Mendel in NJ?

Hello humanity!
I am currently interested in obtaining a reprap, version mendel. That's the newer one, right?
Well, I have approx. 200 USD and I was wondering what I could get with that kind of cash, in terms of parts. I am interested in the electronics, as well as the reprappable extruded parts. Like, everything short of nuts and bolts that I need to start printing stuff.

Any offers/reccomendations?

Mendel is the newest design, and the one everyone is building. It is a little difficult getting the printed parts right now. I would recommend getting your motors and what electronics you can. Makerbot.com sells both, but is often out of stock. Finding printed parts is very difficult right now. It might be worth getting your nuts and bolts now because those are easily available, and spend your time looking for someone to print your parts.

cheers,
Josh

For $200 you may not be able to get what you need.

It may help to think of the reprap as four systems:
Electronics
Motors
Cartesian Robot
Extruder

You CAN probably get the electronics and motors for that price - makerbot and www.alltronics.com. Pololu's stepper driver is a good price and liable to be more available, though it does require heatsinking.

The parts for a McWire cartesian bot, which can be driven by the official electronics and motors, can be very cheap. Especially if you avoid lasercut plastic, any board you have on hand will probably work OK. Except cardboard. Well, unless it's some really thick corrugated, I suppose.

The extruder can be a bitch. I still haven't got mine working. I recommend a stepper driven extruder w/ reifsnyderb's parts. Note that this isn't what I did, it's what I wish I'd done

To reduce your total cost beyond that, you'll have to look at scrounging. Old dot-matrix printers are famous for having stepper motors that are easy to re-purpose, some people (like myself) have managed to re-purpose electronics as well. If you have or can get access to a cartesian robot, then of course all you need is the extruder. A milling machine can often be changed into a cartesian bot by adding the electronics and motors. The fact that you'll scrounge an old computer PSU is already taken for granted. Parts for building a cartesian robot can be scrounged, ACME threaded screws from old scissor-jacks, for instance.

But all of that will increase your man-hours-to-build figure tremendously. The least time to build option is to buy a repman or makerbot complete kit, which is of course more expensive.

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I'm building it with Baling Wire

Any hope of someone cranking out a few Darwin parts? The older model is probably cheaper...

On the note of electronics, I have an arduino Duemilanove. Do i need a Seeeduino, or whatever Ard. clone comes with the electronics stuff, or will a Duemilanove suffice?

The subject of actual mechanical components: Whatever can be done by a reprap can also be done by a fancy CNC, right? Suppose I get some parts CNC'ed. Thqat's an alternative, right? Granted, a more expensive and fancier option, but getting a hold of reprapped reprap bits is tricky so far.

Mendel is actually cheaper to build than a Darwin, but only by a few dollars. Darwin was also more mechanicly compliated and had verious issues that mendel doesn't have.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Actually, the Mendel is less expensive then the Darwin. The design improvements was to make it smaller, cheaper and better. I have to say they did a great job on the new design.

The parts can be made with cnc, but were not designed to be made that way. So many of them can not be made with a simple 3 axis cnc. That means you would need to either make a fixture to rotate the part or have a very fancy 4,5, or 6 axis cnc, and that would cost a lot.

just some thoughts

cheers,
josh

Mills! i just remembered my school has a 3-axis mill, And I can probably make the parts on there. Where can I find the files, I have not found the Cads or the mechanical drawings around anywhere on Thingiverse, or Reprap.org.

Benbo231 Wrote:
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> Mills! i just remembered my school has a 3-axis
> mill, And I can probably make the parts on there.
> Where can I find the files, I have not found the
> Cads or the mechanical drawings around anywhere on
> Thingiverse, or Reprap.org.

The links to the files can be found on the wiki Mendel/Files page.

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

This is still the "FOR SALE" forum.
Requests go into the other one.

Could someone with moderator-access please move this illiterate guy over?

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