendel90.

A sheet to put over the printer would be a lot cheaper way to keep it safe.

Hi,

I am currently printing spare parts for my dibond Mendel90 as well. I am using PETG filament for it and in essence I am quite happy with the results. There is only one issue I´d like to get rid off.

When I print bridges , for example for the wades block, or the Z-clamps, the first bridge layer tends to sag a little, is there a way to keep that from happening?
I hope bridging is the correct term, i´ve tried searching for discussions about the topic here in the forum but didn´t get any results. In case it is not, I will describe what I mean.

In some parts of the object small spaces have to be bridged with no material below to support them.

Jens

To get good bridging you need to print filament with a cross sectional area a bit smaller than the circular cross section you get when extruding the filament into mid air. That means it has to stretch lengthwise and so is under tension.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Quote
nophead
To get good bridging you need to print filament with a cross sectional area a bit smaller than the circular cross section you get when extruding the filament into mid air. That means it has to stretch lengthwise and so is under tension.

That would mean bridging a little faster while extruding the same amount, or reducing the amount of extruded material at the same speed? Is there a value, maybe in percent, one would increase speed, or decrease extrusion (or a mixture of both). I guess fine tuning is still necessary, but a range, for example speed between 110 and 120% or extrusion between 90 and 80% would be a good starting point.

I do it simply by using a layer height and filament width that give an area a bit less than the area of a circle with the diameter that the filament comes out at when extruded into mid air. With ABS I can go down to about half the area, i.e. stretching by a factor of two before it starts to snap. The more it is stretched the better it bridges until it snaps.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]