TCT Live show (UK) 3D printing and more

I visited the TCT Live show at the NEC in Birmingham last week. A lot of really interesting stuff, too much to detail everything here, so here are a few highlights for me. If you do nothing else, please Read the section below on Geoff McCormick.

One of the highlights of the TCT show for me was a presentation by Geoff McCormick. Geoff is passionate about lots of things connected to 3D printing and the social / economic side of design and development using technology spread all over the world (open-source / sharing networks and joint development projects).
I know he is a fan of Fab-Lab so must be aware of RepRap, I would have liked to talk to him further, we only briefly discussed the Microsoft Gadgeteer project (It's an ARM7 Arduino style Open-source tool-kit) - Yes I know it does not sound like Microsoft... but they are throwing money at it.

Geoff's presentation was unfortunately wasted on many of the people present, but that's just an indication that many industries have no idea what's changing and how seemingly implausibility things become possible when you get a load of people together who are passionate about problems and finding solutions to them. So many of the companies at that show should take a big look at what's going on with open hardware, open software, community projects, digital playgrounds and personal manufacturing in general, it would be an eye-opening experience for many I'm sure. Ways to turn these many channels of development into commercially successful products or business ideas should really be a critical focus for most established companies and investors or they will all wonder what happened and why they missed out..

The customer is King, at some point soon businesses will need to tailor make almost everything or someone else will.

Please take a look at these reports that were used as the basis of Geoff's presentation - They highlight key trends that will drive growth in Creative industries and they provide very interesting views on the colliding digital and physical world in which we all interact.


Executive summary - New models, new markets, new makers
Baseline Report - BRIDGING THE DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL WORLD
Key findings - this is excellent food for thought - Final Report

And - Where to next?

 Back to the TCT Show -

Mcor were at the show, with their A4 paper based 3D printer. About £9,000 for the printer and it uses normal office paper. Still can't convince myself of it's eco-credentials as it's going to use bleached copier paper and waste quite a bit of it in every print. It's back to subtractive manufacturing, but a nice machine and the 'printed' parts looked great.

I was highly disappointed by the HP 3D printer, I had expected great things, it seems a lot slower than any other 3D printer I have seen and the quality was just average, the ABS plates are throw away after just a few prints and it's really expensive

Bits From Bytes had their new '3D Touch' printer, it's like a BFB3000 with new electronics and a touch-screen interface and a Memory stick slot on the front for printing from.

A1 Tech had a BFB3000 making a bit of a mess printing something?, it went on printing this badly for a while, the raft had lifted and the print head was catching, causing quite a mess over the object. Sadly not a good advert for the technology.

But they did have plenty of nice printed objects on a desk.

Renishaw Laser SLS 3D printing (Sorry for the high reflective surface, hopefully you can make out the Laser doing it's job.

Nice Objet printed materials using different resins.

All the usual suspects were there, the big players and a few technologies I had always wanted to see in action (Laser sintering and full colour powder printing and also multi material resin printing).

Did anyone else go to the show?

I would be really interested in your comments or thoughts on Geoff's reports? what do you think?

Thanks for reading.

Rich.

Yearly review of my Rep-Rapping adventures Sep2010 -> Sep2011

Wow! that went quickly. Review Sep 2010 - > Sep2011

I have some really interesting things planned for the next 12 months rep-rapping, but here is a round-up of my adventures in the last 12 months -

Starting out -
When I first started I made a few incorrect assumptions about the available DIY 3D printers out there, this initially led me to design and build my Screwball-Bot, very strong, highly accurate, but quite slow and VERY heavy.

My advice to anyone thinking about making 'the ultimate', 'strong' 3D printer out of T-slot and ballscrews, don't do it. It's just way overkill, I really enjoyed making Screwball-Bot and I have a really cool plan for it's ongoing use but a Prusa Mendel is almost as accurate, much faster and much easier to build.

