Woohoo!!! After days of anguish over failed prints of various Mendel pieces (and broken extruders, and broken thermistors), I’ve finally printed my first successful piece of my Mendel RepRap (printed on the MakerBot RepStrap, which I just fixed). This piece is “frame-vertex_6off”. I completed it sometime after 4am on December 11, 2009 (my brother Jon’s birthday.. Happy Birthday!). So happy. Awesome.
The build took 1 hour and 28 minutes to complete. Two days ago I’d tightened all of the belt tensioners and turned the Y pot up 1/4 turn, but never got to test it out because of the heater barrel problem. That night I built a new PTFE insulator, screwed it on the heater barrel, and in the process damaged the thermistor, causing the temperature to constantly rise when the machine was turned on. Tonight I replaced the thermistor, taped up the extruder again, and then tried printing a standard test part with no success (the part bent up, causing the nozzle to hit it and knock everything all over the place). So I took off all of the double-sided scotch tape that I’d put on the acrylic bed and replaced it with new double sided tape. That held everything down perfectly. Once the raft was laid out without flaw, I knew I had a chance.
I actually fell asleep a bit of the way through the build, then woke to see it had completed the teardrop holes on the side.
Here are pictures I took throughout the process, showing it progress. Too tired for captions now, maybe later:
The one thing I was a bit surprised by was that after the entirely successful build, the nozzle then plunged into the piece, which left the tiny brown mark you can see in one of the photos. Was this somehow deliberate, like “tie off the last bit of plastic so it doesn’t unravel?”. I can’t remember if I stopped it or if it stopped on its own. But anyway, the piece is great!
Oh, and just one more time… Happy Birthday, Brother Jonathan!
Wahoo!!! Congrats!!!
I’m honored! It looks like me… congrats brutha!
Grant,I rlelay like this idea. Thanks for sharing. Please keep us updated on how the heated bed actually works out. I’m just starting to build the first of 2 Mendels this weekend. I’m donating the second one to our children’s school. I’d like to figure out a heated bed as well and will take your lead on it.
It looks like a nightmare cross between a piece of swiss cheese and a potato… Why don’t you build a CNC milling/drilling machine instead of another RepRap? He he he…
Congratulations. The Brown mark was only your bots way to tell you it’s still in charge. You will see that mark every day for YEARS!!
Very very cool. I like the intermediate snapshots of the build process. It’s cool that it can form those interior tunnels without the piece collapsing before they’re finished.
Ricky Shiers
I found a great…