Ok, I have not posted on this blog for around 10 months as I have been busy with my electric car conversion build (See previous post) but I am now tasked with building a Mendel90 derivative for a good friend who wants to get into 3D printing.
So this blog will now be getting more than a few posts over the next couple of months as I am going to use it to track the progress of this build.
We have already decided that it will be a Mendel 90 with a build volume of 400mm cubed.
Seeing as I have been out of the 3D printer RepRap community for a while and I have never attempted a build of a Mendel 90, I initially had some difficulties getting the OpenScad to build on my PC, after trying on my work PC then my home PC, I finally got it to work on my Home laptop, so now at least I am able to build the source files and potentially customize the Mendel 90 to our preferred specifications.
So it won’t be long before I am printing parts for it, Have not started buying bits for it proper yet I am still working out the best way forward but I am actually really looking forward to building it now.
Also now my EV battery charger build is finished in terms of soldering and such my bench is clear to begin the next project i.e. the next 3D printer.
Looks like I will be pushing the envelope with the size of this beast as well but it should be simple compared to the charger and I have high expectations for it, I will be using 10mm induction hardened smooth rods for the axis as I used 8mm induction hardened smooth rods for mine and they have not a mark on them compared to the z axis (where I did not) and these have score marks from the bearings on them already!
So induction hardened rods are definitely the way to go, I will also be using the J-head hot-end as this seems to be the defacto standard these days.
I may use the sanguinololu electronics set as I have some experience here and there is a lot of support for this set (Firmware etc)
I hope to do the chassis in 3-5mm Ali (as we have some already) and this should give it some serious strength when we start pumping up the print speed.
Will probably fit a quick change x carriage as we will probably want to print extra heads (Bowden style possibly) and this even gives the possibility of multiple print heads, (I am not 100% on the sanguinololu yet as this may limit a triple head upgrade which I definitely want on mine)
I will investigate triple heads again as last time I looked this was still in development, people have done it but there was no definite upgrade path that had been settled on when I last looked (that was a year ago now however and I am sure things have moved on now) Update:- surprisingly there does not seem to have been much development of triple head/extruders over the last year, so I will probably leave this for a future upgrade for now and concentrate on the build.
Triple head give the possibility of 3 colours simultaneously or even 3 types of feed thermoplastic, this would definitely be an additional upgrade (to come later) as triple head hotends are not available off the shelf as yet, but we could cobble together 3 single hotends currently this require 3 motors/drivers etc and pushes the cost up considerably.
This was one reason I wanted a milling CNC machine so I could make my own custom hotends out of brass etc when I am going to find the time however is anyone guess, but hey I have no form of social life so I am sure I can squeeze it in somewhere, anyway as I said I want triple head printing myself so it is definitely on the cards.
In fact I may well build two of these Large Mendel 90’s at the same time 1 for my friend (Steve) and one for me.
Watch this space for rapid updates as the build progresses.
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