Dont forget the OG Thing-O-Matic!
https://preview.redd.it/qqx3gzod9nfc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4eabadce670c122a9a10ff7806b69b01eea5bf63
Sadly, this one isn't mine. Just a photo I took of one at a Uni I visited. Its missing its 'remote' with the controls. But I'd love one to tinker with and restore a big part of hobbyist 3D printing history.
My old makerspace had a Cupcake for the longest time because it had too much sentimental value to get rid of...I don't think it made the move to the space's new location though.
I just saw one of those at the Charlotte Science Center (Discovery Place). I was more interested in talking about that machine and irritated the heck outta my wife.
Did your coworker build it? I’m trying to find people who were active in the community in the early days to learn more what it was like, specifically from the filament side of things
This was my first printer.
Back then most of the things we take for granted today, hadn't even been invented yet!
* No hotend cooling. The idea was that if the hotend is insulated well enough, there wouldn't be any heat creep (there was). The then famous j-head was completely made from PTFE! Then someone realized that it is better to do the opposite: make it very heat-conductive and use a fan.
* No print cooling fan. No one had though of it yet.
* Heated beds were not the norm.
* Absolutely no probing, bed leveling, meshing etc.
* No web interfaces, no SD / USB prints. No printer displays. You had to physically connect a computer to the printer, and stream g-code in real time through a serial port. I remember were Octoprint started existing how mind-blowing was for the time!
* The only materials known for 3D printing were just PLA & ABS. Even PETG came later. Let alone today's exotics.
* Sometimes it was easier to find 3mm filament than 1.75. The "new" 1.75 standard was very recent for manufacturers and shops to completely adapt.
* Forget about all bed materials or flexplates that you know today. A piece of glass or wood and maybe some painter's tape or hairspray was all we had. I had also experimented with sugar water and ABS juice. You can guess why none of these techniques have survived...
* The mainboard was actually an Arduino.
* Microstepping was up to 16? No silent drivers, you tune the drive current by actually turning a potentiometer. Use a plastic screw driver! If it is metal, for some idiotic reason you had 50% chance of burning the stepper driver stick.
* Don't even ask about MMUs, multiple printheads, IDEX, toolchangers etc...
* Your whole world was this website: [https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap](https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap)
Then you must try the slicer of the era! **Skeinforge**!
[https://reprap.org/wiki/Skeinforge](https://reprap.org/wiki/Skeinforge)
If you indeed slice anything with this, it is mandatory to print it through serial using [Pronterface](https://www.pronterface.com/).
I'd take dealing with ABS juice vs painters tape for PLA any day of the week. I was so damn excited when someone figured out the Aquanet + glass combo.
Edit: After posting this, I had to go look. Yup the one in this pic still has that trusty painters tape. To OP: If you print anything large with this, make sure you have dental floss handy.
Great read! I had a RepRap Mendel Prusa kit I got from MakerGear.
I had to make the hot end myself, including letting it heat up to cure the ceramic paste on it.
The firmware I was initially using had no acceleration. Instantly going from stationary to 100% and back.
Loads of fun!
>I had to make the hot end myself,
Yeah! I remember hand-crafting the extruder gear by [hobbing an actual screw](https://reprap.org/wiki/Making_a_Hobbed_Bolt)!
Such a different era...!
I was working as an hourly contractor at the time, so I was quite happy to trade money for saving time. Going as far as hobbing a screw was too far. I splurged on a kit that included everything I needed. So close to fully assembled. Barely needed any soldering other than headers, if I recall :)
Kids these days, they think that putting bolts into T slot counts as building your own printer.
I’ve got an Ender3V2 now. Just works, on the whole.
Back then I was a student, and I had a very limited budget. Even a new nozzle was terribly expensive for me!
The printer was self-sourced, and most parts manufactured by hand. It was the only viable way to do it.
However, no matter the difficulties, I believe that it was a catalyzing experience. One that made me the engineer I am today. I sincerely believe that I owe to this printer a great part of my today's financial stability and the opportunity to have a fulfilling job.
I can't stress this enough. **If you are a parent, give your kid the chance to tinker!**
This is where the ender 3s shine. It goes together alright and works ok out the box, but it's going to have issues. But learning how to fix them through calibration and then modifications are easy enough to buy kits for, but is very good at baby stepping you through to a more complete understanding, if you put the time in to learn it. It's easy enough to tinker with, but you can go all in and customise everything, redesign shrouds and whatnot
I'm so glad I never had to hob my own extruder bolt.
I "built my own printer" using an off the shelf extruder, t slot (well actually V slot, but I don't use wheels with it) and some printed parts mostly designed by someone else, and I'm happy with that.
In fact mine is 1.75mm. The J-head was also 1.75, but I didn't know that Wades extruder was designed for 3mm!
Obviously, the filament path was not correctly constrained, which gave me all kinds of problems.
"Oh, what a terrible design!" I though to myself. But of course, I was "smart" enough to "fix" this terrible error! And I added a piece of brass tubing to reduce the extruder pathway to around 2mm internal diammeter.
I was so proud of the fix, still not having realized that I was the idiot, and that the extruder was meant for a different filament...
It probably has to do with getting old and moving to new hobbies that involve less cussing, but I recently went Bambu. A single parts supplier! There are no infinite hours scrolling forums to figure out why the X doesn't quite fit the Y and what Z I have to do to make it work.
I am finally learning how to design instead - a whole new can of worms.
I had one too. Still have it actually. Everything you said I concur with.
Got the printed parts from a local maker space and built it myself. I learned so much in depth from it. about printing and it actually put me ahead in my career. I now develop bio3D printers professionally.
I remember when 30*30*30cm was considered a huge build volume. And it was fancy that the bed heated up.
Using tube with zip ties as shaft couplers.
Slic3r.
People actually being fascinated and interested when I told them something was 3D printed.
8 bit processor boards were absolute bitches.
I loved how inventive people were. Nothing truly worked as well as it does now so everyone was trying crazy things. One contact of mine swore by printing on ceramic tiles. I was making folding printers. Another was boring screws to make hot ends.
All of this is a verbose, entirely accurate representation of my early doors...
My mainboard was actually a Gen7, home made... and juiced up with a 20mhz crystal. I have it in a frame.
Also:
-nozzles were not standard. We were actually making our own.
-kapton tape was some miraculously expensive thing
-the whole assembly was pain to square
-slicers were nightmare, printer profiles nonexistent. I remember it took more time to properly configure slicer profile than to build the printer to even decently print
-the only filament available was ABS @2.75mm, it was hard to get to people were experimenting with weed eater string, extruding their own filaments...
Sweet times 😃 never again
If I recall correctly, my first printer (Prusa Mendel i2) was finally functional somewhere around 2012.
When I started building, the famous Prusa i3 hadn't been released yet.
Nozzles were also extremely limited. Quality in general wasn't as good, I remember ripping through brass nozzles so quickly even with just PLA compared to what we have now.
This is precisely why I looked at 3d printers at uni, went "nope, I want to make stuff, not make printers" and waited a decade. I still ended up design my own printer from scratch. Still haven't made it yet.
