RepRap Mendel Revisited
Description
Happy Birthday, RepRap Mendel! This printer is being released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the RepRap Mendel, designed by Dr. Adrian Bowyer. Ten years may not seem like a long time, but in the world of 3D printing, the technology has leaped forward. In this design, I have addressed the issues I encountered with the original machine, while still preserving its iconic shape. Main changes include a sturdier frame with M12 threaded rods, an E3D v6 Bowden extruder, a geared extruder with Bondtech drive gears, optical endstops, an optical filament runout sensor, an optical Allen-key Z-probe, and a TR6 or TR8 Z-axis leadscrew. The 24V MeanWell PSU and electronics are integrated into the frame (RAMPs or TinyBee) including display and SD card. The printer is still able to print with either 1.75mm or 3mm filament (though I've only tested 1.75mm so far), and the print area is similar to the original, with dimensions of 200x200x135mm. The inspiration behind this printer’s design came from an 2021 April Fools' joke published by Prusa Research, where they announced a "downgrade" of their popular Prusa i3 MK3 to a Prusa Mendel i2. In the video, the print quality was intentionally poor, but I distinctly remember my own Prusa Mendel delivering much better results. Another reason for revisiting this design is that, during the COVID pandemic, I did some cleaning and ended up disassembling my original printer, throwing away many of its plastic parts and key components. Ever since then, I’ve missed having the machine, so I decided to reprint it—this time, without the issues I encountered before. Should anyone use this as their primary printer in 2024? Probably not. But if you feel the same sense of nostalgia, you might enjoy having it on display and using it occasionally, just as I do. Happy Printing! To-Do: - Provide a better description on thingiverse.com - Create an assembly manual on reprap.org - Finalize the Bill of Materials (BoM) - Implement automated Z-probe deploying - Make a video :D
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