Prusa Mendel Part Files

[Rayne Lang]

Hello.

I just got my printer printing and I'm starting to look at printing custom Mendel parts that will allow me to clean up the horrible wiring job I did. I like to use Solidworks to do all of my CAD work and then I can make my STL files from there. Is there anywhere I can get all of the prusa mendel parts as a PRT file? I dont mind quickly doing the parts up myself is someone could point me in the direction of a dimensioned drawing?

Thanks!
Rayne

[Triffid Hunter]

On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 3:56 AM, Rayne Lang <rayn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there anywhere I can get all of the prusa mendel parts
> as a PRT file? I dont mind quickly doing the parts up myself is someone
> could point me in the direction of a dimensioned drawing?

The prusa parts are all designed in openscad. That's the closest to
dimensions that you'll find I think.

https://github.com/prusajr/PrusaMendel is the official prusa repository, and
https://github.com/MakerGear/MakerGear-Prusa-Mendel is MakerGear's
repository with all their alterations.

[Nolan Poe]

This has already been mentioned but they are OpenSCAD parts. I recommend learning how to use OpenSCAD, especially if you like solidworks. It is highly parametric and much faster than traditional CAD for some jobs. I don't know if it's ideal for what you're trying to do, but I have found it is very nice for most of the things I do.

[Dale Dunn]

If you like SolidWorks, you'll hate OpenSCAD. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to learn if you have any programming experience. It is not a parametric CAD software in the way a CAD user would think, though it is widely considered so in the RepRap community. It is a script-based modeler. It is barely a front end for a facet-modeling kernel. As such, it is less a parametric CAD tool than AutoCAD 12 for DOS was 1995 (An ACIS BREP solid modeler that could be script-driven).

OpenSCAD is pretty widely used in the RepRap community, and you'll want to use other people designs from time to time. So, you'll need OpenSCAD for getting .stl files from .scad files (MakerGear kindly includes them in the Git repository Triffid Hunter linked). Once you have an .stl, you can import that into SW. Make sure to find the setting that imports the .stl as a solid model, not a graphics body or surface body. From there you can build up an assembly, like I did here for the Prusa i2.

[Nolan Poe]

To each their own. I guess it's just because I'm a programmer. My only problem with OpenSCAD is that it doesn't allow recursion or non-constant variables. You (non-specific) might have some other issues with it, depending on your background.

[Jay Couture]

As for me, when I compare the cost of OpenSCAD and SolidWorks ... well it's no wonder the reprap community picked OpenSCAD :)

[Bwanamukubwa]

Hello,

I know this is a little old, but thank you for the Solidworks files firstly. I checked for interference and found a few. Many of them are irrelevant but i wanted to ask if you had any trouble assembling a kit and if any of these interferences were an issue. The biggest thing i see now are all concentric printed plastic parts on metal rods - they seem to not be round rather they are made of several smaller faces. I've attached a screenshot of all the interferences. Are these parts made like this because of the print quality?

[Bwanamukubwa]

On Monday, September 3, 2012 8:02:53 PM UTC-4, Dale Dunn wrote:

[Dale Reed]

Bwanamukubwa,

 

No, it's because OpenSCAD does not do curved arcs, circles, spheres or cylinders.  It models a curve as a set of "short" line segments.  So a cylinder is modeled as an n-sided prism, where you have parameters that control "n" either as number of sides ($fn), angle ($fa), or as a dimension ($fsomthing-but-dang-I-forget-which-letter-because-I'm-on-my-other-PC).  For example, to make a hex-shaped recess for a nut, just subtract (difference {  }  operation) a "cylinder with six sides" from the body of the object.

 

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that STLs are made up of triangles.  If that's so, then there really are no "curves".  Of course, for OpenSCAD to export a "cylinder" to STL, the underlying software should be pretty darn simple, as the conversion from an n-sided cylinder (prism) to a set of triangles is trivial.

 

The Marlin firmware has a capability to move the extruder in (simulated, since it's all done in steps) arcs, using G-codes G2 and G3.  Some slicers have the ability to detect when the designer "intended" a circular arc type of movement (by the huge number of short linear moves that form it) and replace the bunch of moves for an arc with a single G2 or G3.  But some have noted that this substitution can go awry, for example, when making a small hexagonal hole --- if the segments are short enough, the slicer "thinks" you want to draw a cylindrical hole and substitutes when it shouldn't.  (Note that Simplify3D Creator had G2/G3 substitution up through version 1.1.5, but removed it 2.0.0 for this reason.)

 

Basically:  everything in OpenSCAD is linear -- arcs, circles, cylinders and spheres use "estimated" arcs -- but on the plus side, you can control how finely the arcs are "digitized" with parameters.

 

Reminds me, I need to make some 11-sided volume knobs for my boss's guitar amplifier.  It's louder that way.

 

Dale