I'm pretty comfortable with my decision to purchase - he certainly seems to be releasing plenty of goodies - software, videos, etc. I'll let folks know when I receive it, and again when I eventually get it built.

I thought showing construction videos would help. Check out profounddevices.com and go to YouTube look up profounddevices.

It does. But you must remember, you are selling people kits for something you haven't even completed yet. That is the apex of fishy.

I can only assume you are using the funds from the people who ordered the kits, to purchase the materials for the kits, therefore allowing you to avoid having to raise capital to start your business.

Remember Both Makerbot and BfB built MULTIPLE iterations of their printers before they sold a single copy (This for a good reason, the 1st Makerbot designs where flawed, and changed multiple times till they had a reliable printer). RepRap printed with their printers before they even let us have the designs. What you are selling doesn't seem to be a Mendel any more, it's a Delta RepStrap that only shares the Vertexes with a Mendel, so therefore a new design all together.

You where never seen in the community until they day you start offering the printer (and at that time you hadn't even put it together, if you photos are any indication). You had buy it now buttons up before you had even finished your Y axis. You are still offering Buy it now buttons on a printer that you haven't even printed with yet.

It would be different if you where Nophead, Adrian, Vic, Rick from Makergear, or Hydroraptor. We have seen these people forever, and if they where selling things upfront (which they wouldn't do), we would be likely to believe them.

On the other hand you do have a bushiness license in the name you give on this board, registered to your home address, in Oregon, you have ran another company (http://www.useablesoftware.com/profounddevices), you also seem to at one point to have sold a PCB printing system, that was mentioned over at CNC Zone a few times. [web.archive.org]

Honestly your video's are informative, but again give the impression that the design is not complete, but you have STACKS of boxes ready to ship. It's just sort of an odd way to run a business.

I hope your design works out, I hope it prints perfectly and you don't have backlash issues, or speed issues, or heat issues. I hope all the mechanics still work out after the heavy modification you have done to all the axises of the Mendel. I hope the extruder you designed doesn't burn someones's house down (really dude, don't talk about flaming ABS in your video's it's scary). But more than anything, I hope that if your design fails, you have the cash to return everyone's deposits, because it seems you are playing a dangerous game with other peoples money.

That all being said, if you show video of it printing, and I see someone else buy your kit, and get it printing, at $400 most of us would be a fool not to buy your version instead of printing our own, or even buying a Makerbot/Rapman.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2010 10:58PM by spacexula.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Quick question, are the plastic parts that are normally printed from another printer actually injection molded in this design? I've noticed in the ad on profounddevices.com that the vertex pieces are split halves and would be basically hollow internally.

If the pieces are injection molded, will this affect the integrity of the machine?

i don't want a flame war. just view profoundevices.com and view youtube look for profounddevices.com

nuff said

as for the parts, they are molded, not injection molded. that means they may have some small bubbles internally. it does not effect strength or durability at all. the parts are strong enough no matter what. it allows for fast building of parts. the only parts that are hdpe and not urethane are the y axis under the table body, this is because the part requires greater precision. you can look through my videos and find out more youtube.com and look for profounddevices and my videos should show.

If anyone truely has questions about the strength of the parts, let me know your name and address and i will send you a few parts. you will see they are strong as regular plastic, and although not precision +/- .1mm they are well within anything a reprap prints. i will send out parts up to 5 people, preferably schools, and public club forums. state your name, who you are and what your relation is with reprap as well as your address. simple as that

James

James

spacexula,

i just uploaded that bearing less y axis you wanted onto thingy verse. i uploaded y rod mounts, y motor holder, and the fingered frictionless snap in place design of the y slide table.

here it is [www.thingiverse.com]

Now why don't you be a good boy, ok? then i can focus on uploading more stuff and focus on more instruction videos.

instructions here:
youtube.com/watch?v=vkC-9tpHo1A
youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Gho6oxj0M

just so you know the designing i'm doing right now is to speed up the creation of my mendels 'catalysts' I've already made 4 different printers over a coarse of 2 years. if you want here is the first ugly one i call the 'beast'
[www.youtube.com]

this is for laughs only. it was not until mendel did i figure out a proper and affordable z axis. this video is of x and y table only. this video is really old. I've been designing for a while now.....

James i think everyone is just asking for you to post a video of your machine printing something. Its not about flame wars or anything like that, its a valid question that you dont answer.

You keep posting all these instructional videos, but they are all crap if your machine dosnt print things. ALL WE WANT IS ONE (1) O N E. one.. video of your machine PRINTING PARTS.

then when someone eles gets one to work to have them put up a video of their machine printing things.

after that then you should start posting up all the other videos you have. UNTIL THEN THEY ARE USELESS TO EVERYONE.

james villeneuve Wrote:

> Now why don't you be a good boy, ok? then i can
> focus on uploading more stuff and focus on more
> instruction videos.

Trust me I am being a "good boy".

