Have printed PC from Ultimachine at 300C on Kapton+PC-Juice with a 130C bed. E3D Hotend obviously. All the prints I have made are incredibly strong with absolutely no chance of delaminating by hand. The strongest items I've ever printed in fact, by a long way. I've some of the RRW ABS-PC on the way, so will test with that too and see how I go.by SanjayM - General
So I've been printing flexible/elastic/rubbery filaments for the last few days. I've tested NinjaFlex, FilaFlex, and Flexible Polyester 40D Shore from Plastic2Print. I've been trying to compare them and figure out how to print them effectively. My test object was the thick-legged octopus variant, sliced with slic3r. Slic3r isn't best clever about how it should print the legs, so it performs quitby SanjayM - General
Hi Everyone! Long time no talky. Really sorry about that. It has always been my intention to be as active as possible on forums and communities. However recently we've been undergoing huge strains in terms of human time, and the amount of growth we are experiencing. Please bear in mind that only 6 months ago we didn't exist as a business. In the last six months we outgrew 2 industrial units in tby SanjayM - General
We run 1.75mm through our Nophead supplied Mendel90s. You need a new hotend - I'm obviously biased when I say that the E3Dv5 works well for this purpose. It fits without problem in the extruder using the same method as the supplied 3mm J-Head. You can use the stock extruder too - the only thing that needs tweaking is that the idler bearing axle (the piece of 8mm steel round bar that was probablby SanjayM - Mendel90
Just to add some info here, I would bet good money that the flexible filament they are peddling is just rebranded Polycapralactone (PCL) - which is actually one of the first EVER materials extruded on RepRap during the very early Bath Uni development days. You can find good info here: Some people might be more familiar with it under the name "polymorph" or "instamorph" and other similar namesby SanjayM - General
Acrux, Just jumping on here to say how much I love that cable configuration. I might use a lot of cable, and have a fair few idlers. But these things are cheap. It gets rid of that racking problem of H-Bots (i'm pretty sure) as well as the kinematics, which is nice. Keeps both motors off carriage. It seems to be better than the UM arrangement due to the lack of rotating shafts that need bushinby SanjayM - Tantillus
Just got a new kit from nophead. Earlier than expected and wonderfully packaged as always. (My 3rd/4th Mendel90 kit from nophead - happy repeat customer) Noticed some rather large design changes to the X-Ends, The new bar clamp is particularly welcome. I was wondering what the motivation/reasoning behind making Z-Axis linear bearing holders/lead-screw guides 'boxier' as opposed to the previby SanjayM - Mendel90
maralb Your order was for one of the earlier versions - and that particular batch had a shorter heat-break than other versions. Which in hindsight was a mistake. I have emailed you about getting you a replacement part. millerii I tend to just wind out the filament by hand, turning the large extruder wheel. So I would say fairly quickly, but really the speed shouldn't matter too much and filamenby SanjayM - General
bobc Sorry about the lack of manual availability - we just replaced the link from v4 to v5 making the (wrong) assumption that everybody with the v4 had by now received and therefore assembled theirs. v4 Manual Here But for the mostpart I would actually use the v5 build manual in preference to the v4 - the v5 manual is more detailed, has more troubleshooting advice, and the differences betweenby SanjayM - General
Franck Really nice video. I like the concept, extruding flexibles is something i've been wanting to get to for a good while now but simply haven't had time. How well is this working compared to whatever solution you had before? Confining the filament to eliminate buckling and lateral slop properly should help enormously. Where are you getting that flexible polyester? How flexible is it?by SanjayM - General
Drawcut Yeah the inconsistent diameter surrounding 3mm filament is maddening. There is no such thing as an "industry standard" surrounding 3mm filament being intentionally undersized, just a vaguely applied consensus. I am of the opinion that 3mm filament should be ... well.. 3mm. (Call me crazy?!) The sizing was originally based around 3mm welding rod, that had a nominal diameter of 3mm, not "by SanjayM - General
You would be best served posting in the Mendel90 sub-forums where the creator of this machine and those scripts is very active and supportive.by SanjayM - General
Ohmarius I really do think water cooling is very promising for a heated chamber system. I have a design being finalised and going to manufacture sometime today or tomorrow for a prototype run. It's quite specialist so I might kickstart it to gauge interest before I go buying way too few/too many.by SanjayM - General
To those using heated chambers: I have heard of this sort of thing from users of other more enclosed printers. I think part or all of the issue is that the fans aren't happy at those temperatures, it seems to have some effect on the lubricant in the bearings. We've gone to higher spec two-ball-bearing fans recently to try and help with this, but there's only so much that can be done. Some low visby SanjayM - General
mitchnajmitch That looks like a pretty good solution/hack. Turning it into an actively cooled all-metal hotend with a short thermal transition should make it work pretty well. It's starting to look like my early prototypes for the E3D all metal hotend! Parallel evolution, like dolphins and sharks!by SanjayM - General
