Blog 2010
December 29: while (probably) everybody was stuffing themselves with alot of food with Christmas, I decided to stuff myself with SkeinForge for 2 days.. (I havent used skeinforge before). And im really amazed about the quality im already getting after 24hours.. (also thanks to Araspitfire to give me a good start point). Ive tweaked skeinforge a bit further then ara, so i dont use retract/restart and ive deleted even more M lines and other lines etc.. (extended the replace.csv) so ive got really basic, (but really fast!) gcode. Ive made full printbed STL files.. (including our new parts).. So our production will also move to skeinforge today/very soon. More news about our own parts very soon. But here are some sneak previews:
pictures in higher res are here: click here
December 21 NOTE2: Alot of people tell me we should raise our prices, because of the large demand etc.. well my own idea is to lower the prices.. because my original plan is rolling out better and better. Our goal is to sell huge amounts, so we get better and better prices. And last few weeks/months this is already happening, so another reason to wait a bit with ordering.. alot will change and some products will (probably) be lowered in price the next few weeks/months.
December 21 NOTE: We have negotiated new prices on BZP 8.8 quality M8 studding. This means from now on, we wont have 4.8 quality anymore. It will be replaced by 8.8 quality (for probably same price). People who have ordered a hardware kit or complete machine with 4.8 quality will already get the new 8.8 quality BZP.
December 5: 5-12-2010 NOTE: Please DONT PLACE ANY ORDERS anymore for the coming week or so.. (if I could close the webshop for new orders safely/temporarily I would...) We are very busy catching up (last week we shipped over 150 orders for example..), but we need a little air gap to get back to normal. We have alot of news/new items etc, but we will not put those online unless we are back to normal handling times. We have recruited alot of help for coming week, we should have 8 printers working by the end of this week, have insane amounts of stock etc etc etc.. Soon more (detailed) news. Also we have uploaded alot of photos from building our last two hot end v4 extruders.. (check the build info page) And we have decided that a forum is the best solution for now. so we can reply once and everyone else can read the answer also.. and that way we can have users help other users etc etc.. Soon more news on the forum (ill try to fix that next weekend). Last but not least: if you want to cancel your order and get full refund please email me asap on my hotmail: camielgubbels@hotmail.com and put the words "cancel" and/or "refund" in your email subject, otherwise we might ship your order this week... very sorry for all the trouble, but I cant guarantee we read all the backlog in the webshop email coming days...
November 4: Coming soon: 1.75mm PLA filament (In production now..) also a new hot end for this 1.75mm off course coming. Our new/longterm solution for a PLA heated bed will be online in a few days probably. We have designed a few new Mendel parts, new extruder base, new idler holder etc.. (coming online soon, once im sure they are ok and tested enough). Also Ive designed a new x-end-bracket, because we had another broken belt last week. So its not that they brake after 4 sets (someone mentioned that) but here its more after 10 sets. Anyway I didnt like it, and I also didnt like the current solution, a printed part that required different Bar length?? wtf? I mean, thats what the printed part should solve.. So we have designed a new one, that dont need bars cutting and it can be assembled very easy without touching the rest of your Mendel, also coming in few days..
October 16: Well it was getting cold here (no heater in the MendelFactory yet..) and its time we say goodbye to our hairdryer...
So we have made a 5 euro (nichrome, cables etc) heated bed to print warp free without trouble (for PLA & if you have an alu printbed, kapton tape and a power supply..)
I must make this note: our electronics partner doesnt like this solution, and I (& Araspitfire) agree for long term use this is not suitable. So use at your own risk. However it is very cheap and most people have these materials.. But I never leave my machines unattended.. Also we have a cheap longterm safe&simple solution already too.. More news about that later, but the development might involve a heat camera etc, pretty cool or eh warm I mean...
I\'ve used 3 parallel loops of our NiChrome wire of about 60cm (13,0 Ohm each). My total then came up 4,6 Ohm. note -> P=U^2 / R
By simply changing the voltage on the power supply the temperature can be controlled. With 6mm alu printbed we use 16-17V for fast heating up, and 12-14V while printing. Aluminium is a very good heat conductive, I have measured only 2-3C difference from center to 1cm from side..
This means we now havetwo three Mendels with a heated bed, and the rest will follow soon.
Thanks to Araspitfire for his input on this.. And all of the pictures in higher res can be found: here
October 12: We have alot of good news.. Mendel nr.2 is back home (from our electronics partner)... but WITH a heated bed!. So we finally have all four Mendels back in the MendelFactory. We have received the next load of GEN6 today. We have 1.75mm PLA Filament in stock for testing purposes (more news soon about that). We have developed two new hot ends.. v3. But also v4.. (soon more info on that too).
