I'm willing now to produce complete kits, would anyone use a mendel that had threaded axis instead of belt driven axis if it saved 100$ i'm thinking i can get a kit out to people for under 300$ with motors minus electronics to control stepper and axis. there are tons of suppliers for 4 axis cnc boards and lots of people know how to use mach III and emc2 i think. anyone interested? also are you fine with the threaded drive versus belt drive? i need to know so i can get the right designs for people. also i will post the designs for those that want to built it themselves. It will cost me 900$ for my first mendel design, but i did it in a way that building more will use templates and cnc code so the next one will be 299$ minus extruder heater and electronics, but mechanically complete.



thanks,

james

James, I believe you should put your sales "on hold" until you've taken care of your standing orders. I'm very worried that you are critically overextended.

New users, as a RepRap forum admin, I do not suggest you place new orders with James until his current customers are happy.

Good luck, James. I wish you well with these matters.
-Sebastien Bailard

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2010 06:16PM by SebastienBailard.

I think threaded rod design would seriously affect the build speed.
McWire design seems to get 4mm/s head spead. While Mendel is supposed to print at 16 or 32mm/s.

Best regards,
Khiraly

Wow...this is a bit daunting, but thats the fun part i guess. I am interested in making a Mendel to give me something to do, but getting the parts seems to be the hard bit.

From what I have read, staying away from a rod design is much better.

So you could provide all of the plastic bit to build the frame. Then one would need to order the Generation 3 Electronics and motors/belts? What about the extruder head?

Cheers.

I'll show video this weekend on it if i get time, or at least some pictures. honestly i need to test the setup before i do speed tests. I have done other x-y table designs before that have pushed 80ipm about 32mm/s keep in mind many machines extrude at 16mm/s. not to mention the controller electronics are the biggest factor in speed of a machine. something to do with the controller having a chopper (current circuit)

i think you all will be pleasantly surprised. I'll get some real numbers out there in the wild soon!


thanks,

James

ok, it does about 28mm/s with .25 threaded rod i am trying to modify it with .5 inch rod and get it to 80 mm/s just for x and y. z axis goes about 15 because of the mass it lifts. i have pushed z to 30mm/s but it skips at the bottom. I have current set about 1/2 where it should be on all the axis. notice that i have z as 2 motors rather than a belt. i can find motors anywhere. belts are hard to find, and to dangerous to my fingers to size a belt to fit. this method is feasible and i will post the stl files for people to cnc and print in a week or two after i'm done tweaking. also note i using my own electronics, just because i can control it easier with mach III (the computer i'm using is to the left. this is my prototyping bench.

sorry my mendel is being reconstructed towards .5inch rod. you can see in the second picture. i hope to have it back together and take video with the larger axis threaded rod.

here is a video of the high speed prototype. the bigger threaded rod did not work, but a mass of 10 large washers added enough mass to overcome binding.

think of mcwire but 80mm/s mendel is spec to 64mm/s so i think 80mm/s will put the threading issue to rest!

I am interested.

Ideally I would like to buy a complete kit but as long as I have a list of parts and suppliers I can do the leg work myself.

What else exactly would I need to get in order to complete the Mendel?

Keep in mind that my total budget is around $1000

I am selling a complete and functional Mendel for 350$ you can upgrade it with more sophisticated electronics later on. this price is until my motors and components run out.

Sold. How would you like to get paid and what will shipping be to
Illinois 60112 ?

Won't there be issues with motor heat on your design? Seems that a 3 hour print stepping at 80 rpm on a NEMA 17 stepper motor is a little extreme. I know my makerbot Z axis gets pretty warm with it's workload, which is NOTHING like this.

---

repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Mail sent to James.

Steppers run hottest when stationary and use less power the faster they go as the torque falls off.

The video shows very long acceleration periods so it will need the 5D code to keep the extruder flow in sync.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

can you post a video of a fully functional one of your mendels printing parts?

James, I would be interested in one of your kits, but I have to second RyanGeorge's comment. Do you have a video of one of the fully functional Mendels printing a part?

i will post a video sometime next week. one that shows it building parts.

my current setup is taken apart as i am redesigning the x axis stage.

james

If the videos good ill buy one asap

thanks! i'm quite busy right now putting my mendel back together. i needed it taken apart to reference parts for the ones i am selling.


also please note i am not accepting any more orders till after 2/8/2010. any further payments sent before then will be refunded within 48hrs. sorry i want to get what i promised out the door!



I am at my capacity to build till then. if you see a video online with a wooded table top, i have switched to acrylic, with labeling taped beneath having logo. so you see thru acrylic and see a color logo, but it is printed, not etched/machined . reprap logo was taking to long to machine out of wood, and too much clean up work. i'll post that video soon as well.

if anyone makes cheap acrylic reprap table tops then email me we can do business. this part is too time consuming for me to do in my own shop..... thanks.



