I have been doing a lot of research on bootstrapping mendel with a mcwire. I don't have all your answers but this is the direction I am taking... * Best I can tell mendel CAN be made on mcwire, it was very fuzzy if anyone has actually completed this though * If you use ABS you may have some warping problems but you can probably address those with some hackish hot-bed solutions, specifically it sby goinreverse - General
I don't think it is really a good idea to make a mold with nuts in the object, threads this small would not reproduce very well in urethane or silicone in my experience, YMMZ. My concern would be slight distortions of the thread, there would be no easy way to fix those. Like I said I would plug all the holes but leave them dimpled, a small recess perhaps 1/32 or 1/16 deep so you can see the outlby goinreverse - Casting and Moldmaking Working Group
Ok, this is the sort of detail I was looking for: This really makes it obvious how to build this for the mcwire. Also note that many places here in the US stock only "standard" size acrylic i.e. 1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4 inches rather than mm though ponoko supports mm sizing. Waiting to hear from makerbot what the thickness is.by goinreverse - General
I use blender, you are definitely the only person I have ever heard call its interface as 'intuitive' though ... lol, I like meshlab a lot better for viewing parts but that is just me. I think we are talking about the same thing, to me "trapped nut" = hex head recess, which is probably better than saying "nut recess" which just sounds dirty, but 'trapped nut' also paints a bad mental picture. Dby goinreverse - Casting and Moldmaking Working Group
My apologies but those chars were my way of venting subtly without writing a gigantic rant. I think open source is great and I have contributed to open source projects for nearly 20 years, I've run companies whose projects were put out under the GPL. As far as open source projects go reprap is a 11 on the pulling your hair out scale. I've had an easier time convincing VC's to agree to giving awayby goinreverse - General
What tool and files do you use to look at cross sections? I mostly use sketchup and the dxfs import terribly. The stl's I load in meshlab, i would prefer not to dig through a ton to find what you mean, is there a specific example? By trapped nuts do you mean the hex head recesses? Urethane has a decent amount of give so those aren't like to be a problem. I just randomly sampled 5 parts and pulby goinreverse - Casting and Moldmaking Working Group
Thanks for your reply, the link to the maker bot layouts is helpful. Any idea what thickness acrylic is needed? As for the other names how do I actually build those?by goinreverse - General
The thing with molding though is that you could easily make a mold of several copies, make the parts 10 at a time or ideally this looks like I can even do a one part mold for the whole thing: [1.bp.blogspot.com] I have access to the molding materials. Probably urethane mold rather than silicone for these types of parts. I read that darwin is approximately 80 cubic inches for the printed parts (by goinreverse - Casting and Moldmaking Working Group
My plan here is to build a set of mendel parts using my mcwire and mold them so they can be cast in polyester resin. All the parts that cannot be laser cut that is. Is there a good reason no one else has done that? Say from the masters that made the first mendel? If someone ones to lend me parts it would take me about 2 weeks to complete the molds and start pouring sets, I am in US AZ. Seems likeby goinreverse - Casting and Moldmaking Working Group
I recently made another post regarding how to build a mendel, I selected to do so by first building a mcwire to bootstrap the parts for the mendel. After just sending off the cutting files for the mcwire 1.2 today I believe that they do NOT include the extruder parts. This is very #@@$%% frustrating. I ordered the miscellaneous parts such as the barrel and pulley from makerbot. They are perpetuby goinreverse - General
I have access to a 3 axis cnc which can be used on plywood/mdf/etc. It seems though that a lot of the parts couldn't be made on that because of 3-dimensional elements or thinkness/size issues? What part diagrams could I work with, our CNC doesn't take stl files and I doubt I could redo all of them in our cnc software tools.by goinreverse - General Mendel Topics
I have spent the past 2 months working through the various sites, wiki's and documents and I have everything nailed down pretty well except how to make/get the mendel extruded parts. I am hoping someone who has actually built a mendel can confirm these: Option 1: Get someone with a darwin/mendel to extrude all the parts for me. This is pretty much impossible because of the print time and demandby goinreverse - General Mendel Topics
On the duplicate items those are not errors and were based on the BOM, I haven't finished building so I not sure if there is a cheaper way to order.by goinreverse - General
After pulling my hair out for a couple of hours trying to figure out the preposterously and unnecessarily complex BOM spreadsheet, I created this cut and paste list for the mcmaster carr website, you can just drop it in on the order page by selecting the "paste order" link at the bottom. NOTE: I have not tested out this list yet but best I can tell it matches the BOM, any feedback is greatly apby goinreverse - General