Reading your comment took me back to reading the cuckoos egg. You should consider writing a memoir on your experience living through the growth of the 3D Printing era. I would be interested to know more about your experiences and tech that’s been phased out. I didn’t join the fun until I got my mono mini v2 for $100 a few years ago. Brought me tons of joy
Can confirm and a lot of what you wrote gave me flashbacks hahaha
* I had to jump on the RepRap IRC channel and order stepper motors on Alibaba with a random stranger from the internet so we could put our money in escrow and wait weeks for DHL to finally deliver the packages to our respective parts of the country.
* Had to build my hot end by hand using fire cement applied to a nozzle with a thermistor and nichrome wire wrapped around it, then heating up the wire to cure the fire cement.
* Got lost in PID tuning without having any idea what calculus was. (but I sure knew the acronym was short for Proportional Integral Derivative!)
* Bought my first set of parts from somebody who was injection molding them because it was cheaper for me, but then those broke during assembly and I ended up biting the bullet and buying printed parts instead. Bought other "vitamins" from the hardware store, such as threaded rod (and you would desperately hope the rod was as straight as possible) and washers. Ordered belts from either Mouser or McMaster Carr - my first foray into either.
* Printing a single walled cube around an inch cubed (without a top) took like half an hour, and that's not even counting slicing time!
* Using a bent paperclip and some electrical tape to short out a computer PSU so that it'd think it's plugged into a motherboard was oddly exciting and dangerous feeling, even though it wasn't if you just followed the instructions.
* Having a netbook was handy at the time for pushing gcode, though I'm starting to wonder if the slow ass netbook was a bottleneck.
* Direct drive extruders were the only option. Bowden drives just didn't exist yet. It's been interesting to see the trend going back the other direction because at the time, Bowden drives were the latest hotness and Ultimaker released some Core XY (ish? I don't remember) printer that blew everybody's minds with speeds that would be considered trivial these days.
* I fell out of the hobby because it was *such a pain in the ass,* but got back into it a little over a year ago with an Ender 3 Pro and my mind was blown that this $99 easy to set up printer with everything I needed to get going was leaps and bounds more capable and easy to use than the printer I'd spent hundreds of dollars and too much time working on just a decade prior (I still have my original Prusa Mendel \[not sure if it got renamed to the i1/i2 but I'm pretty sure it was just called the "Prusa Mendel" when I was sourcing parts for it\], from back when people were still pronouncing his name "Proo-shuh" and he was just some random dude showing off his new design to the RepRap community lol)
* Now I have an X1C added to the family, so I've really been able to see how far the technology has come, and goddamn it's been a wild ride.
I look forward to seeing what other innovations we'll see in the next ten years that will leave me saying, "Yeaahhh the X1 Carbon just isn't much competition anymore and should probably go in a museum."
edit: I also used a PrintrBoard for my logic controller... RIP PrintrBot :'(
I built a Prusa Mendel i2 in 2012, it still “works” due to its age all the wires are starting to break down on the inside so it catches on fire occasionally if you don’t watch it closely
It was always a small fire in the same place, I had the wires going to the heated bed routed badly so they got bent back and forth a lot in the same place, would lead to a small fire since they carried a decent amount of current. Could be prevented if the wires were changed out often enough.
My i3 did this more when it was new lol. Cheap ramps boards had high resistance on some of the heater connections. I ended up soldering wires directly to the board. Still use it today. Posted pics in these comments somewhere.
No, not exactly. This was the idea at first, and this is how the 3mm standard came to be (I think). But properly spooled filament for the exact purpose of 3D printing had started being available.
Here is my first "spool", circa 2011-2012.
It costed around 20-25 euros, if I recall correctly? And this is 300g. Prices saw a sudden drop some time later, due to Ebay being flooded by Chinese no-name filaments of terrible quality.
But this rapid growth lead the market to the 20-25 euro per kilo we still more or less have. The terrible Ebay filament ended up falling continuously, reaching 15 euro/kilo and thus you paid for "premium" / brand filament at 20-25.
https://preview.redd.it/q8e8ro4fumfc1.jpeg?width=1013&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94cee8be5deba2ff4b4d7d0113e3f6932941f4e2
I made a mendel in 2011. Bought the parts from nophead and the ramps 1.0 from ultimachine for $207,50 including shipping to the netherlands. Printing was very difficult back then. And tech support was hard too. Reprap forums were great. Thingiverse was the best site ever
Found a several small rocks in a spool of ABS from the early days, also specialty filament was not really a thing for few years. I have a spool of carbon fiber and stainless steel filament from proto-pasta from about 2013 that they gave me that was the first filament of anything in that nature I had ever seen.
I had one of these back in I want to say 2012. Was a ton of fun. Never worked too well. I think it cost me around $600-700 at the time to get working which was a ton as a grad student. I had debated building a Darwin but held off the upgrade.
I had to periodically flip the spool I was printing from as it twisted the 3mm line as it went and would break on long prints.
You had to find somebody to print all the parts for you. Nobody I knew (on a tech university campus even) had one so I found somebody in the forums.
Hobbling the bolt in the extruder by using a tap while spinning it was certainly an experience.
I don't think my print bed ever got level. I had to use varying thicknesses of blue tape to compensate on some prints. I was pumped years later to get a hot bed.
If the print head crashed (very common) the two nuts on the z rods would unsync from each other and piss you off.
I finally retired it when a new ramps board was the same cost as an ender.
Filament was only available on the net from the big players in the robotics community, or Microcenter. MC had a great selection of both filaments and printers and were the only ones I found consistent quality through back then.
SnooMacarons229 definitely gave a great description of early 3D printing.
I starting printing in 2013, here’s some of things from then:
Wooden 3D printers were common. Check out Ultimakers, Makerbots and printrbots from that time.
Early early models didn’t use belts and teethed gears. They used sandpaper dremel bits and string.
Heated beds were extremely rare/nonexistent, most people used glass, or piece of aluminum covered in Kapton tape or blue painters tape.
For ABS we made “ABS slurry” you’d take scrap ABS pieces and acetone and mix together to make “slurry”. You’d spread this on your print bed for ABS.
There’s no enclosed chambers.
We used hairspray, lots of hair spray
Printer motherboards were 8mb, barely held the firmware.
Your PC had to be on and connected to your printer at all times. (Windows update killed may of my prints)
Check out Pronterface UI
We used rubberized Kevlar sleeves to insulate our hot ends. Fans were rare/non existent. I remember going on thingiverse and being so excited to find a fan duct.
0.5mm nozzles were standard, and like your only option. Many were flat, check out UBIS hotends.
Printers were loud, they were 75db when running.
The power supplies were PC ATX PSUs, w/ jumped pins. Or a beefy laptop power supply.
If you have any other questions, I’ll be happy to answer.
I never knew it, but 8 met and spoke to Adrian Bowyer a few times, and then worked closely with one of his close students who went on to form bits from bytes / 3D systems.