If you want a 3D printer make a Prusa Mendel. but if you really want (and need) to be able to Mill/CNC then maybe T-slot and ballscrews are still a good option for you, but think if you will ever really do that when you have a 3D printer? I have never bothered with Subtractive / CNC machining even though I have a machine that could do it really well.
And if you don't fancy sourcing all the parts for making a Prusa, check out the eMaker Huxley, it's a lovely machine (I have one) and is a great way to start on your journey into DIY 3D printing.

Screwball-Bot Links - Concept, Design, Build-up, Wiring, Bowden_Extruder, Test, Printed Results with Reprap Host,  printed results with Skeinforge, Multicolour Printing

Most popular Blog posts -
According to the stats my most popular Blog post is on Skeinforge V41, it now needs an update and maybe a few more details about how to refine settings and what some of the other functions do so maybe I should do an updated one, and as many people now use SFACT maybe that's also worth a write-up.
* We have Skeinforge V42 just landed officially, that's going to be fun - check out the SKIN function* -

Polycarbonate Printing has rocketed up to the number 2 spot.

The other most popular posts are my DIY hot-end and the high-power hot-end
The Filament joiner
Colour 3D printing
Pimp my Mendel - Mendel *Bling*
Masterclass event Organised by eMaker
Bowden Extruder and 1.75mm Push-fit Hot-end

Not many people showed much interest in the Microscopy I did on extruded filament, which is a shame as I thought that was quite neat and I need to do some more to help with understanding the Polycarbonate printing process.

Multicolour printing (Layer selective colour printing) -

 

One of my most interesting adventure was into colour printing, this was always planned from the very start and now we are seeing all sorts of new ways to do this, so it's going to be really fun watching future progress in this area.

My particular way was to join sections of coloured filament together (with my filament joiner)
And as far as I know at least one other person has managed to do the same, with cool results.

Printed by Lenbok

And as Rep-G now has a Dual extruder option, things like these below are starting to pop-up.

Take a look at this 2 colour 3D Globe 

Prusa Mendel's -
Building them is addictive, they are just so neat, and it's great helping people build them up.
My collection is growing.
My original Bath Mendel that's currently being upgraded.
And the pimped-up Mendel *BLING* is working well.
My eMaker Huxley Machine (Number 8) - Blog post on this planned.
Shortly the British Mendel will be posted, I'm planning on that machine to accommodate a dual extruder
And then after that who knows, but I'm really enjoying watching progress with the Vertical X carriage challenge by bryanandaimee and I have some other ideas for a 'Hybrid Prusa'
All of my machines have built-in Filament holders, it's quickly the first problem anyone faces after getting the printer working.

Firmware -
I'm only really using Sprinter because of the SDCARD support and the fact it works really, really well and is very easy to understand.
Many others are worth watching, but for me until they have SDCARD support I don't have time to test them.

Electronics -
This would have been an obvious area for me to develop, but so many people are working on hardware enhancements at the moment I'm more than happy to use what's already available.

I have not tried Gen 6 or Gen 7 and don't really see a personal need to use them, the SDCARD support of RAMPS and Sanguinololu electronics are really important to me, so I'm looking forward to any new hardware with local memory or SD support the connection to the PC is becoming much less important.
LCD displays and menu / navigation keys are also increasing in use.

Extruder's -
Again, at the start I believed that I could make the 'ultimate' Extruder, and I believe 'this design' is good and works extremely well as a Bowden set-up. But for Prusa Mendel I would recommend you start with Greg's excellent accessable WADE style and as I have done, then refine aspects for what you need.

Hot-Ends (and cool/cold zones) -
It sometimes looks like Everyone tries to make their own Hot-ends when starting out, (It's the most searched term on my blog stats) it is a critical area of the machine and can have such a massive effect on reliability and quality.
I have made quite a few now and I'm still not completely happy with all aspects but for what it's worth my current angle on this is to use 2 x 10Ohm 3W resistor's in parallel for heating element, a triangle shaped heating block and a PTFE liner (tube) for filament transport that goes right from the hot-end to just short of the Hobbed bolt inside the extruder body.
I Still use PEEK (and PTFE) as the cool transition zone but any new investigations will start to use Stainless steel (and other materials) as the 'cool' zone.
And use these Thermistors, they are so much easier than the tiny ones normally used.

