Sloth Mendel - unfinished by sloth

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

My printer is called "sloth mendel". I am pretty curious if "sloth" has in any way the same meaning as in german, where it is "Faultier". That literally means "lazy animal". That name comes from the shape of the vertexes, which reminded me of the character Sid from the movie "Ice Age". Additionally the name fits because auf the german meaning, since much less time would be needed to build the whole frame, comparing to the prusa mendel. Additionally I think less plastic and less parts are needed to be printed. All the parts, except the frame can be clipped on to be easily swapped.
Instead of the threaded rods for the frame I am using 10mm smooth rods out of aluminium. They can be cut to length precicely with a circular saw bench with arrester and sliding table (I do not really know the exact names for the tools and had to look them up, please correct me). Also I use the saw for the reliefs, which really should better be done with other tools, but it works quite well (Unfortunately I do not have access to a lathe yet.) The rods need a M6 internal thread. Therefore I improvized again and used a box column drill. (Again, no lathe...) I screwed the drill to a thick board, drilled with 10mm through the board and inserted the 10mm rod. Then I fixed the whole thing on the workbench and tapped the thread. You could argue, that the described process is more time-consuming than the threaded rods and I agree, but I like the fact that the frame is much easer put together. That could make it a perfect variation for sold kits.
Some of the parts might even be possibly used with a normal prusa, like the bar-clamps and definitely the idler wheel insteat of this impractical large diameter washers. Also, I used the same distance between the z-axis rods for compatibility. In some cases I combined several parts into one, compared to the orignal prusa design. I should have used the same distances for the frame as well, but I did not.
Initially I planned to finish the printer and print all the parts on my prusa. But the printrbot design flashed this plan. So I am stopping the development and the sloth mendel will stay unfinnished forever.
Sorry for the positioning of the parts in the stl. Maybe someone can tell me why they look as they do...