Mendel90 Lasercut - Overview

Thanks for all the interest we have been getting for the new Lasercut Mendel90! This post is to give an overview for those new to 3D printers and answer questions about how easy the M90LC is to assemble. It is not designed to replace the detailed assembly instructions and user manual which are now awaiting final feedback from our beta testers before being published.

Printer Overview

The Mendel90 Lasercut is a RepRap printer: there is much more information about RepRaps in general on the wiki but in summary it is a printer which can print the plastic parts that go into its assembly along with many other interesting and useful things. To get an idea of what people are using RepRap-style printers for, a good place to look is Thingiverse. Most CAD and 3D design software can export ".stl" files which the printing software uses to generate print instructions. The printer works by laying down layers of plastic, one on top of the other, to build up an object, in a process called fused filament fabrication.

The Mendel90 lasercut has a build area of 200mm x 200mm x 200mm and comes with a single 0.4 mm extruder nozzle which can reliably print layers as thin as 0.1mm. With a smaller extruder nozzle it can reliably print as low as 0.02mm.

Looking at the printer from the front, the Mendel90 LC axis are X left and right, Y backwards and forward and Z up and down. The print head is in the 0,0,0 position when it is fully to the left (X=0), the heatbed is fully to the back (Y=0) and it is just touching the surface of the glass on the heatbed (Z=0). The "homed" or parked printhead position is at 200,200,200.

The main components of each axis are:

The frame parts are the base, portal, buttresses, back-top and extruder "sandwich" (for potential future developments) 

  

The electronics are mounted at the right buttress along with the power supply unit. They support the addition of other types of electronics in future upgrades.

General points

• The printer is made up of sub-assemblies which need to be completed before each major part of the printer is assembled. The sub assemblies can, in general, be worked on in parallel if more than one person is assembling the printer, reducing the build time.
• The printer design in regularly updated, so refer to the manual that is distributed with your printer for the most up to date instructions.

The next section will provide an overview of the assembly process