We will make a new video this evening showing you all these nice addons/developments etc.. because images speak more then words..
October 7: After reading the first review of GEN6, I have to say, that is why we developed these electronics, I just hated that instead of printing I had to spent alot of evenings messing with electronics.. well thats past now :)
October 4: First part (30-35 of 50pcs) of GEN6 electronics shipped out today, so the first customers will receive their GEN6 tomorrow. All necessary files are published now (i hope..). One more thing: our manufacturer made a (positive) mistake, and instead of just using high temp cable for heater/thermistor, he used the high temp cable on all cables (so also all the opto\'s have high temp cables. (for same price.).
October 2: New video on youtube: video 4
October 2: We have added complete mendel kits and PLA filament to the webshop, so we now have a complete one-stop webshop for our customers.
October 1: Customers waiting on GEN6: we are very sorry, but the opto\'s and high temp cables didnt arrived Friday as planned. Something not in our hands.. This means we will start shipping gen6 electronics on Monday. We have arranged extra help for Monday, so we hope to send out all orders.
September 30: We have the first 50pcs of Generation 6 Electronics in stock, however we are waiting on the opto\'s and high temp cables for full sets. Should be here tomorrow, so we can ship first part of gen6 Friday if all goes as planned..
September 29: First serie (50pcs) of Generation 6 electronics have arrived at our electronics partner and they will be programmed with correct firmware today/tomorrow. So we can start shipping first sets tomorrow probably.
September 29: We are very sorry, we have a massive delay in email communication. We will try to answer all emails tonight. We have delay because we are very busy last week with all kinds of things, but mainly improving our plastics productions line. And on the ohter hand, we get more and more emails. Please only email when its urgent for now..
September 20: We made a new thin shelled frame vertex, check: thingiverse.com/thing:4173
September 20: Shipping changes are done, but we still need to update the shipping text page... maybe later tonight.
September 17: We finally started integrating UPS envelope, it works now for USA/AU/NZ and more.. 14 EUR to ship to USA in 48hours (during weekdays). And we are changing more in the shipping options. Turns out Postmail is not limited in size for most cases (above 250gram, but under 2000gram) so we have a cheap option now also to ship for example motors worldwide, but without trackntrace. We will finish this shipping upgrade the next few days, untill then SHIPPING PAGE IS OUTDATED, please use checkout instead to check shipping prices, its not necessary to checkout complete, you can also just use checkout to see shipping quotes/possibilities..
September 15: We are finally (after 4months) progressing in PLA production.. more news in a few weeks about this. But it all looks very promising, it seems we found a very professional Technical Institute that is capable of producing high quality PLA for sharp prices. We are now busy investigating how much there needs to be invested in optimizing the machines just for our PLA..
September 9: New/lower shipping rates for UPS for alot of regions: NL,FR,IT,DK,FI,SE,ES,PT,NO,CH etc.
And more zones will get lower rates this weekend. Shipping costs for the above countries have already been updated, however we still need to update (parts of) the shipping text page. But when checking out, the new lower rates are already active.
September 5: Pre-ordering started for Generation 6 electronics: link to product page
September 4: We have started working on build/print info pages.
August 24: The production has started of the first serie of the new Generation 6 Electronics.
August 22: We just uploaded a new thing, to thingiverse.. check our simple spool design: thingiverse:3866
August 20: Estimated selling prices for generation 6 electronics announced.
August 19: second video on youtube: video of generation 6 electronics in action 2
August 15: First video on youtube: video of generation 6 electronics in action
August 14: We upgraded another mendel (#1) now also to Gen6 electronics, because we couldnt hear our other machine with gen6 running because of the makerbot electronics on this one.. and for some more testing off course.
August 12: Soon we will have UPS envelop, for example: 15 EUR to ship to the USA in 48hours with track n trace.
August 11: We changed the electronics on one of our production Mendels (#3) to Gen6 for extensive testing. So far it prints very nice, we printed 6 black parts in the first few hours. And removing all the cables/pcb\'s of the makerbot electronics was probably more work then adding the gen6 electronics. It prints also very quiet.
July 28: Our new electronics, got a name: Gen6 electronics, link: reprap.org/wiki/Generation_6_Electronics
July 18: We started with redrawing reprap parts, since alot of original parts have issues with making good gcode or are difficult to print (holes too close to edges etc). We uploaded first two files to thingiverse, these are updated parts of Adrian\'s geared extruder.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3567
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3568
Expect alot more to come..
July 5: Reprap plastics ordering started.
July 4: We decided to lower shipping cost (pay a part out of our own pocket) for UPS & TNT for some zones (USA/AU/NZ etc) with an extra 10-12%. Since we dont want shipping cost to stand in the way of making an order with us.
June 24: live video stream started of Mendel #01 busy printing Mendel #04.