Dark Alchemist Man that really strikes a chord. Having just printed a set of similar items for my other half it really makes you think. You have my sympathy. I hope you get your machine and your prints soon.by SanjayM - General
Interestingly I have noticed that the parts come off the hairpray with a strong static field on the base that you can actually feel. Like a charged balloon. I don't know how much relevance this has, but in the witchcraft zone of "what plastic sticks to what" that might be of some relevance.by SanjayM - General
My intention was that the screws would be horizontal and could be accessed though the belt. Looking at the machine next to me and holding a nut up to the clip there seems to be enough room, but it is marginal. I expect you could have a small boss that the nut sits in. Edit, just to give you some data, on the two machines you supplied as kits, only one of the 8 clips has not snapped. The belt runby SanjayM - Mendel90
I have 2 "official" Mendel90s from nophead, and have built another 6 machines. The bar clamps consistently snap when tightened enough to hold the bars firmly enough to tension the X belt appropriately. Even when "quite tight" the clamps can't resist the tension applied by the belt, this pulls the X-Idler out of square, so the belt runs forward onto the idler fender washer where it rubs. This isby SanjayM - Mendel90
So far no degradation in adhesion experienced. I'm a week of solid printing in now. I think I changed the glass on one of the machines at one point though. I forget which, those two machines we purchased from you look exactly the same, so I have had to add name tags to them to stop me muddling them up!by SanjayM - General
Another point of note here is that I am not waiting for the bed to cool on these prints. The Mendel90 is rigid enough and has enough torque to just ram the parts right off the bed. This greatly increases printing rates as heating up and down does take a fair bit of time at ABS temperatures.by SanjayM - General
A bit of a follow up! I now have ABS working, auto-printing fan ducts for the E3Dv5 hotend. I need a LOT of these ducts literally thousands, so auto-printing is really valuable to me in this case. Here's the video with explanation: (Part 1) (Part 2) In essence I'm using firm hold hairspray with a very hot bed. The hairspray has acrylic-co-polymer listed as an ingredient. Acrylic is a polymerby SanjayM - General
new to3Dbob If it ain't broke... don't fix it! But if you do have any more issues do just email or post and I will do what I can. turutk Yup Royal Mail is all we use. God Save the Queen and all that.... In General I would really like it if we could keep general sales enquires off the forum, it doesn't add to the discussion and I don't want to be seen as exploiting the forums as a sales platfoby SanjayM - General
Hi All, Sorry I haven't been as active here recently. We have just moved facilities to a new bigger unit where we can really set up shop. It's coming together nicely. Once again we are out of stock, but really we are only waiting on heater cartridges. We have been through a few different suppliers, and the new poorly toleranced, lower power ones are shockingly prevalent. As soon as we get heateby SanjayM - General
As far as I can tell, printing UHMW-PE is impossible. UHMW is made using a special annealing process where it is cast and kept at a very specific temperature for an annealing cycle of sorts while in the presence of a catalyst. This causes the polymer to do a lot of linking and go from standard PE to what we call UHMW. If you heat up UHMW-PE you kill those super long chains and end up with plaiby SanjayM - Plastic Extruder Working Group
This is strikingly similar to my first ever working hotend. Way back before I thought about going into business selling hotends! I built a Mendel90, but instead of a printed X-Carriage I milled one from 3-4mm aluminium plate. My barrier was just a piece of stainless tube like yours, coupled to a brass nozzle made from a brass bolt with an aluminium heater block. The one difference between mineby SanjayM - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Sanjay here from E3D Online - we can and do print with polycarbonate without any issues on the E3D v5. 300C works very nicely, but you can extrude a bit lower. The thermistor we supply with the kit is rated to 300C - but we have gone a bit higher without much issue. 320C or so, but it's impossible to know if that is really the true temperatures being achieved as we were obviously operating beyonby SanjayM - Plastic Extruder Working Group
uGen Honestly I'm not sure, I have made a tonne myself on manual lathes. Well over 20 iterations, a lot of dumb ideas too before I found my way. After that there were about 5 iterations made by professional machinists. Surface-finish of the machined nozzle plays a large part in stopping stuff sticking. Angle of chamfer helps too. Oddly I think that the angle of chamfer helps keep things clean, bby SanjayM - General
Eric Automating ABS is something that would be very valuable to me. I print a hell of a lot of those little fan-ducts that go on the E3D hotend, and having to manually clear the bed, re-wipe with ABS juice etc is killing production. What I have done now, is to use exceedingly clean glass. (Wash down with dish-soap/water & rinse well), a 110C heated platform and a 3mm brim around the part. Tby SanjayM - General
Nophead Yep the whole situation is a little bit murky to me. You point out the most obvious flaw in my theory - the constraint of the not-quite-fluid filament in the XY plane due to the tube walls - this should eliminate "springiness"? There is also the question of filament above the expanded "plug" becoming more flexible and springy if it is warmer but not yet part of the plug itself. However Iby SanjayM - General