A good portion of my pst was pointing out you are not some nutter who has never ran a bussiness, that your name really is James Villeneuve, and that you have produced kits before.

That is called being nice to someone who is trying to start a business.

If people want to send some guy off the internet $400 for a kit that doesn't exist yet, well Caveat emptor and good luck to you sir.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

James,

I do consider my questions to be true. I actually do work for a local charter school and organize and facilitate community education for three local libraries and a regional college, I also run local workshops and build nights surrounding the tech and DIY world from my business. My question was not intended to be anything more than a request for information. I would hope that you do consider it valid because instead of asking you for free parts, I have exhibited supreme trust by buying a kit from you.

In the last week you've shown a tremendous amount of work on your machine and design in order to try to quell criticism. If you meet anyone's critique or question with honest observation and know that once you get going, and we've built a few of your Catalysts, posted our own pics and such anyone's doubts or questions will be automatically answered.

I'll continue posting videos, and will show the printer running.

spacexula thingiverse has those y axis parts you are looking for. they are in inches, so i will re post them in metric.

also frankneon, your post was just in the middle of another post i was commenting on. i hope i answered your concerns, and if not feel free to email me and i will take time to answer your questions. thanks.

james

As mentioned in previous post, I went ahead and ordered one Mendel complete kit. Will post more when I receive it.

The videos in the last few days show a tremendous amount of effort you put into this project. I’m very impressed with your improvements over the original Mendel, the elimination of the belts, the bearings…
Now I have a suggestion for you. Have you ever thought about providing another type of extruder such as a syringe with lead screw pushing the plunger so that a lot more materials can be used, not just plastics. One material I have in mind is ceramic paste.

Thank you so much and wish you the best of luck.

James emailed me last night and told me that my kit is shipping out on monday or tuesday. When I recive my machine I will take photos of everything and document building it. I feel I should mention that James has been professional in my dealings with him.

For me goes the same. Any mail i've sent has answered pretty quick. Keeps me wondering about the time differences :-).

I have no doubts this mendel 'catalyst' will be up and running according expectations, perhaps and hopefully even better!

So far I have been very content with the way things go..!! Nice videos to show you what you can expect. Nicely boxed and clear!


@Jeffrey perhaps we can share notes and images.. Although the next coming month my time is limited, but perhaps we can provide a written document on the what and how of the catalyst. From build to the first print is what I will try to document!

With kind regards,

Michael

Has he got it to print yet?

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Quote
Tony
I’m very impressed with your improvements over the original Mendel, the elimination of the belts, the bearings…

I've seen a lot of James' videos - where can i find this one please?

@Michael
Thats exactly what I was planning to do. I have quite a bit of time on my hands and I'll be happy to share my notes and photos of the build with everyone.

Quote
Tony
I’m very impressed with your improvements over the original Mendel, the elimination of the belts, the bearings…

I've seen a lot of James' videos - where can i find this one please?

------------------------

Hi tbone,
In the following videos you will see that James used lead screw design and a simpler bearing configuration for the z-axis.

mendel design testing y stage
[www.youtube.com]

building bearing support for z axis that other axis rides on
[www.youtube.com]

Lead screw offers much higher resolution than the belt driven design.

I hope you will find them helpful. Have a nice day!

Hello all,

I wasn't sure if I should add my two cents to the dialog here, but I finally decided to because I am hoping it will help the community. I really like what James is trying to do. But I also agree with spacexula that James should be careful selling his product without having it printing yet. He has made some big design changes, hopefully for the best.

So without choosing a side, I thought it might be good for me to share my results with a similar machine and the problems I have run into. I had already built a cnc mill before I started trying to build my Mendel. Since I had the mill we were able to mill several of the parts from stock plastic and assemble a frame, but we eventually ran out of parts that could be made on a 3-axis mill easily. So we decided to attach a plastruder from makerbot to the mill and print with it.

Some specs about my system (Annabelle, am I the only one that names my machines?). It is a lead screw design, using precision acme thread 1/2"-10. So the diameter of the screw is 1/2" and it has 10-turns per inch. I am driving them with Nema23 motor from makerbot. and controlling them with version 2.3 stepper controllers from makerbot. My machine was designed to move slower and have more pushing power because it was used as a mill and need to push a endmill bit into material, where the 3d printers do not. So already it is slower then it could be.

So here are my results. While we can move the machine at speed around 40mm/s we can not print at that speed. When we first started we were losing steps and we failed at printing parts. We had to slow our machine down to 7mm/s to avoid losing steps. This makes printing parts take around 2-3 hours each. I am so glad we only need to print about 1/3 of the parts to build our Mendel. But we do get pretty good results at these settings. Photos at the end of my post.

My concerns are these. While James has shown that he can move his system at much faster speeds, I believe 70mm/s, that does not mean you can print at those speeds. Stepper motors can lose steps very easily and the gcode generated changes direction thousands of times. I use SkeineForge to make my gcode and it does not include acceleration control for the motors. This means the motors try to go from stationary all the way to max speed and back to stationary instantly. My understanding is that James added more weight in the form of washers to help avoid binding by having more inertia. This is fine for running at the max speed, but might be a problem when you try to change direction thousands of times without losing steps.