June 9: Webshop opened.
December 29: while (probably) everybody was stuffing themselves with alot of food with Christmas, I decided to stuff myself with SkeinForge for 2 days.. (I havent used skeinforge before). And im really amazed about the quality im already getting after 24hours.. (also thanks to Araspitfire to give me a good start point). Ive tweaked skeinforge a bit further then ara, so i dont use retract/restart and ive deleted even more M lines and other lines etc.. (extended the replace.csv) so ive got really basic, (but really fast!) gcode. Ive made full printbed STL files.. (including our new parts).. So our production will also move to skeinforge today/very soon. More news about our own parts very soon. But here are some sneak previews:
pictures in higher res are here: click here
December 21 NOTE2: Alot of people tell me we should raise our prices, because of the large demand etc.. well my own idea is to lower the prices.. because my original plan is rolling out better and better. Our goal is to sell huge amounts, so we get better and better prices. And last few weeks/months this is already happening, so another reason to wait a bit with ordering.. alot will change and some products will (probably) be lowered in price the next few weeks/months.
December 21 NOTE: We have negotiated new prices on BZP 8.8 quality M8 studding. This means from now on, we wont have 4.8 quality anymore. It will be replaced by 8.8 quality (for probably same price). People who have ordered a hardware kit or complete machine with 4.8 quality will already get the new 8.8 quality BZP.
December 5: 5-12-2010 NOTE: Please DONT PLACE ANY ORDERS anymore for the coming week or so.. (if I could close the webshop for new orders safely/temporarily I would...) We are very busy catching up (last week we shipped over 150 orders for example..), but we need a little air gap to get back to normal. We have alot of news/new items etc, but we will not put those online unless we are back to normal handling times. We have recruited alot of help for coming week, we should have 8 printers working by the end of this week, have insane amounts of stock etc etc etc.. Soon more (detailed) news. Also we have uploaded alot of photos from building our last two hot end v4 extruders.. (check the build info page) And we have decided that a forum is the best solution for now. so we can reply once and everyone else can read the answer also.. and that way we can have users help other users etc etc.. Soon more news on the forum (ill try to fix that next weekend). Last but not least: if you want to cancel your order and get full refund please email me asap on my hotmail: camielgubbels@hotmail.com and put the words "cancel" and/or "refund" in your email subject, otherwise we might ship your order this week... very sorry for all the trouble, but I cant guarantee we read all the backlog in the webshop email coming days...
November 4: Coming soon: 1.75mm PLA filament (In production now..) also a new hot end for this 1.75mm off course coming. Our new/longterm solution for a PLA heated bed will be online in a few days probably. We have designed a few new Mendel parts, new extruder base, new idler holder etc.. (coming online soon, once im sure they are ok and tested enough). Also Ive designed a new x-end-bracket, because we had another broken belt last week. So its not that they brake after 4 sets (someone mentioned that) but here its more after 10 sets. Anyway I didnt like it, and I also didnt like the current solution, a printed part that required different Bar length?? wtf? I mean, thats what the printed part should solve.. So we have designed a new one, that dont need bars cutting and it can be assembled very easy without touching the rest of your Mendel, also coming in few days..
October 16: Well it was getting cold here (no heater in the MendelFactory yet..) and its time we say goodbye to our hairdryer...
So we have made a 5 euro (nichrome, cables etc) heated bed to print warp free without trouble (for PLA & if you have an alu printbed, kapton tape and a power supply..)
I must make this note: our electronics partner doesnt like this solution, and I (& Araspitfire) agree for long term use this is not suitable. So use at your own risk. However it is very cheap and most people have these materials.. But I never leave my machines unattended.. Also we have a cheap longterm safe&simple solution already too.. More news about that later, but the development might involve a heat camera etc, pretty cool or eh warm I mean...
I\'ve used 3 parallel loops of our NiChrome wire of about 60cm (13,0 Ohm each). My total then came up 4,6 Ohm. note -> P=U^2 / R
By simply changing the voltage on the power supply the temperature can be controlled. With 6mm alu printbed we use 16-17V for fast heating up, and 12-14V while printing. Aluminium is a very good heat conductive, I have measured only 2-3C difference from center to 1cm from side..
This means we now have
Thanks to Araspitfire for his input on this.. And all of the pictures in higher res can be found: here
October 12: We have alot of good news.. Mendel nr.2 is back home (from our electronics partner)... but WITH a heated bed!. So we finally have all four Mendels back in the MendelFactory. We have received the next load of GEN6 today. We have 1.75mm PLA Filament in stock for testing purposes (more news soon about that). We have developed two new hot ends.. v3. But also v4.. (soon more info on that too).
We will make a new video this evening showing you all these nice addons/developments etc.. because images speak more then words..
