Mendel - Bot
Mark Cohen
I assume many of you have built a Mendel. Anyone build a Mendel-Bot?
That is the Mendel frame and the cupcake electronics, software and
plastruder. It started as a plain Mendel but the Makerbot software is
much better and the fact that I can use all the electronics as is, is
a plus. So I reworked it this weekend as I wanted to change the steel
threaded rod to stainless steel anyway. I am pretty much done. I just
have to print out an adapter for the plastruder from thingiverse for
the head. Everything else is functional. The issues I have is that the
stepper drivers probably have to be mounted on the side and the PC
power supply needs to be mounted somewhere. Does anyone have some
pictures or suggestions for this project? I did get some settings for
RepG for the Mendel but have not tried these out.
Thanks,
Mark
jakero...@gmail.com
just got our Mendel up and running exactly as you describe.
From the beginning we had much more luck with the makerbot firmware
and repg. After many months of trying different extruders, the mk5
drive gear was what finally worked. Our 'plastruder' is very
bastardized, just an angled bracket with the motor and bearing secured
to a piece of acrylic all sandwiched between the x stage. Pictures
will probably explain better:
http://twitpic.com/23646y
http://twitpic.com/2364by
Our steppers were mounted as they would be on a mendel, did you mean
stepper boards? We just zip tied them on the back where they would be
out of the way. Wade, of Wade extruder fame had a good idea for
getting low profile molex connectors so they would fit properly under
the y stage but I have yet to pursue that. Our pc power supply is zip
tied up top as you can see here:
http://twitpic.com/236blm
Excuse the mess, I'm still breadboarding a thermocouple circuit
amongst many other things.
I'm just getting calibrated but the major changes I've had to make
were to the machines.xml file. I can give you my settings, but I
ended up using SI 5/16 threaded rod on the Z which means It won't line
up with a standard mendel metric. http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?151,40440,41263,quote=1
has a machines file for the rep rap, and I'm close to most of those
settings with one notable change. When I pushed the z scale up to
~800 with a feedrate of 150 my makerbot z stepper moved so fast it
skipped. To maintain low speeds for higher torque we had to set our
feedrate much lower like 25-50.
As I said were just getting up and running so I look forward to
collaborating with you more as you get your machine transitioned.
Mark Cohen
Those pictures were perfect. I am doing pretty much exactly that. I may cut
a piece of wood and extend out the front left corner base and attaching the
power supply there. I am thinking of printing three flat squares like cards
with circuit board brackets to mount each stepper on the back left vertex
threaded bar. It may be on Thingiverse soon if I do it. I have currently
mounted the stepper driver boards on the wood in the normal mendel position
but rotated so that the not Ethernet plugs are facing the front and bolted
as far back as possible. This almost gives me enough room. I would
definitely like to work together on this. I may put this on a blog and pass
the info into the makerbot blog as they are showing some non-makerbot cncs
using their boards. I also used the machine.xml info from that exact post.
There are some thingiverse items that could possibly mount a regular
extruder. If you need them I'll link them in but I have not tried it yet. I
didn't see the stepper boards in your picture but it is probably real
important to put heatsinks on the stepper voltage regulators if you have not
already done so. I have burnt out three steppers so far as the Mendel motors
I am using are more powerful.
Thanks,
Mark
http://twitpic.com/23646y
http://twitpic.com/2364by
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Mark Cohen
I would remove the plastruder board (yours looks to be on the opposite piece
of the thick sheet) and attach to the plastruder, move the motherboard to
the right and mount the power supply right where the plastruder board is in
your picture using nylon ties.
-----Original Message-----
From: make...@googlegroups.com [mailto:make...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Ja...@HeatSyncLabs.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 7:50 AM
To: MakerBot Operators
Subject: [MakerBot] Re: Mendel - Bot
http://twitpic.com/23646y
http://twitpic.com/2364by
--