My second concern is that he is using regular v threaded rod. I am a mechanical engineer, and I know that this type of rod is not designed to be used as a lead screw. That is why acme thread, and precision acme thread were created. It makes me cringe a little when I see it. However, the Mendel design uses it for the z-axis as well, and I have seen many other people build projects using it this way. That being said, I will be putting acme thread on my Mendel as one of the first modifications.

Here are some photos. I hope my results help the community a little.

Cheers,
Josh Updyke






Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2010 09:20PM by jupdyke.

The video show the axis moving fast but with very long acceleration periods, 10s of millimeters. I can't see how it could be used to make objects. When making small z-zags it would never get up to speed, so would be much slower anyway.

Also the extruder would need to be kept in sync. But the output of the extruder is the input feed rate put through a low pass filter. E.g. for a step input response the output is an exponential rise and fall, just like an RC filter. Keeping that in sync with the motor acceleration will be tricky to say the least.

I would love to see it work as it would be major breakthrough, but the fact that there are no videos of it making objects is very suspicious.

It is certainly true though that threaded rod can go quicker with some acceleration. When I run my machine at 16mm/s the acceleration is shorter than 0.1mm so does not affect the result. I can run at 40mm/s but the acceleration then takes 0.3mm so starts to be noticeable. It still produces parts that are usable at that speed. Mind, that is with proper 1/2" pitch leadscrews, but also an 8Kg bed.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Josh,

Any interest in documenting your machine up on the wiki?

[objects.reprap.org]
or
[objects.reprap.org]

Using
[objects.reprap.org]
As a template.

There is a lot of interest in extruded aluminum RepStraps.
[objects.reprap.org]
[objects.reprap.org]

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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!

Hi everyone. Just throwing in my 2 cents, I ordered one of James' kits as well. It will be my first 3d printer but I've been using arduino/AVR and doing electronics and programming for years so I think it'll be ok. I will document the build process with photos and videos as much as possible as soon as it arrives and give everyone links.

hi,

i just noticed you are taking any order now but will take order in march. i want to preorder one ore two for march delivery. please let me know when you get a chance. you take paypal and it is ok for me. i mean to find you earlier but your website is not working. i just started with cnc and i am a newbie. so, it is a complete kit with extruder when it is avaialble. am i right? please let me know as soon as i can.


best regards

thomas yuen

hi james,

i just noticed you are NOT taking any order now but will take order in march. i want to preorder one ore two for march delivery. please let me know when you get a chance. you take paypal and it is ok for me. i mean to find you earlier but your website is not working. i just started with cnc and i am a newbie. so, it is a complete kit with extruder when it is avaialble. am i right? please let me know as soon as i can.


best regards

thomas yuen

I know that the parts to your kits are cast however I was wondering if the parts are printable. If so will you provide files so that we can make replacement parts and or make parts for others.

Ive been watching your youtube videos and everything looks great so far. I am really anticipating the arrival of my kit.

Thanks again and keep up the great work.

He did, go to Thiniverse and look up his name.

He has reduced the part count down to 11 parts plus the vertex.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

wow I cant believe I missed that.
heres the link in case anyone else wants it.

http://www.thingiverse.com/jamesvilleneuve/things

@James

Wow... No offense, but that site design (or lack of, thereof) is horrific. I HIGHLY suggest that, when you get some free time, install Wordpress.org on your server. You don't need to use it as a blog; it's perfectly capable of being just a content management system.

In the end, the more inviting your site is, the more sales you get.

Happy making!

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"The whole is more than the sum of its parts." - Aristotle

[www.cyrozap.com]

My Mendel shipped today. I should get it in a few days. Ill post pictures when I get it.

sorry for the web page, it will be redesigned soon. currently it is hand coded, and my service provider has lost my page data several times. this way i can just quickly upload it the changes to the web page will be with going to my own private host server, where i have more control over what goes on with it.

anyway I've done a few things

uploaded directions for arduino and manual for cnc settings,
added shipping status for those looking at there status. i'm currently churning out about 4 a week in a pipeline fashion.

I also humbled myself to the request of those here and now am using a maker bot mk3 extruder with a ptfe thermal barrier.

I am accepting orders again

also donating the first 6 people to email me free vertex's (free but you must pay the 13.00 shipping)

1 catch!

I want to here how you helped some one out today and made the world a better place. just something simple, to make me feel good about busting my back to give out something free. I may post your comments on my web site later on, but anyway first 6 people to email jamesdanielvATmsn.com (replace AT with @) will receive a link by me to pay 13.00 for shipping and get 12 vertex halfs sent free, shipped next day after payment sent), only the first 6. but people are skeptical, so this may last a few days. thanks,

james