October 7: After reading the first review of GEN6, I have to say, that is why we developed these electronics, I just hated that instead of printing I had to spent alot of evenings messing with electronics.. well thats past now :)
October 4: First part (30-35 of 50pcs) of GEN6 electronics shipped out today, so the first customers will receive their GEN6 tomorrow. All necessary files are published now (i hope..). One more thing: our manufacturer made a (positive) mistake, and instead of just using high temp cable for heater/thermistor, he used the high temp cable on all cables (so also all the opto\'s have high temp cables. (for same price.).
October 2: New video on youtube: video 4
October 2: We have added complete mendel kits and PLA filament to the webshop, so we now have a complete one-stop webshop for our customers.
October 1: Customers waiting on GEN6: we are very sorry, but the opto\'s and high temp cables didnt arrived Friday as planned. Something not in our hands.. This means we will start shipping gen6 electronics on Monday. We have arranged extra help for Monday, so we hope to send out all orders.
September 30: We have the first 50pcs of Generation 6 Electronics in stock, however we are waiting on the opto\'s and high temp cables for full sets. Should be here tomorrow, so we can ship first part of gen6 Friday if all goes as planned..
September 29: First serie (50pcs) of Generation 6 electronics have arrived at our electronics partner and they will be programmed with correct firmware today/tomorrow. So we can start shipping first sets tomorrow probably.
September 29: We are very sorry, we have a massive delay in email communication. We will try to answer all emails tonight. We have delay because we are very busy last week with all kinds of things, but mainly improving our plastics productions line. And on the ohter hand, we get more and more emails. Please only email when its urgent for now..
September 20: We made a new thin shelled frame vertex, check: thingiverse.com/thing:4173
September 20: Shipping changes are done, but we still need to update the shipping text page... maybe later tonight.
September 17: We finally started integrating UPS envelope, it works now for USA/AU/NZ and more.. 14 EUR to ship to USA in 48hours (during weekdays). And we are changing more in the shipping options. Turns out Postmail is not limited in size for most cases (above 250gram, but under 2000gram) so we have a cheap option now also to ship for example motors worldwide, but without trackntrace. We will finish this shipping upgrade the next few days, untill then SHIPPING PAGE IS OUTDATED, please use checkout instead to check shipping prices, its not necessary to checkout complete, you can also just use checkout to see shipping quotes/possibilities..
September 15: We are finally (after 4months) progressing in PLA production.. more news in a few weeks about this. But it all looks very promising, it seems we found a very professional Technical Institute that is capable of producing high quality PLA for sharp prices. We are now busy investigating how much there needs to be invested in optimizing the machines just for our PLA..
September 9: New/lower shipping rates for UPS for alot of regions: NL,FR,IT,DK,FI,SE,ES,PT,NO,CH etc.
And more zones will get lower rates this weekend. Shipping costs for the above countries have already been updated, however we still need to update (parts of) the shipping text page. But when checking out, the new lower rates are already active.
September 5: Pre-ordering started for Generation 6 electronics: link to product page
September 4: We have started working on build/print info pages.
August 24: The production has started of the first serie of the new Generation 6 Electronics.
August 22: We just uploaded a new thing, to thingiverse.. check our simple spool design: thingiverse:3866
August 20: Estimated selling prices for generation 6 electronics announced.
August 19: second video on youtube: video of generation 6 electronics in action 2
August 15: First video on youtube: video of generation 6 electronics in action
August 14: We upgraded another mendel (#1) now also to Gen6 electronics, because we couldnt hear our other machine with gen6 running because of the makerbot electronics on this one.. and for some more testing off course.
August 12: Soon we will have UPS envelop, for example: 15 EUR to ship to the USA in 48hours with track n trace.
August 11: We changed the electronics on one of our production Mendels (#3) to Gen6 for extensive testing. So far it prints very nice, we printed 6 black parts in the first few hours. And removing all the cables/pcb\'s of the makerbot electronics was probably more work then adding the gen6 electronics. It prints also very quiet.
July 28: Our new electronics, got a name: Gen6 electronics, link: reprap.org/wiki/Generation_6_Electronics
July 18: We started with redrawing reprap parts, since alot of original parts have issues with making good gcode or are difficult to print (holes too close to edges etc). We uploaded first two files to thingiverse, these are updated parts of Adrian\'s geared extruder.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3567
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3568
Expect alot more to come..
July 5: Reprap plastics ordering started.
July 4: We decided to lower shipping cost (pay a part out of our own pocket) for UPS & TNT for some zones (USA/AU/NZ etc) with an extra 10-12%. Since we dont want shipping cost to stand in the way of making an order with us.
June 24: live video stream started of Mendel #01 busy printing Mendel #04.
June 9: Webshop opened.