I also have a little fan duct for assisting the cool-end that's designed to fit onto Greg's X-Carriage, this really helps quality and is essential for extreme long-running print runs or build-plates.

Plastic (Filament) -
I have found out a lot about plastic and still have so many more things to learn and experiment with in this area, but for a status so-far I can say the following -

PLA - (Start with PLA), it's easy to extrude and gives good results. My favourite PLA supply is from Faberdashery, it's simply the best filament I have used to date, dimensionally excellent between different colours and batches, colour intensity and choice is amazing and it extrudes so smoothly, no blobs, less ooze and no bubbles and best of all it's not brittle - (I have now used and tested many colours from 8 different PLA suppliers all over the world - a future Blog post planned on this).

ABS - I use it for Extruder's, X-carriages and Y bearing holders and I don't like using it. yes you can get some funky colours but it's annoyingly softer than PLA so I personally tend to get more filament drive issues (clogged hobbed bolts usually) I need to find a nicer way to use it more, but it's not my preferable material.
Again tried 5 different suppliers so far and usable quality seems more of an issue with ABS than with PLA.

Polycarbonate - I'm still testing and not very many (any?) people seem to have used it in DIY 3D printing, but WOW! it's strong and could be the very best material to use for machine-part Rep-rapping, very interesting. - And thanks to everyone that has contacted me about the Blog post and testing, I have had a tremendous response and it's great to see so many enthusiastic and supportive people involved in this wonderful project. Thank you.

PC-ABS - Still to test this mix, the intention is to lower the required extruding temperature.

Other materials - stay tuned, some more are planned (I'm also open to ideas?)

Meeting people (other rep-rappers) 'in real life' -
It was a good year for sharing, we had a really great Masterclass weekend organised by Jean-Marc of eMaker and for me the West of England RepRap user group is starting to get organised and planning to meet regularly.

I can't wait to see what we all do in the next year, it's going to be great!

Resources and contact-
My Youtube channel is here, all HI-Def video content.
Thingiverse Here
You can find me on the Reprap Forum (PM me if you want to make contact)
eMaker forum
Reprap Wiki
And at some point soon I'll find time to try IRC
Should I bother with twitter?

I love reading other people's Blogs, far too many to list, but thanks to all the re-rappers that have helped, problem-solved, discussed or generally inspired me to be part of this great project.

So if you have managed to read this far down I would really like to hear from you on what you would like me to investigate, design, experiment with over the next year? I don't have infinite time or resources, but I'm interested and up for any challenge connected to 3D printing.

Also this would be a great time to tell me what you like and dislike about my Blog posts or content?

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

I wonder what 2012 will bring to our industry? Predictions anyone?

Rich.

Indestructamendel - Polycarbonate 3D Printing with Prusa Mendel

A little while back I posted on the Reprap Forum about printing with Polycarbonate, no one seemed to have done this yet so I had some pure Polycarbonate filament made up and some other mixes to enable some further experimentation and testing, here are my initial results and findings with Pure Polycarbonate.

Firstly if you are not exactly sure why Polycarbonate is worth investigating for 3D printing, take a look at the Wikipedia page, basically it's strong and impact resistant (It's used in the making of bullet proof glass) temperature resistant and luckily it is a thermoplastic so can be extruded (at the right temperature). It can be bent and formed while cold without cracking or deform and it is also very 'crystal' clear, but that's actually not so important for us as will become apparent below.

Don't confuse Polycarbonate with Acrylic or Plexi-glass, they shatter and crack, Polycarbonate tends to just bend and deform and after much effort will eventually stretch like very hard rubber until it eventually breaks.