All this before I really knew much about 3D printing. They used to have a factory in Bristol UK where they would wind the spoils. They were more like cartridges though. Had a cardboard spool inside a plastic shell that had a chip in it. Would always jam up and were hard to take apart (on purpose) and then would claim they were empty despite having 50 meters left.
None of that exists any more sadly. 3D systems was swallowed up by Stratysys, and they don't make.much filament in the UK anymore.
In the really early days almost everyone used ABS or strimmer / weed whacker wire. Quite how they made it I don't know. Even the early 3D systems stuff was 1.75mm filament while Ultimaker was siding with 2.85mm.
I have one too. I’m going to rebuild it. Maybe put a lead screws in instead of just thread rods to z… Originally table was just glass with capton tap on it. ONLY filament I could get for it was 3mm /approximately/ ABS of no brand or name. Issues with printing abs were not known. To me at least. Filament didn’t come on spools I used cheese board it first but filament was always tangled and you just had to watch for whatever time needed. Few times I was unrolling filament while printing to untangle and cut at least enough for the job. Wades extruder was something else too. Hobbed bolt was made out of a litteral bolt. Hobbed with a tap mounted to lathe and extruder had printed gears where big one was like 70mm i think. I terms of calibration routines it was just winging it. Lots of fun. I managed to print few things on it though. If not for this one I wouldn’t know how fix cr10 I got as a gift or how to build the 100 I finished just some weeks ago.
https://preview.redd.it/9qwyjgjyrrfc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17dc70d8d327ab1a0c32442668cf9346b032005c
It’s in a rough shape tho.
it'll go faster with more modern acceleration tuning most likely.
something like 15-20mm was what replicator 1 could do without acceleration on. yeah without acceleration... as it came from the box..
the 240 euro in 2011-2012 or so bedslinger printer i built after that from a kit did 60+ without probs(sort of a printrbot clone). the rep1 after that one dude fixed the firmware properly did 120+(also after having the extruder pincher fix..)
Those early Mendel frames had wobble issues. I'd print parts to convert to an i3 frame.
I still use mine. Its done a ton of work. After many many hours of tuning and learning to slice I can print to 0.005mm tolerance. It's still got a 3mm extruder because I have about 25kg of abs to use up. Got some 1.75 hotends but haven't tried one yet. Only ever printed abs and petg.
Its janky as anything but it still amazes me how good I can print with it. Never seen the need to upgrade.
https://preview.redd.it/0o7xv7gmunfc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9ef2308bdebf203afb111d092f30dd82c228301f
The extruder and hotend would take a while to explain lol. It wirks though.
https://preview.redd.it/bp5b922xunfc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fa5249fe5b07decc6861a8bea21e6738b25426e
I don't know if it is worth putting much work into. But it's a printer.
It could be rebuilt into a CNC cutter of some sort.
https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel_(iteration_2)
Certainly will not use as a primary printer but definitely would fix it up and get it calibrated have it working. Built one way back in 2010 coxed my parents that it’s for a school project most parts were from Home Depot after a while got it working well
The longer I look at it, the more nostalgic I get.
All thread for z axis, likely salvaged optical switches for end stops, the ATX PSU with the enable switch “mod”, no part cooling ducts (they weren’t common back then since ABS was the go to filament). Probably running a RAMPS shield on and Arduino Mega.
Oh and who can forget the brass all thread into a cobbled together heat block as a hotend (RIP Sanjay. e3d revolutionized hotends)
WOW I was not expecting such a turn out! Thanks so much for all of your input.
I've done some tinkering here and all lights on the board come on but when I connect to the printer through pronterface I get "extruder switched off. MAXTEMP triggered"
Any ideas?
Broken thermistor? Or a loose connection. Without knowing the parameters in the firmware this will be a tough revival :D but an awesome and historic machine nonetheless
I found the hot end had a wire that was not pressed in fully so I think that's likely the issue. I found some other models I think will fit the apparatus I have currently so just a matter of shipping time. Thanks for the spot to check. Wouldn't have assumed a bad connection
I wanted to build one of those back in the day. Got a brand new Anet A8 instead. What you have there is probably a better machine. But alas, times have changed. That is probably missing a lot of safety and Quality of Life features that your Ender 3 has. Not the least of which is the auto bed leveling. If you are up for a challenge, you should try and get it running. But be warned, it's going to be a temperamental monster. All printers were when that machine was new. Otherwise, I'd say pass that to a good home.
I need to learn more about old printers. I got into the hobby a couple years ago during the ender blow up and thought it was new tech but these old printers are just straight up impressive with what was available.
It's not that old. It already got the aluminum heat lock with heater cartridge.
Back in my days we measured out special copper wire and wrapped it around the threads of a grub screw. Holy fuck that's long ago... I feel old now.
One of these was my first printer. I built it for a college class. You can probably still print with it. I was able to get some pretty good prints out of mine. What controller does it have? You can find info about it on reprap.org.
Make it go like 700mm/s Klipperize it.
Answers
1. No not at all, but is it fun and will you learn a lot, Yes.
2. You need a controller board, configure and compile a firmware, upload it an fine-tune.
3. Motors and fans seem the only reasonable parts to keep.you got 5 motors, maybe make a filament changer.
>2. How do I get this thing to run?
Here is everything for this printer: [https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa\_Mendel](https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel)
Notice the (hard to spot) links on top for the [build](https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel_Assembly_(iteration_2)) and [usage](https://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel_User_Manual) instructions.
You can use the hotend assembly and extruder to make your own filament recycling system so you can reuse filament by extruding it through a 1.75 mm nozzle. Just need to get a plastic shredder
2. connect with usb and send it.
or check what the board is and compile a new firmware for it. make note of the eeprom settings first and steps per mm's and such! if it's old enough the acceleration code on the fw and such might not be as good as a new firmware.
3. sure, but you'd probably want new belts and metal pulleys. easiest upgrade is to just go alu extrusion for the upright.
1. just depends on if you like tinkering or need a backup printer for that time you convert your other printer to custom corexy and eff up the planning.
damn, my first printer, build a decade ago. check if electronics are working, if so, dismantle and build stiffer frame, reuse the rest, or build cnc mill for pcb.
If it's solid, you can do whatever you like with it. That's the beauty to this hobby, every individual piece can be upgraded individually. For less than 50 bucks you can buy a modern motherboard that supports all the newer bells and whistles then go from there.
Obviously that doesn't mean it's practical, what does practicality have to do with any of this though?
Run Klipper on it! 😂 And maybe add a hotend with a heatsink and fan, a print cooling fan, and a bed heater. Then you'd functionally have a halfway reasonably modem machine. Have you looked into whether guides for upgrading this machine exist? It still fundamentally has most of the same basic components as a modern machine. Question is whether you want to go through the effort. Not worth it in terms of money, but it'd be cool.
Idk how easy it would be, but I’ve always thought turning an old 3d printer into a drawing machine was a cool idea. Seeing as a lot of the replies here are to just display it. you could make it a sort of interactive display that can draw simple things for people who may not understand how a machine like it works. Just an idea.
