Print

Print3D have been producing 3D printed 'things' since February 2012 following the build of our first 3D printer, a RepRapPro Huxley, over the 2011 Christmas holiday period. Over the next 12 months, the number of printers grew - another RepRapPro Huxley in April 2012 and then the third machine, a Nophead Mendel90 in November of the same year.

Technical Note

The two Huxley machines have a build plate area of around 140mm square and a build height of approximately 70mm or so. The design incorporates a heated print bed which reduces warping and enables the machines to use ABS filament as well as PLA. Both of them take 1.75mm diameter  filament feedstock but they differ in that one of them is fitted with a 0.3mm nozzle, the other with a 0.5mm nozzle. Design improvements from the original specification have been described on Thingiverse. You can read about two such improvements online: the Y carriage bearing changes are HERE and the cooling fan changes HERE.

The photograph below comes from the RepRapPro site - our two Huxley's look very similar to that although because of the above improvements and other changes, the colour of the plastic parts on our machines vary a little bit! (Our Huxley machines also use a different set of electronic controllers - one even has a touch screen controller which eliminates the need to connect a computer for printer control).

 

The Nophead Mendel90 machine is physically much larger than the Huxley although it is still classed as a Desktop 3D printer. The heated build plate enables us to print things up to 200mm square and because of the frame design, print height is also 200mm. Electronic control is via Melzi electronics (pictured on the Huxley photograph above) coupled with a Raspberry Pi device which enables control of the printer over a computer network. (The Mendel90 can even be set to work remotely over the internet). We have also fitted an internet webcam to the Mendel90 - if you place an order for anything on this site and you want to watch it being printed, just let us know - we will let you have the internet web address and confirm the time to log in!

Our Mendel90 was photographed for display on Nophead's  blog which you can read HERE