It's a really amazing material, the 'diamond' of plastic, I was excited to test it out.

I have used sheet Polycarbonate for all sorts of things so I already had an idea of what to expect when thinking about extrusion.

• It has a high melting temperature (glass transition is about 150 Degrees C)
• It flows at around the 280 - 300 Degrees C point
• It is stiff so 3mm filament would have been a problem to coil and feed into the extruder
• It's hard so should work well in a Hobbed bolt filament transport system (geared extruder drive)
• I already had a new hot-end design that I was confident would work at 300 Degrees C 

My test Polycarbonate Coil was manufactured at 1.6mm which will work in a 1.75mm extruder.

I did a few temperature tests and free air extrusion tests to see what the extruded filament looked like, it's one of the cleanest extrusions I have seen in free-air (290 Degrees C)

After changing my extruder Esteps and calibrating infill for 0.3mm layer height I started testing.

My first test was with the good old Pyramid model. Looking back I should have started with cubes or something requiring less extruder reversals, but it was a good test.

I was getting a small amount filament buckle in the cool-end, not a big issue, but extruder reversal needed tweaking a little.

Firstly I started at a reasonable speed of 30mm/sec print and 180mm/sec Travel.

Hot end at 280 Degrees C and the Heated bed set at 95 Degrees C

I was expecting warp and the extruder to jam, it didn't and printed ok.

I then printed again and lowered the temperature until it jammed up.

This was a really interesting failure mode !

It didn't do what I was expecting. Normally when you lower the temperature to work a lower limit eventually the hobbed bolt grinds through the filament and carves a chunk out of a single point and the teeth get all jammed up.

With the Polycarbonate it kept on driving the filament into a tightly packed block under the Hobbed bolt all around the spare space under the drive just before the opening, as the filament was still being driven I didn't even realise it until I started to see it bulge from under the hobbed bolt.

I didn't take a photo of it jammed up in the extruder, but here is it after extraction from the extruder, it's been stretched a little by me pulling it out, but you can see the failure mode really well.

And remember this filament is completely cold (room temperature) when it's doing this, amazing stuff!

That just told me that Polycarbonate is one of the best materials to use with Hobbed bolt transport and actually it can be extruded at a much lower temperature than I expected as long as you are not printing too fast- more on speed and temperature below - 

I was reasonably surprised by printed Pyramid looking so 'snow-white' I had initially expected it to look clear, so I experimented with Speed and temperature for the next six Pyramids.

What I discovered was that the slower you print and the lower the temperature the 'whiter' the printed object.
Also lots of reversal moves gives the object a snow-white appearance.
Strength does not seem to be affected by the appearance or speed of printing or indeed temperature.

If you print hotter and faster the more clear the object becomes.

This Pyramid above was printed at 120mm/Sec and 305 degrees C, I don't think it's going to get much more transparent than this due to the many extruder reversals? That's my theory as the free-air extruded filament is clear so something is causing it to change, or maybe other factors like moisture are playing a part?

I pulled the hot filament out of the extruder to see what it looked like, you can see the filament is slightly buckled in the drive channel, this is due to the fact it's 1.6mm and my extruder is designed for 1.75mm filament, but not a big problem with this strong material.

What's really interesting is that the melted part is the same snow-white colour I can see in the printed object.

This needs more investigation, maybe I should to try to dry the filament to see if moisture is some of the cause to this? Anyone have any ideas?

Here is a short video showing Polycarbonate printing on Prusa Mendel, you can watch it below or in High Def on Youtube Here

Polycarbonate Printing

This should give you an idea of how strong Polycarbonate is, you can bend it when cold and even put a knot in it. 

The video below shows Polycarbonate filament being bent, manipulated and tied to show strength and flexibility, you can also view this in High Def on Youtube Here

PC and PC-ABS Filament test

As a way to compare PC printing material take a look at the below videos showing PLA and ABS in the same manner. This is part of a wider material testing program I'm doing at the moment.