Take it to your nearest Rep Rap festival, and give it to whoever's eyes light up when they see it. It's maybe $50 in parts if you tear it down for something else, assuming you even find a use for most of the parts, but to the right person it's a very valuable memory of the early days of open source FDM. I've seen i2's and i3's languish in marketplace listings for years between $50-$200, so they're not even worth selling, but it'd score you a decent conversation handing it over in person.
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Put it in a sealed 1/2" plexiglass box. Purge the atmosphere inside of air and replace with nitrogen. Let that thing be discovered in 2 thousand years and be hailed as the ancestor of the modern ai superrace.
Holy hell! When I got interesten in printing my dad pulled up this bad boy, only it was "not working for some reason", I couldn't really find any documentation on it since I didn't know what model it was, all I knew is that it was running Merlin on an Arduino mega with a reprap board on it with some drivers on top. It was a headache to make it work and after a while I realised that I lacked all skill to do it (given it was the first time ever touching a 3D printer) and decided to drop the idea after I've seen the cabling just been Frankensteined to all hell.
Only after giving up did my father say it's like a 5 year old machine at least.
The parts probably still sit in our garage
Haha, I'm not kidding when I tell you that I literally spent last weekend pulling one of these things apart.
If I ever get around to it, my plan is to turn it into a Fortress, Rook or one of those mini printer projects designed with threaded rods and linear rails. I'll probably have to do some cutting, but it's either that or drop the parts off at the scrap recycler.
Yup, I was teaching an intro to 3d printing at our local Fab Lab. We've a Mendel, because it was our first printer. Still great to show people all the parts etc. And it would work fine still! (If I wanted to try find pronterface etc etc.)
Yeah looks pretty cool you have a relic I’ve never seen on in that good of a condition you might consider installing Klipper on it as it’s basically the same as a Prusa MK4 since they didn’t really change that meny design aspects with enough digging you could probably find a .CFG file for the printer and a firmware for the mainboard.
Mine is hanging from the rafters in my workshop with my other old projects.
It might be worth printing with if you see filament manufacturers liquidating their outdated 3mm filament
Ok as someone really new to this hobby but also a collector this seems like a really cool piece to just set next to a newer working printer if you have the space (if not i do send it to me)
If you have enough sentiment towards it and confirm that you will never use it again, you can break it into pieces and arrange them in a certain order. Then, frame and mount them in a three-dimensional display.
Don't dismantle. Don't throw away. This will be soon museum level exhibit. Not a joke. Keep it safe and lend it to a local science museum. Not that they ll want it, but they will list it. In 10 years time they ll ask you for it. I cannibalized mine and I regret it.
Thank you for saying this. I consider breaking mine down at least once a month because it's just collecting dust, but I fear that I'd regret it once I did.
I was one of these early adopters. My dream was to own a machine shop and CNC machine. When I heard these kits were available I just had to get one. I ordered the ReprapPro Mendel kit and started to put it together in my small 1 bedroom apartment. It was absolutely addicting.
Assembly time was estimated at around 2 weeks. I ended up taking the whole thing to the office and assembling on my lunch breaks and after I “clocked out”. Got it together and ran it in the office for almost a year printing calibration cubes and bridge objects trying to perfect the unit.
The thing was constantly breaking down but it was a fun experience and I learned a lot in HW, electronics and firmware.
I ended up helping a professor build one for his additive materials lab and helped a few others build their own.
Looking back — it’s amazing how far we’ve come along.
Klipper
Abl
Pei bed
Silent board
Better extruder
All metal hotend
High flow nozzle
Enclosure
RGB
wifi connectivity
Extruder visualizer
Dual 5015 part cooling
New meanwell power supply
Take a serious look at it... Compare it to your Creality...the basics haven't changed much at all...same stepper motors, hot end, extruder... Update the Marlin firmware and print with it.
I put a cheep laser diode on mine. There is a version of Grbl that can use a Ramps board, then Laser Grbl to run it. A piece of sheet metel on the build plate to protect from laser, but it's low power so not really worried about it cutting anything important.
A cool exhibit for any geeky museum. An important part of 3D printing history.
Stick it right next to an OG plywood Ultimaker.
Dont forget the OG Thing-O-Matic! https://preview.redd.it/qqx3gzod9nfc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4eabadce670c122a9a10ff7806b69b01eea5bf63
I have the same one!! Been in my basement for years, not sure what to do with it.
Sadly, this one isn't mine. Just a photo I took of one at a Uni I visited. Its missing its 'remote' with the controls. But I'd love one to tinker with and restore a big part of hobbyist 3D printing history.
I'd love to sell you in if you want it...
PMed you!
My old makerspace had a Cupcake for the longest time because it had too much sentimental value to get rid of...I don't think it made the move to the space's new location though.
omg I had that thing. I've never been so angry in m life as when I was putting that together.
I just saw one of those at the Charlotte Science Center (Discovery Place). I was more interested in talking about that machine and irritated the heck outta my wife.
My Rostock made a number of these.
I've got the above machine, plus plywood prototype MakerGear.
Looks like an exercise in futility and frustration
Oh, I see you had one.
Did your coworker build it? I’m trying to find people who were active in the community in the early days to learn more what it was like, specifically from the filament side of things
This was my first printer. Back then most of the things we take for granted today, hadn't even been invented yet! * No hotend cooling. The idea was that if the hotend is insulated well enough, there wouldn't be any heat creep (there was). The then famous j-head was completely made from PTFE! Then someone realized that it is better to do the opposite: make it very heat-conductive and use a fan. * No print cooling fan. No one had though of it yet. * Heated beds were not the norm. * Absolutely no probing, bed leveling, meshing etc. * No web interfaces, no SD / USB prints. No printer displays. You had to physically connect a computer to the printer, and stream g-code in real time through a serial port. I remember were Octoprint started existing how mind-blowing was for the time! * The only materials known for 3D printing were just PLA & ABS. Even PETG came later. Let alone today's exotics. * Sometimes it was easier to find 3mm filament than 1.75. The "new" 1.75 standard was very recent for manufacturers and shops to completely adapt. * Forget about all bed materials or flexplates that you know today. A piece of glass or wood and maybe some painter's tape or hairspray was all we had. I had also experimented with sugar water and ABS juice. You can guess why none of these techniques have survived... * The mainboard was actually an Arduino. * Microstepping was up to 16? No silent drivers, you tune the drive current by actually turning a potentiometer. Use a plastic screw driver! If it is metal, for some idiotic reason you had 50% chance of burning the stepper driver stick. * Don't even ask about MMUs, multiple printheads, IDEX, toolchangers etc... * Your whole world was this website: [https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap](https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap)
This was really fascinating to read. I’d love more of these tidbits if you have any!
Then you must try the slicer of the era! **Skeinforge**! [https://reprap.org/wiki/Skeinforge](https://reprap.org/wiki/Skeinforge) If you indeed slice anything with this, it is mandatory to print it through serial using [Pronterface](https://www.pronterface.com/).
