I thought I'd share a progress report. I've completed printing all of the main frame pieces and started assembly, although I just ran out of M4 nuts, hence the top frame not being together & bolted in the picture below. I'm hopeful that Home Depot may have some tomorrow otherwise a McMaster order will be placed soon.
I printed the frame in ABS and it was a bit of a pain, although this was my first time printing pieces this large in ABS on my Mendel, so that may have been a learning curve for me. You'll likely note the bottom frame pieces have a blue marbling on the top of the pieces as a result of too much blue ABS and not enough acetone when I was trying out ABS juice. The top pieces wound up being a hairspray experiment which worked better than ABS juice. Cubify glue actually worked the best, but it worked too well and chipped my glass when removing it, so I only did one piece that way. Anyhow, the end result for me was that any pointed pieces of the frame all wound up warping slightly, but I think they're still good enough to use. I could have printed everything in PLA and had a much easier time of it, but I'm in South FL and worried that the PLA would be a problem if left the printer in my truck during the day when moving it around. I also wound up printing all of the frame pieces at 101% scale, and even scaled up just a bit it took a bit of gentle hammering to get the extrusion and precision rods into the frame (even after using an 8mm drill bit to clear out the precision rod holes and cleaning up the extrusion holes).
Anyhow, here's where my build currently stands:
![www.flickr.com]( "www.flickr.com")
2014-01-12 21.29.29 by Senior Kabong, on Flickr
I printed the frame in ABS and it was a bit of a pain, although this was my first time printing pieces this large in ABS on my Mendel, so that may have been a learning curve for me. You'll likely note the bottom frame pieces have a blue marbling on the top of the pieces as a result of too much blue ABS and not enough acetone when I was trying out ABS juice. The top pieces wound up being a hairspray experiment which worked better than ABS juice. Cubify glue actually worked the best, but it worked too well and chipped my glass when removing it, so I only did one piece that way. Anyhow, the end result for me was that any pointed pieces of the frame all wound up warping slightly, but I think they're still good enough to use. I could have printed everything in PLA and had a much easier time of it, but I'm in South FL and worried that the PLA would be a problem if left the printer in my truck during the day when moving it around. I also wound up printing all of the frame pieces at 101% scale, and even scaled up just a bit it took a bit of gentle hammering to get the extrusion and precision rods into the frame (even after using an 8mm drill bit to clear out the precision rod holes and cleaning up the extrusion holes).
Anyhow, here's where my build currently stands:
2014-01-12 21.29.29 by Senior Kabong, on Flickr