Further 3D Printing material test comparisons - 

To give you an idea of how difference material handle, take a look at the videos below or on Youtube Here, where I bend twist and break some different filament types and supplies to see how they behave.

A range of PLA 3D printing plastic filament being bent and manipulated

A range of PLA 3D printing plastic filament being bent and manipulated

Future tests will be on a much wider range of suppliers and materials along with printed parts, for an example of how different materials perform after being printed look at the below video where I destroy some printed Pyramids.

Part Destruction! - lets pull apart some Pyramids

In the video below I pull and snap apart some printed Pyramids of different material types, they are all made with 20% infill and printed at 80mm/sec with 3 solid layers.

Printed object destruction

Other 3D printing materials - I'm really interested in what other experiences people have had with different material types in 3D printing, please contact me if you want to be involved in materials testing and /or you have any experience of different plastic's.
If you also want to test Polycarbonate materials then please do contact me.
I'm not a plastic's expert or have training on materials analysis but I'm really interested in how different types perform in 3D printing and how blends or mixes of plastic may help enhance our machines and objects.

Future test - PC-ABS

I have some other spools of mixed Polycarbonate materials, the intention was to lower the extrusion temperature and make it even easier and lower cost to use PC on RepRap.

I will get around to testing these types when I make another dedicated extruder.

I would really like to add this info to the Reprap.org wiki pages, but I could do with some help on creating pages and sections. At this time references to PC do not exist on the wiki.
Ideally A page like this for PLA needs to be made for Polycarbonate.

If anyone can help me please get in contact or PM me on the RepRap forum, thanks.

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment.

Rich.

Upgrade your bed springs –> improve your print quality

Just a quick note and upgrade for you to consider - If you have a Prusa or any other machine with little springs on your build bed / heated bed especially if they are springs from biro pens think about upgrading them.

I was getting more and more issues going faster on my Prusa, most of these manifested themselves as less fine outer surfaces and less alignment on the vertical walls. So after fixing all my vertical Z issues (de-couple the Z motor mounts, make sure the rods are really straight, and adding Z rod bearing stabilisers) the only thing remaining was a little wobble on my build-bed. This wobble gets more and more the faster you print / accelerate / stop etc, so I changed my bed springs from the 'official' little ones from biro pens to ones usually used on the Extruder Idler.

On the left is a ground spring normally used on the extruder. On the right the 'official' bed spring is usually sourced from a disposable biro pen.

Change to a firm spring, under good compression.

Old Pen spring fitted, bit floppy

You need a firm spring, and make sure they are well compressed, mind you don't distort the build bed but keep them reasonably tight to stop wobble.

The change was really good and well worth doing.  I'll try to post the before and after printed objects, but I would recommend giving it a go especially if you are upping the print speeds on your machine past 80+mm/sec or having a fast machine travel speeds around ~200+mm/sec

Let me know if you change them and if it also improved your print quality.

Rich.

* Pimp my Mendel * - How to build up a LM8UU Linear Bearing Prusa

Mendel Bling is built up and running better, smoother and faster than I imagined possible.

I decided to make the Bling machine build to be a complete as possible manufacturing solution and also add a few upgrades and ease of use changes along the way, let me know what you think. It’s also a full linear bearing (LM8UU) design on all the axis.

I’m also going to use this as a *basic* overview ‘How to build a Prusa Mendel’ post, hopefully it will help someone or at least give you some ideas for your own build.

I does not cover every step, just highlights many of the main assembly points.

Frame Vertex -

My frame vertexes are a little chunkier than the normal Prusa versions, the only thing to make sure is that you have the same measurement between all frame vertex plastic faces, so if that’s 250mm like the ‘official’ Prusa or 252mm or 246mm like mine then that’s fine, just make sure they are all the same.

Axis lower frame Assembly.

Axis lower frame back with Y motor mount.