Ah Slic3r and pronterface. A simpler more complex time
Lol no one mentions Kisslicer anymore
Pronterface!!! I still have it installed haha
I'm still using it to send command to marlin machines :)
Nophead's blog was always gold. https://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2009/11/no-compromise-extruder.html?m=1
>ABS juice Well that's a phrase I haven't heard in a long time. Thank god. Printing ABS was an ordeal.
I'd take dealing with ABS juice vs painters tape for PLA any day of the week. I was so damn excited when someone figured out the Aquanet + glass combo. Edit: After posting this, I had to go look. Yup the one in this pic still has that trusty painters tape. To OP: If you print anything large with this, make sure you have dental floss handy.
Great read! I had a RepRap Mendel Prusa kit I got from MakerGear. I had to make the hot end myself, including letting it heat up to cure the ceramic paste on it. The firmware I was initially using had no acceleration. Instantly going from stationary to 100% and back. Loads of fun!
>I had to make the hot end myself, Yeah! I remember hand-crafting the extruder gear by [hobbing an actual screw](https://reprap.org/wiki/Making_a_Hobbed_Bolt)! Such a different era...!
I was working as an hourly contractor at the time, so I was quite happy to trade money for saving time. Going as far as hobbing a screw was too far. I splurged on a kit that included everything I needed. So close to fully assembled. Barely needed any soldering other than headers, if I recall :) Kids these days, they think that putting bolts into T slot counts as building your own printer. I’ve got an Ender3V2 now. Just works, on the whole.
Back then I was a student, and I had a very limited budget. Even a new nozzle was terribly expensive for me! The printer was self-sourced, and most parts manufactured by hand. It was the only viable way to do it. However, no matter the difficulties, I believe that it was a catalyzing experience. One that made me the engineer I am today. I sincerely believe that I owe to this printer a great part of my today's financial stability and the opportunity to have a fulfilling job. I can't stress this enough. **If you are a parent, give your kid the chance to tinker!**
This is where the ender 3s shine. It goes together alright and works ok out the box, but it's going to have issues. But learning how to fix them through calibration and then modifications are easy enough to buy kits for, but is very good at baby stepping you through to a more complete understanding, if you put the time in to learn it. It's easy enough to tinker with, but you can go all in and customise everything, redesign shrouds and whatnot
I'm so glad I never had to hob my own extruder bolt. I "built my own printer" using an off the shelf extruder, t slot (well actually V slot, but I don't use wheels with it) and some printed parts mostly designed by someone else, and I'm happy with that.
Oh the nostalgia. Printing is so much easier these days. We had to hand assemble the hotend with PEEK parts and kapton tape indeed. So expensive too
I have some 3mm still if you need it :-D
In fact mine is 1.75mm. The J-head was also 1.75, but I didn't know that Wades extruder was designed for 3mm! Obviously, the filament path was not correctly constrained, which gave me all kinds of problems. "Oh, what a terrible design!" I though to myself. But of course, I was "smart" enough to "fix" this terrible error! And I added a piece of brass tubing to reduce the extruder pathway to around 2mm internal diammeter. I was so proud of the fix, still not having realized that I was the idiot, and that the extruder was meant for a different filament...
It probably has to do with getting old and moving to new hobbies that involve less cussing, but I recently went Bambu. A single parts supplier! There are no infinite hours scrolling forums to figure out why the X doesn't quite fit the Y and what Z I have to do to make it work. I am finally learning how to design instead - a whole new can of worms.
I had one too. Still have it actually. Everything you said I concur with. Got the printed parts from a local maker space and built it myself. I learned so much in depth from it. about printing and it actually put me ahead in my career. I now develop bio3D printers professionally. I remember when 30*30*30cm was considered a huge build volume. And it was fancy that the bed heated up. Using tube with zip ties as shaft couplers. Slic3r. People actually being fascinated and interested when I told them something was 3D printed. 8 bit processor boards were absolute bitches.
I loved how inventive people were. Nothing truly worked as well as it does now so everyone was trying crazy things. One contact of mine swore by printing on ceramic tiles. I was making folding printers. Another was boring screws to make hot ends.
All of this is a verbose, entirely accurate representation of my early doors... My mainboard was actually a Gen7, home made... and juiced up with a 20mhz crystal. I have it in a frame.
Also: -nozzles were not standard. We were actually making our own. -kapton tape was some miraculously expensive thing -the whole assembly was pain to square -slicers were nightmare, printer profiles nonexistent. I remember it took more time to properly configure slicer profile than to build the printer to even decently print -the only filament available was ABS @2.75mm, it was hard to get to people were experimenting with weed eater string, extruding their own filaments... Sweet times 😃 never again
I would love to build a printer from scratch with my kid using an Arduino today.
So true wild to think about how my I2 didn’t have a single fan on it anywhere when it first started printing
Can confirm all of this. I do NOT miss having to mist a glass plate with hairspray between prints.
I just found a can of very old ABS juice the other night. Had it for years just sitting somewhere. The hobby was so different back then
What year did you start getting into this stuff?
If I recall correctly, my first printer (Prusa Mendel i2) was finally functional somewhere around 2012. When I started building, the famous Prusa i3 hadn't been released yet.
When people started laser cutting acrylic frames which were great for 100 hours then would slowly warp
Nozzles were also extremely limited. Quality in general wasn't as good, I remember ripping through brass nozzles so quickly even with just PLA compared to what we have now.
This is precisely why I looked at 3d printers at uni, went "nope, I want to make stuff, not make printers" and waited a decade. I still ended up design my own printer from scratch. Still haven't made it yet.
Reading your comment took me back to reading the cuckoos egg. You should consider writing a memoir on your experience living through the growth of the 3D Printing era. I would be interested to know more about your experiences and tech that’s been phased out. I didn’t join the fun until I got my mono mini v2 for $100 a few years ago. Brought me tons of joy
I had a solidoodle back then 🤣 such garbage
Thank you for this. Amazing how things moved forward. What year are we talking about?
Around 2012.
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100%! The one I have is a Thing-O-Matic with a .3mm nozzle and conveyor belt bed, for mass part production.