James

Hi James,

I am currently building a Mendel myself (and also posted a THREAD ).

Right now, I am missing a supplier who could provide me with the necessary Mendel plastic parts. Is there any chance you could sell those parts?

you said something about uprgrading the electronics... why would they need to be upgraded?

Please inform me when your new design is available in kit form and at what price.

Thanks

Bob Schafer

PS Love what you have done!!!

kit is done, I'm posting videos of building it, then posting videos of it in use,

james

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Dear James, I'm not what you would call a very handy man around tools. I've got all this tstuff in the garage, a lath and drill press i got from my dad, but the idea of building something entirly from scratch, then upgrading the nest day, is not something i looked forward to., If i could get a COMPLETE up to date Mendel RepRap 2.0 machine for under 400 dollars with all the latest gimmiks, i'd be eternally grateful.
I suppose it's just like way back when radios first came around, or computers, and you could go into a store and give your kid a kit to assemble a working radio from scratch. assembling it would be fun, but i'd like to have the entire thing first just to get started.
Take pride in the fact that this is just the begining. Like the start of the industreal evolution, the printing press revolutionised communications. This will not end with us.

Dear NitroNorm,

I think you're missing the point, because of the state of this technology, and it's philosophy, you're supposed to, as we say in French, put your hand in the dough... It will help you service/repair/improve the machine.

I don't think any of the kit makers based on reprap have anything assembled (makerbots or bitsfrombytes)

I assembled in the past a bitsfrombytes kits... and a phlatprinter kit too. it is daunting at first but then you feel rewarded when you complete it...

if you don't want to put it yourself together, get a kit either from this thread, my favourite option, as it seems the fastest way to get a mendel, or an other reprap manufacturer.

Then hire a geek or starving student to put it together... try to get an idea how long the geek will need to put it together. How much will you pay him per hour? minimum wages? add cost of kit, then you get true value of what you're asking... to me, $400 doesn't seem reasonable. more like kit cost plus at least £100 or $200. if you pay someone peanuts, he's more likely to do an half-ass job too... it may look complete, but the cartesian bot might not be true, or the extruder head not perfect, and you have to take it apart and start over from begining...

of course you could always strike a deal by letting him have printed parts for free made by your then assembled machine... or any other parts he may want if he doesn't want a machine...

so with all that, better put it yourself together...

sounds like good advice. the cost of these things is yourtime + the parts. I think i stated i wanted to only to sell to those that have built 3d printers before. the mendel is leading edge. that means sure it is promising, but work is still going on. i have no clue what people are going to do with my design machine. several people are going to mod it for another tool head, or change the design somehow. I need people willing to put forth the effort, and those that understand the mendel is a work in progress, ask those that know. want something today that works great. go to makerbot.com I envy how easy there design is. want a better machine that you build that does bigger, get a rapman, it uses memory cards! and is the one i started on.. want something to tinker with for a while. get a mendel.......


that being said, i appropriately priced out plastic parts for schools and people that are tight with $$. those that want a complete printer on there doorstep that just works out of box. 700$ that's the cost of the printer, the special packing it goes through, and 8hrs of my time building it!

I think part of your problem here is that the pitch of your leadscrew is wrong. If you look at a lathe, which uses a leadscrew for things like threadcutting, you'll see the pitch is more like 30° on a fairly large diameter, 3cm or thereabouts. That way one turn of the leadscrew moves whatever's mounted on it a fairish distance, while the large diameter allows geared-down precision. Part of the problem you'll run into is backlash, which can be solved by using a slit saddle nut to grip the leadscrew, see [www.finelinehair.com].

A reminder for European customers: don't forget Customs will add VAT to the import price, depending on your nation somewhere in the order of 20% more.

Any idea of when there will be a legitimate video of one of your completed kits printing out parts?

There appears to be three promises, in this thread alone, of videos to come showing your kit running and printing out parts. Each time there have been no such videos and only vague explanations as to why there are no videos of this exact kit.

I believe that you may be playing a game with us on the edge of a sword as it seems you could possibly be putting out a product during the research and development phase of your design instead of after it has been proven to work efficiently and is structurally sound.

I truly would like to see your product become useful and sell on the open market, but these discrepancies cause me to ponder who will get cut on the edge of the sword if the kits fail to work properly. Us as the clients or you as the seller?

Prove me wrong and I will look into your kits on a serious level.

I would like to buy this kit. Could you send to Brazil? What is your e-mail address?

hello from croatia

i would like to buy a kit from you in any form, assembled or not-with datasheet

and complete electronics/program for modellingg

what would be the price and shipping

tnx Vedran

Looks like it's printing horribly to me.