How did he print the joints? We had a lot of 3d printer access on campus and it'd be a big help if he printed there.
The drawback to all of the metal strut + printed plastic joints (in my opinion, mind you) is alignment and stability. I haven't seen many (5?) but almost all of them were wobbly due to wear in the joints or poorly printed joints.
If I'm going to drag it around, I want it to be rugged, and I realize that isn't high on the requirements lists for many of these.
It's tempting to just cut all the joints out of metal or acrylic. That, or cut one out of wood, which was good enough for Cupcake CNC plans.
On 6/10/12 13:34, Gabe Cottrell wrote:
One of my coworkers from RMU Charles Mura, just built a MendelMax, and its print quality is great and it is rigid as hell, I think he's planning on bringing it to mini-makerfair. I'll see if he can bring it by the shop for a demo. -Gabe On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Matt Stultz <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: Okay I will keep my ranting to a minimum but there are a few points I can't help but make: 1 Non one is working on PLA extruders for MakerBot's anymore because the extruders MakerBot makes work awesome for PLA. 2 Comparing the pint quality of your first generation Cupcake to MakerGear's finely tuned sales tool demo unit is pretty absurd. 3 Many in the reprap comunity hate MakerGear because he steals their work and calls it his own (see the "MakerGear Prusa" http://www.makergear.com/products/3d-printers) Okay Rant over. Now from the perspective of owning 2 MakerBot's (a Cupcake and a Replicator) and being at the point of about to build my 3rd 3D printer (http://reprap.org/wiki/Tantillus). Build a MendelMax! http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:20355 It's a little more expensive than a Prusa but has the same print capabilities and is easier to build and far more rigid than a Prusa. You can print in both ABS and PLA with this bot (there are upsides and downsides to both). Most importantly it's a "kit" that members of the shop can put together and learn how these systems work which will make it much easier when you have to do repairs on it. That is important because it's not an if it's a when. I will probably end up building one of these myself at some point if for no other reason than the large build size. If you don't want to build a Max then just build a standard Prusa. It has the greatest level of community support and upgrade parts for it. If you want to build a Max or a Prusa (or something else reasonable) for HackPGH let me know and I will print the parts needed for it on my Replicator and send them to the shop. Thanks, Matt On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 2:52 PM, j. eric townsend <jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: Reprap, MakerBot, and most of the open printers can do ABS or PLA. You just have to tweak some hardware, the temperature settings in the controller, and change the g-code generation scripts. Early on there were a lot of people making alternate PLA heads for the MakerBot but they are starting to work more on Reprap these days. There are some other commercial-ish 3d printers out there that are cheap and available as kits, parts-lists, etc. The M Series printers from MakerGear print PLA really well, last year I was next to one at the maker faire and his PLA looked better than my Cupcake's ABS. He was making jewelry he could give to kids with no nasty fumes. I'm putting together a spreadsheet now of the basic models/prices for my own reference, will bring that on Tue. On 6/9/12 14:19, The Gentleman Alchemist wrote: I agree with RepRap over in MakerBot in principle and in practicality. If I understand correctly, RepRap would most likely be a ABS plastic printer. What would be our options for a PLA printer? Scott^2 On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 12:26 PM, j. eric townsend <jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> <mailto:jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jet@xxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote: Tuesday, 7:30pm, free, open to the public. Topic: What should be the next 3D printer one of us builds? MakerBot isn't supporting older models with parts online so I'm leaning towards a Reprap, but what sort of PLA printer should we consider for the shop or for a class? -- J. Eric Townsend design: www.allartburns.org <http://www.allartburns.org> <http://www.allartburns.org>; hacking: www.flatline.net <http://www.flatline.net> <http://www.flatline.net>; HF: KG6ZVQ PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8 -- J. Eric Townsend design: www.allartburns.org <http://www.allartburns.org>; hacking: www.flatline.net <http://www.flatline.net>; HF: KG6ZVQ PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8
-- J. Eric Townsend design: www.allartburns.org; hacking: www.flatline.net; HF: KG6ZVQ PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8