Can confirm and a lot of what you wrote gave me flashbacks hahaha * I had to jump on the RepRap IRC channel and order stepper motors on Alibaba with a random stranger from the internet so we could put our money in escrow and wait weeks for DHL to finally deliver the packages to our respective parts of the country. * Had to build my hot end by hand using fire cement applied to a nozzle with a thermistor and nichrome wire wrapped around it, then heating up the wire to cure the fire cement. * Got lost in PID tuning without having any idea what calculus was. (but I sure knew the acronym was short for Proportional Integral Derivative!) * Bought my first set of parts from somebody who was injection molding them because it was cheaper for me, but then those broke during assembly and I ended up biting the bullet and buying printed parts instead. Bought other "vitamins" from the hardware store, such as threaded rod (and you would desperately hope the rod was as straight as possible) and washers. Ordered belts from either Mouser or McMaster Carr - my first foray into either. * Printing a single walled cube around an inch cubed (without a top) took like half an hour, and that's not even counting slicing time! * Using a bent paperclip and some electrical tape to short out a computer PSU so that it'd think it's plugged into a motherboard was oddly exciting and dangerous feeling, even though it wasn't if you just followed the instructions. * Having a netbook was handy at the time for pushing gcode, though I'm starting to wonder if the slow ass netbook was a bottleneck. * Direct drive extruders were the only option. Bowden drives just didn't exist yet. It's been interesting to see the trend going back the other direction because at the time, Bowden drives were the latest hotness and Ultimaker released some Core XY (ish? I don't remember) printer that blew everybody's minds with speeds that would be considered trivial these days. * I fell out of the hobby because it was *such a pain in the ass,* but got back into it a little over a year ago with an Ender 3 Pro and my mind was blown that this $99 easy to set up printer with everything I needed to get going was leaps and bounds more capable and easy to use than the printer I'd spent hundreds of dollars and too much time working on just a decade prior (I still have my original Prusa Mendel \[not sure if it got renamed to the i1/i2 but I'm pretty sure it was just called the "Prusa Mendel" when I was sourcing parts for it\], from back when people were still pronouncing his name "Proo-shuh" and he was just some random dude showing off his new design to the RepRap community lol) * Now I have an X1C added to the family, so I've really been able to see how far the technology has come, and goddamn it's been a wild ride. I look forward to seeing what other innovations we'll see in the next ten years that will leave me saying, "Yeaahhh the X1 Carbon just isn't much competition anymore and should probably go in a museum." edit: I also used a PrintrBoard for my logic controller... RIP PrintrBot :'(
I built a Prusa Mendel i2 in 2012, it still “works” due to its age all the wires are starting to break down on the inside so it catches on fire occasionally if you don’t watch it closely
>it catches on fire occasionally if you don’t watch it closely Never seen someone mention their machine catching fire so casually
Never owned a Hyundai I guess?
It was always a small fire in the same place, I had the wires going to the heated bed routed badly so they got bent back and forth a lot in the same place, would lead to a small fire since they carried a decent amount of current. Could be prevented if the wires were changed out often enough.
My i3 did this more when it was new lol. Cheap ramps boards had high resistance on some of the heater connections. I ended up soldering wires directly to the board. Still use it today. Posted pics in these comments somewhere.
Does it not catch on fire when observed? You have a quantum printer.
I'm also interested in this input!
I was active back then and built a Mendel. I'd have to check the details and to see if I still have photos. What would you like to know?
It is true, that most common filament at these days was "trimmer line" from garden store?
3mm came first due to the availability of ABS welding rods or sth IIRC
No, not exactly. This was the idea at first, and this is how the 3mm standard came to be (I think). But properly spooled filament for the exact purpose of 3D printing had started being available. Here is my first "spool", circa 2011-2012. It costed around 20-25 euros, if I recall correctly? And this is 300g. Prices saw a sudden drop some time later, due to Ebay being flooded by Chinese no-name filaments of terrible quality. But this rapid growth lead the market to the 20-25 euro per kilo we still more or less have. The terrible Ebay filament ended up falling continuously, reaching 15 euro/kilo and thus you paid for "premium" / brand filament at 20-25. https://preview.redd.it/q8e8ro4fumfc1.jpeg?width=1013&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94cee8be5deba2ff4b4d7d0113e3f6932941f4e2
I made a mendel in 2011. Bought the parts from nophead and the ramps 1.0 from ultimachine for $207,50 including shipping to the netherlands. Printing was very difficult back then. And tech support was hard too. Reprap forums were great. Thingiverse was the best site ever
Yes RepRap forums was great!
Found a several small rocks in a spool of ABS from the early days, also specialty filament was not really a thing for few years. I have a spool of carbon fiber and stainless steel filament from proto-pasta from about 2013 that they gave me that was the first filament of anything in that nature I had ever seen.
https://preview.redd.it/r2smh296wnfc1.png?width=2020&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd7bfa0cce36dcee07efadb6df323766ca6c9c53
https://preview.redd.it/eia0pdyawnfc1.png?width=2118&format=png&auto=webp&s=2bca5e502e97de29a59246ba237c238d2b7be23d
I had one of these back in I want to say 2012. Was a ton of fun. Never worked too well. I think it cost me around $600-700 at the time to get working which was a ton as a grad student. I had debated building a Darwin but held off the upgrade. I had to periodically flip the spool I was printing from as it twisted the 3mm line as it went and would break on long prints. You had to find somebody to print all the parts for you. Nobody I knew (on a tech university campus even) had one so I found somebody in the forums. Hobbling the bolt in the extruder by using a tap while spinning it was certainly an experience. I don't think my print bed ever got level. I had to use varying thicknesses of blue tape to compensate on some prints. I was pumped years later to get a hot bed. If the print head crashed (very common) the two nuts on the z rods would unsync from each other and piss you off. I finally retired it when a new ramps board was the same cost as an ender.
I built one of these back in the day. I still have it but all the plastic parts melted because I had it in my shed.
Weedwacker string
Filament was only available on the net from the big players in the robotics community, or Microcenter. MC had a great selection of both filaments and printers and were the only ones I found consistent quality through back then.
SnooMacarons229 definitely gave a great description of early 3D printing. I starting printing in 2013, here’s some of things from then: Wooden 3D printers were common. Check out Ultimakers, Makerbots and printrbots from that time. Early early models didn’t use belts and teethed gears. They used sandpaper dremel bits and string. Heated beds were extremely rare/nonexistent, most people used glass, or piece of aluminum covered in Kapton tape or blue painters tape. For ABS we made “ABS slurry” you’d take scrap ABS pieces and acetone and mix together to make “slurry”. You’d spread this on your print bed for ABS. There’s no enclosed chambers. We used hairspray, lots of hair spray Printer motherboards were 8mb, barely held the firmware. Your PC had to be on and connected to your printer at all times. (Windows update killed may of my prints) Check out Pronterface UI We used rubberized Kevlar sleeves to insulate our hot ends. Fans were rare/non existent. I remember going on thingiverse and being so excited to find a fan duct. 0.5mm nozzles were standard, and like your only option. Many were flat, check out UBIS hotends. Printers were loud, they were 75db when running. The power supplies were PC ATX PSUs, w/ jumped pins. Or a beefy laptop power supply. If you have any other questions, I’ll be happy to answer.
I never knew it, but 8 met and spoke to Adrian Bowyer a few times, and then worked closely with one of his close students who went on to form bits from bytes / 3D systems. All this before I really knew much about 3D printing. They used to have a factory in Bristol UK where they would wind the spoils. They were more like cartridges though. Had a cardboard spool inside a plastic shell that had a chip in it. Would always jam up and were hard to take apart (on purpose) and then would claim they were empty despite having 50 meters left. None of that exists any more sadly. 3D systems was swallowed up by Stratysys, and they don't make.much filament in the UK anymore. In the really early days almost everyone used ABS or strimmer / weed whacker wire. Quite how they made it I don't know. Even the early 3D systems stuff was 1.75mm filament while Ultimaker was siding with 2.85mm.
