Our First Mendel Build

After printing 7 Mendels (2 mini, 5 regular) for sale, my father and I decided to build our own.

We were waiting on new shipments of black ABS, so we decided to go a different route with this one.

Physical assembly started this past weekend and as of this evening we can:

- jog all three axes
- heat up the extruder
- drive the extruder motor

Currently this Mendel is running MakerBot electronics (unmodified), MB firmware, and uses ReplicatorG. It's got a regular DC motor extruder (non-stepper) for the time being and uses a 'Paxtruder' where some other folks have used a printruder.

Because of the layout we've had to get creative with the wiring, making extended power (motherboard and stepper board) cables, as well as longer ribbon cables, and a lot of other small things.

Anyway -- first extruder tests and hopefully prints in the next few days! Now on to the pics:


All of these are links to higher-res versions:

I like how its red and black, very cool.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2010 02:44AM by Grogyan.

A pic of it almost completed! Click for full-size.

......and.... it prints! Needs some adjustment, but it's laying down great rafts. Not bad for 4 days work!

Oh my god that is beautiful.

Nice bit of work, John.

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-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

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Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything!

So this is the super sweet Mendel you mentioned! Very nice looking! Great job John(s)!

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-Steve

Nice work. Red looks really great. Thanks for posting pics.

Looking forward to seeing some working pics/video too

I should have print videos in the next day or two. Decided to swap out the Paxtruder for a MK4 Plastruder. Installed a set of Mendel paws ( [www.thingiverse.com] ) to raise it up today.

I think you've created the first designer Mendel, looks great in red!

First working print photo! Not bad for something that was just a bag of parts about 10 days ago.



higher-res: [i.imgur.com]

This is after swapping out the paxtruder for a normal MK4 Plastruder. This is untuned in any way to this bot other than some guesses at machines.xml settings, so it should get better as we goof with it.

Single wall thickness is .83 -- not far from what I'd expect.

Quick video: [www.youtube.com]

We'll get the gorillapod out take some HD video once we start printing some larger items.

Ok, last update. It has now printed it's own upgrades! Tuning seems decent so far.

Nice pics. Congratulations ><

Took some tweaking to really get the machines.xml file dialed in right so that a 20mm square is the right size - but now we've got it. This mendel has now printed it's first working Mendel parts!

Been a while since we dealt with rafts and such, but a homebrew heated build platform is already in the works!

Got our prototype heated build platform running today and it worked on the first try. Right now it's just 8" x 8", but we can step up the size easily. Still working on some wiring, but I'm very excited about the result so far.

(pic links to bigger version)

Recent photo from today:



Completed and up and running with our new 8" square homebrew HBP. Working great.

sweet