Great video! I think the world needs more 3D printing "history lessons" like this one

Where have you been what are you doing? I can’t believe you have the originals! Thank you for that insight!

I remember going to place an order for a Makerbot Thing-o-matic and finding they had just released the Replicator. As a devout Wallace and Gromit fan, it was a tough choice not to go with the Thing-o-matic, but if you're investing in bleeding edge technology, you have to go with the latest, don't you? I loved that noisy, dual extruder printer. It taught me a lot. I still have it as well as its replacement and its replacement's replacement, an i3 Mk3S. Kids today, eh? Don't know they're born!

would love some more content on the mendel. Would love to build one today just for the experience

Ah, retro 3d printing content, my favourite! Thanks for the history refresher. BTW, it seems that the Mendel-90 did solve almost all the issues with the original i3 design you have there. In my opinion the whole "threaded-rod-aesthetics" was a dead end.

Good stuff buddy.

Get video !! I have been printing for just over 10 years ... I should totally do a video with my older printers and do a little time line. I love your autographed power supplies !! I would love to have that in my collection.

I was just reminiscing about the Makerbot Cupcake I built, it had a geared DC motor and an acrylic extruder that couldn't tension the filament and wasn't precise. The bed was on an X and Y stage that had bushing with a ton of play, there was no way to level the bed and it was really loud. The nichrome wire wrapped hotends were the worst part, you could have been +/-10C or more off and I mostly printed ABS. The makergear hotend really helped. I believe it's a ptfe tube inside a peek barrel and delrin outter jacket, that was really exotic stuff back then. The J-head also improved on this design as well. I remember other people saying the Prusa Mendel was really hard to square because of the A frame design. This is a great video to see how far we've come.

Love seeing that old Mendel. I have a Prusa Steel kit from Orballo that came with wades extruder parts. It is the only type of extruder that that printer has ever "known". I really didn't like how much of my X and Z axis were eaten up by that extruder design, so I designed a much more compact wades extruder with an inverted motor mount and belt drive, which opened up my X axis perfectly and gave me a great deal of my Z axis back as well. I have a Revo 6 on it now and it prints really well that way. as the filament path is shortened a bit also. The wades does as well as any single drive extruder can be expected to. It is my most reliable printer without question, but it is VERY heavily modded.

Really cool comparison! Thanks for sharing

It is amazing how far 3d printers have come.

oh my gosh! i was looking for a video like this

First time watching any of your Videos, great content! But deez nuts gained you my sub

That’s amazing, I would be too scared to use the special edition Prusa sheet if I ever got one 😅

Excellent! Thank you.

Also. I always give my printers silly names... but I don't have one for the new Prusa Mk3s+. Suggestions welcome!

I have quite a bit more original Prusa Mendel. No screen, no SD Card, hand soldered RAMPS, Wade's extruder. Tho it had some replacement printed parts, some of which design changed between and now are not aligned properly, so finding the original STLs would be needed, i think even back then it was a bit messy and accidentally used i guess v2 parts for Z gantry or something like that? Version control didn't seem to be much of a thing back then. Haven't even powered it on in 5+ years, but i keep it around still.

I can probable get a list from vick oliver