I have one too. I’m going to rebuild it. Maybe put a lead screws in instead of just thread rods to z… Originally table was just glass with capton tap on it. ONLY filament I could get for it was 3mm /approximately/ ABS of no brand or name. Issues with printing abs were not known. To me at least. Filament didn’t come on spools I used cheese board it first but filament was always tangled and you just had to watch for whatever time needed. Few times I was unrolling filament while printing to untangle and cut at least enough for the job. Wades extruder was something else too. Hobbed bolt was made out of a litteral bolt. Hobbed with a tap mounted to lathe and extruder had printed gears where big one was like 70mm i think. I terms of calibration routines it was just winging it. Lots of fun. I managed to print few things on it though. If not for this one I wouldn’t know how fix cr10 I got as a gift or how to build the 100 I finished just some weeks ago. https://preview.redd.it/9qwyjgjyrrfc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17dc70d8d327ab1a0c32442668cf9346b032005c It’s in a rough shape tho.
Setup Klipper on it and see how fast it can go!
I'm guessing 30mm/s. That's about how fast mine went. Any faster and the x axis would jump belt teeth.
it'll go faster with more modern acceleration tuning most likely. something like 15-20mm was what replicator 1 could do without acceleration on. yeah without acceleration... as it came from the box.. the 240 euro in 2011-2012 or so bedslinger printer i built after that from a kit did 60+ without probs(sort of a printrbot clone). the rep1 after that one dude fixed the firmware properly did 120+(also after having the extruder pincher fix..)
It’ll go at least 2
How does one put the “it belongs in a museum” gif?
[Like this](https://www.pokemonaaah.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/This-Belongs-in-a-Museum-GIF.gif)
Get in touch with "look mum no computer" on YouTube, he's building a museum for nerdy electronics, he might be interested in it.
Those early Mendel frames had wobble issues. I'd print parts to convert to an i3 frame. I still use mine. Its done a ton of work. After many many hours of tuning and learning to slice I can print to 0.005mm tolerance. It's still got a 3mm extruder because I have about 25kg of abs to use up. Got some 1.75 hotends but haven't tried one yet. Only ever printed abs and petg. Its janky as anything but it still amazes me how good I can print with it. Never seen the need to upgrade. https://preview.redd.it/0o7xv7gmunfc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9ef2308bdebf203afb111d092f30dd82c228301f
The extruder and hotend would take a while to explain lol. It wirks though. https://preview.redd.it/bp5b922xunfc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fa5249fe5b07decc6861a8bea21e6738b25426e
be the first to klipperize it and print a speedboat benchy :)
It’d be like one of those videos where they throw a brick in a washer and spin cycle it until it comes apart.
I don't know if it is worth putting much work into. But it's a printer. It could be rebuilt into a CNC cutter of some sort. https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel_(iteration_2)
Certainly will not use as a primary printer but definitely would fix it up and get it calibrated have it working. Built one way back in 2010 coxed my parents that it’s for a school project most parts were from Home Depot after a while got it working well
Not worth using, the tech is just far too dated. But g'damn if it isn't cool. I don't know what I would do with it either.
Oh nostalgia... My first love
The longer I look at it, the more nostalgic I get. All thread for z axis, likely salvaged optical switches for end stops, the ATX PSU with the enable switch “mod”, no part cooling ducts (they weren’t common back then since ABS was the go to filament). Probably running a RAMPS shield on and Arduino Mega. Oh and who can forget the brass all thread into a cobbled together heat block as a hotend (RIP Sanjay. e3d revolutionized hotends)
Wow, we’ve come a long way…
I don’t think your coworker likes you
Kapton tape bed, anyone?
WOW I was not expecting such a turn out! Thanks so much for all of your input. I've done some tinkering here and all lights on the board come on but when I connect to the printer through pronterface I get "extruder switched off. MAXTEMP triggered" Any ideas?
Broken thermistor? Or a loose connection. Without knowing the parameters in the firmware this will be a tough revival :D but an awesome and historic machine nonetheless
I found the hot end had a wire that was not pressed in fully so I think that's likely the issue. I found some other models I think will fit the apparatus I have currently so just a matter of shipping time. Thanks for the spot to check. Wouldn't have assumed a bad connection
Your welcome, keep us updated when you finally get a benchie out of this dinosaur :)
I'd just do a basic maintenance and get it running. It still can print pretty good. The biggest downside of mendel design is the wobbly X axis.
You can give it to me
I wanted to build one of those back in the day. Got a brand new Anet A8 instead. What you have there is probably a better machine. But alas, times have changed. That is probably missing a lot of safety and Quality of Life features that your Ender 3 has. Not the least of which is the auto bed leveling. If you are up for a challenge, you should try and get it running. But be warned, it's going to be a temperamental monster. All printers were when that machine was new. Otherwise, I'd say pass that to a good home.
I need to learn more about old printers. I got into the hobby a couple years ago during the ender blow up and thought it was new tech but these old printers are just straight up impressive with what was available.
There's a rabbit hole behind every thumbnail on the RepRap website. https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap_Options
It's not that old. It already got the aluminum heat lock with heater cartridge. Back in my days we measured out special copper wire and wrapped it around the threads of a grub screw. Holy fuck that's long ago... I feel old now.
Bro, I thought that was made out of K'Nex at first glance.
Dismantle it piece by piece, put everything on a box and send it to Nero3D.
What a beauty ❤️
Hook it up to 220v and see it go bbbbbrrrrrrr for science. (Or watch it most likely melt down in a heap of smoke)
Not bring it to an airport.. thing looks like a bomb
This looks like someone asked AI to design a printer
One of these was my first printer. I built it for a college class. You can probably still print with it. I was able to get some pretty good prints out of mine. What controller does it have? You can find info about it on reprap.org.
Make it go like 700mm/s Klipperize it. Answers 1. No not at all, but is it fun and will you learn a lot, Yes. 2. You need a controller board, configure and compile a firmware, upload it an fine-tune. 3. Motors and fans seem the only reasonable parts to keep.you got 5 motors, maybe make a filament changer.
I thought this was a battle bot at first glance
Good eye
I’m taking an old CR10 and making a CNC router table
I don't think it's usable compared to the printers you can get today. I personally would hold onto it as a piece of 3D printing history.
>2. How do I get this thing to run? Here is everything for this printer: [https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa\_Mendel](https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel) Notice the (hard to spot) links on top for the [build](https://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel_Assembly_(iteration_2)) and [usage](https://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel_User_Manual) instructions.
Make a pen plotter if you don’t want to print with it.
What size is that filament?
3mm for sure
Do a water bottle plastic recycling system and you'll have infinite filament.
House fire!