X-Carriage - 

This is Greg's X carriage fitted with 3 x LM8UU Linear bearings.

The X carriage assembly with Z ends –

Both the Prusa Z ends are a tight push-fit, I recommend wrapping just the end of the bar in Kapton tape then slightly softening the plastic before pushing it in and holding the plastic in compression against the bar until it goes cold and sets, the wrapped Kapton tape will make it impossible to remove without re-heating, so make sure you push the bars all the way into the Z end, and do one end at a time.

REMEMBER to slide on your X carriage with it’s Linear bearings before attaching into the push-fit ends of the Z axis parts.

Y stage –

If you use Greg’s LM8UU Y axis holders then assemble them in a similar way to this, there are other variants (Joem_)that have mounting lugs etc. so take your pick.

Slide them (carefully) onto the Y stage bars and space them on your frame.

So after making sure your Y axis bars are parallel, straight and spaced appropriately you can screw the Y plate onto your Linear bearing holders.

Keep going, in a short while it will start to look something like this.

The Print bed –

I slightly modified the MDF print bed by adding small wooden bars at both the Y axis ends and spray painting it with high temperature paint, you don’t need to do this, I just wanted to eliminate any flex and also have a slight lip in the Y axis direction to stop extra air movement under the bed and also over the top of the heated surface.

I added a sheet of Aluminium foil 

And then a cut sheet of silicon (kitchen baking silicon)

After this if you can get hold of it (£1 from you local pound shop) I added a sheet of PTFE cooking mesh, this stuff is great, 260 Degrees C rated. Lightweight thermal isolation and insulation for your heated bed.

The heated bed is a normal Prusa FR4 PCB; I’m going to use it upside down with the heating tracks on the top surface, so to protect the tracking and smooth it out I covered the bed in PET tape.

Top TIP – Adding the Tape (PET or Kapton) to this side of the PCB has another major advantage, any air bubbles trapped when you put the tape on make their way down the gaps in the tracks so you end up with a really nice surface, bubble free.

If you use the other side it’s not easy so apply the tape and you still end up with an impression of the PCB silk-screen printing text appearing on all your printed parts!

The stack of Alu foil, silicon sheet and PTFE mesh will give you a gap between the MDF and heating PCB, so you need to make sure you have the same spacing or a little more for the four mounting points.

Here I have used M3 stainless steel bolts, nuts and a PTFE washer to get the correct spacing.

Z Motors-

The Z drive motor connections are Nophead’s design, these work well and only need a small section of plastic tube around the motor shaft, heat it up if it’s tight to fit onto the shaft.

These should be done up tightly around the motor shaft and the M8 studding using all four bolts on each.

Z stage –

To install the Linear bearings into the Z stage you may need to heat the plastic slightly, it makes it a little easier to click them in and you can make sure they ‘set’ tightly in place and in alignment if you also use a M8 rod while you fit them in place. Secure with ty-wraps.

The motor mounts for the Z stage are both designed to have 4 bolts connecting the motors tightly down, no one actually seems to use these and it is preferable to ty-wrap the Z motors in place to allow them to ‘decouple’ mechanical wobble from Z movements.

I started by only securing with 2 bolts and using PTFE washers, but after a few prints I also ended up using ty-wraps so the motors are floating other than being held in place with ty-wraps.

The next time I take it apart I will also put a sheet of silicon in between the motors and the mount to further decouple any vibrations.

Also when you install the Z motors and the very straight M8 studding remember to add a spring inside both sides of the hexagon sections, it should be under compression between the top and bottom M8 nuts so when you do Z moves it reduces backlash to an absolute minimum.

I also added Rod stabilisers to my machines top and bottom of the Z drive rods.

I think they do help support the Z transport very well and help with vertical alignment, but you don’t really need them.