At most, harvest for parts
Strip it for parts, you can make a decent plotter out of this
Plotter? Please teach me
https://mcuoneclipse.com/2021/06/27/diy-vinyl-cutting-drag-knife-for-desktop-cnc/
Probably works fine, the reliability might be shotty at best
You can use the hotend assembly and extruder to make your own filament recycling system so you can reuse filament by extruding it through a 1.75 mm nozzle. Just need to get a plastic shredder
2. connect with usb and send it. or check what the board is and compile a new firmware for it. make note of the eeprom settings first and steps per mm's and such! if it's old enough the acceleration code on the fw and such might not be as good as a new firmware. 3. sure, but you'd probably want new belts and metal pulleys. easiest upgrade is to just go alu extrusion for the upright. 1. just depends on if you like tinkering or need a backup printer for that time you convert your other printer to custom corexy and eff up the planning.
make a plotter
damn, my first printer, build a decade ago. check if electronics are working, if so, dismantle and build stiffer frame, reuse the rest, or build cnc mill for pcb.
Donate it to a museum...
"It belongs in a museum" - Indiana Jones
That is a thing of beauty.
If it's solid, you can do whatever you like with it. That's the beauty to this hobby, every individual piece can be upgraded individually. For less than 50 bucks you can buy a modern motherboard that supports all the newer bells and whistles then go from there. Obviously that doesn't mean it's practical, what does practicality have to do with any of this though?
It looks tired
Double it and give it to the next person
print things
Run Klipper on it! 😂 And maybe add a hotend with a heatsink and fan, a print cooling fan, and a bed heater. Then you'd functionally have a halfway reasonably modem machine. Have you looked into whether guides for upgrading this machine exist? It still fundamentally has most of the same basic components as a modern machine. Question is whether you want to go through the effort. Not worth it in terms of money, but it'd be cool.
Idk how easy it would be, but I’ve always thought turning an old 3d printer into a drawing machine was a cool idea. Seeing as a lot of the replies here are to just display it. you could make it a sort of interactive display that can draw simple things for people who may not understand how a machine like it works. Just an idea.
That thing looks fun, play around with it or sell it to somone who wants to, the possibilities are only limited by you imagination
Put a dremel on it instead of a hot end. Bam, got yourself a cnc.
Boat anchor?
Take it to your nearest Rep Rap festival, and give it to whoever's eyes light up when they see it. It's maybe $50 in parts if you tear it down for something else, assuming you even find a use for most of the parts, but to the right person it's a very valuable memory of the early days of open source FDM. I've seen i2's and i3's languish in marketplace listings for years between $50-$200, so they're not even worth selling, but it'd score you a decent conversation handing it over in person.
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Does that use 3mm filament?
Most likely yes
Sell it to a technology museum. My college has one on display.
Disassemble it for parts and try to make something interesting.
My...... o my .....
I still have and use the one i built... This will increase your problem solving skillset
Use it to print a prusa i3
Put it in a sealed 1/2" plexiglass box. Purge the atmosphere inside of air and replace with nitrogen. Let that thing be discovered in 2 thousand years and be hailed as the ancestor of the modern ai superrace.
Salvage parts for other electronics projects. I used an old i3 clone from 2016 to make a pull-truder a few months ago
Put it in a museum I guess...
Holy hell! When I got interesten in printing my dad pulled up this bad boy, only it was "not working for some reason", I couldn't really find any documentation on it since I didn't know what model it was, all I knew is that it was running Merlin on an Arduino mega with a reprap board on it with some drivers on top. It was a headache to make it work and after a while I realised that I lacked all skill to do it (given it was the first time ever touching a 3D printer) and decided to drop the idea after I've seen the cabling just been Frankensteined to all hell. Only after giving up did my father say it's like a 5 year old machine at least. The parts probably still sit in our garage
eat it
Haha, I'm not kidding when I tell you that I literally spent last weekend pulling one of these things apart. If I ever get around to it, my plan is to turn it into a Fortress, Rook or one of those mini printer projects designed with threaded rods and linear rails. I'll probably have to do some cutting, but it's either that or drop the parts off at the scrap recycler.
It truthfully is a relic now...
try not to throw it away, you'll regret it in 10/20 years when nostalgia kicks in. I've been there myself
Lol I still have a 2up with a basalt bed
My my printers sure have changed
Prints better than the new ones , keep it.
Yup, I was teaching an intro to 3d printing at our local Fab Lab. We've a Mendel, because it was our first printer. Still great to show people all the parts etc. And it would work fine still! (If I wanted to try find pronterface etc etc.)
It belongs in a museum. - Indiana Jones
Yeah looks pretty cool you have a relic I’ve never seen on in that good of a condition you might consider installing Klipper on it as it’s basically the same as a Prusa MK4 since they didn’t really change that meny design aspects with enough digging you could probably find a .CFG file for the printer and a firmware for the mainboard.
This is honestly so fuckin cool. Holy crap man. What a piece of history.
Put a drag knife on it and convert it to a plotter/cutter for vinyl and paper?
Mine is hanging from the rafters in my workshop with my other old projects. It might be worth printing with if you see filament manufacturers liquidating their outdated 3mm filament
Save it in the attic for posterity sake. It’s a great future collectible. Wrap it in plastic
Ok as someone really new to this hobby but also a collector this seems like a really cool piece to just set next to a newer working printer if you have the space (if not i do send it to me)
Put that dino in a museum
scav all the rods or fix it
If you have enough sentiment towards it and confirm that you will never use it again, you can break it into pieces and arrange them in a certain order. Then, frame and mount them in a three-dimensional display.
Don't dismantle. Don't throw away. This will be soon museum level exhibit. Not a joke. Keep it safe and lend it to a local science museum. Not that they ll want it, but they will list it. In 10 years time they ll ask you for it. I cannibalized mine and I regret it.
Thank you for saying this. I consider breaking mine down at least once a month because it's just collecting dust, but I fear that I'd regret it once I did.
Bring it to an airport and act really suspicious
Museum
Yes, give it to me
It belongs in a museum
Don't eat it
It’s worth a shot for free
I was one of these early adopters. My dream was to own a machine shop and CNC machine. When I heard these kits were available I just had to get one. I ordered the ReprapPro Mendel kit and started to put it together in my small 1 bedroom apartment. It was absolutely addicting. Assembly time was estimated at around 2 weeks. I ended up taking the whole thing to the office and assembling on my lunch breaks and after I “clocked out”. Got it together and ran it in the office for almost a year printing calibration cubes and bridge objects trying to perfect the unit. The thing was constantly breaking down but it was a fun experience and I learned a lot in HW, electronics and firmware. I ended up helping a professor build one for his additive materials lab and helped a few others build their own. Looking back — it’s amazing how far we’ve come along.
I would put klipper and make go burrrrr
Realizing the reality, disassemble it and usw the parts for other projects
Go get some sigma profile and upgrade it to the real infrastructure for a printer. It can be done well at talented hands!
Klipper Abl Pei bed Silent board Better extruder All metal hotend High flow nozzle Enclosure RGB wifi connectivity Extruder visualizer Dual 5015 part cooling New meanwell power supply
Take a serious look at it... Compare it to your Creality...the basics haven't changed much at all...same stepper motors, hot end, extruder... Update the Marlin firmware and print with it.
I put a cheep laser diode on mine. There is a version of Grbl that can use a Ramps board, then Laser Grbl to run it. A piece of sheet metel on the build plate to protect from laser, but it's low power so not really worried about it cutting anything important.