Belts and pulleys -

I have used off-the-shelf Metal pulleys this time as it’s using the 2.5mm belts and I didn’t have time to cast more of the fine pitch pulleys, I also wanted to see how tricky it was to drill and tap the metal pulleys, it’s not hard, anyone with a drill press and a simple hand tap could do it.

Top left shows how they come, you need to drill them out and add another hole for the grub screw and tap that with M3

Attach the pulleys to the motor shafts and use a good quality grub screw to keep it in place.

Greg’s X carriage has an in-built tensioner system.

Install the Y belt and if you keep the Y belts long enough so you can pull, adjust and tighten them even after the build platform is on then you should not have to disassemble anything to tighten belts in the future. 

I just taped the spare ends down to keep them tidy.

The extruder is Greg’s design along with my own Fan duct mounted on the X carriage.

The hot-end heater block is my version here - 

Electronics –

I’m not going to explain how to make up the electronics here as there is very good documentation on the Wiki and also everyone seems to have a different preference with electronics and there are so many variants.

I did have some new (at the time) RAMPS 1.3 PCB’s but I decided to use up the last 1.2 PCB I had as they are not very different in reality.

I plan to use the 1.3 Versions in a future dual extruder machine that will look quite different to this machine.

I’m housing the wiring and electronics in a simple ABS case (175mm x 110mm x 66mm).

Neat wiring and cable identification is a good thing to make it easier in the future.

RAMPS installed and some of the stepsticks for testing.

Make sure you have nice chunky wires and good crimps for your +12V power connections to the electronics.

RAMPS V1.2 does not have a separate Poly-fuse for the Heated bed, This one is 11A rated and connected separately to another set of +12V wires from the ATX PSU and then on to the heated bed, the return from the heated bed goes to the H-bed MOSFET sink (GND) on the electronics.

These are simple mechanical endstops to my own design, but you can use whatever switches you have or opto-endstops if you prefer.

I added a few LED indicators so I can see when the power to the system is on, the heated bed is active and the hot-end is being driven, I recommend doing this it tells you a lot about how your system is working and is nice to check things happen when you expect them.

When running from SD cards it’s always nice to be able to quickly remove the card to update Gcode, so I decided to extend the SD cable to the outside of the enclosure in an easy to access spot. 

To do this I simply used a cut-down Ribbon cable (an old PC Floppy drive cable) and fitted a male connector so I can fit the SD card adapter. I have not had any problems doing this, but keep this ‘extension’ as short as possible.

I’m using Stepstick motor drivers in this machine, they are almost identical to the Pololu versions, and in the photo you can see both the Pololu (top left) and Stepstick below.

Think about cable strain relief and give yourself plenty of cable to allow free movement especially on the Z axis and the extruder assembly.

Added an on/off switch for the ATX psu (this is on the low-voltage side, instead of just wiring it to ground to get the ATX to turn on), it can be classes as a panic button also as it will shut down all motors and heated things.

To mount everything and as a frame for a filament spool I use some 20mm T-slot Aluminium, you could just as easily use wood or threaded bar for this ‘extension’. The Mendel is fixed to this via 4 x 8mm printed plastic mounts at the base and two small M8 threaded rods for extra stability using the normal Mendel mounting plate at the top. The electronics box and ATX psu are all mounted to the t-slot frame.

At the very top there is space for a standard 30cm filament spool using another M8 threaded rod. This means the whole thing can be picked up and easily moved all you need is power and a USB cable that can also be removed after you set off a print using the onboard SD card.

Finally four rubber feet to minimise vibration and noise .

Software and firmware is your choice, and many more are on their way as I write this, I’m using Sprinter and Printrun (Pronterface) along with Skeinforge V41 but people are starting to use SFACT, I just had a quick go and it has much easier to understand names for the settings, and a lot less ratio's, so be sure to check it out.

First print.

It’s first print was successful and it went on to print all my multi-coloured things a few posts back.

It’s now going to be hard at work making more stuff and of course a grandchild…

Thanks for reading, I hope it was useful.

Rich.