I’ve had a ton of fun with my Bukito. But I wanted a bigger build area and dual extruders, so I could use support material.

I looked at the MakerBot offerings and was ready to buy one, but was totally put off by their Smart Extruder.

So the search was on. I wound up looking at the MendelMax2 and thought it would be a nice kit to put together. While paging through the MakersToolWorks store, what should I stumble upon but a hidden link for the MendelMax3 (No longer manufactered).

This looked like a very nice printer, so I placed an order. I think I may have been the first non-beta person to order the MendelMax3. I also discovered that they have an IRC group (#makerstoolworks on freenode). The MendelMax3 was officially made available in their store a day or so later.

I decided on a kit, so that I would learn all of the various bits and pieces and gain an intimate understanding of all the parts and how to tune it.

A couple weeks later,a nicely packed box arrived on my doorstep:

Very nicely packed:

Here are the contents spread out on my desk:

Many of the pieces were laser cut stainless steel that was then powder coated:

Belts, clips to hold the glass, and some miscellaneous wires:

Lots of M5 and M3 nuts and bolts:

And polycarbonate wheels for the linear rails:

A few printed parts:

And a few laser cut plastic parts:

Tools (almost everything needed to assemble it):

A buck converter (to convert 24V to 5V, and an Arduino. These are used to drive the LEDs which show up on the front panel, and across the top. Apparently the LEDs change color based on the extruder temperature.

I also ordered the optional GLCD and the required RAMBo adapter:

This is the RAMBo board, along with 3 limit swiches.

Some miscellaneous electronics:

And the 2 extruders, which are both E3D-v6 all metal hot ends:

A box full of stepper motors:

A 400W 24VDC power supply. The extruders, bed heater, fans and RAMBo all run off of 24V:

A few more laser cut metal pieces:

And a bunch of V-Slot extrusions (the wheels and extrusions are from Open Builds Parts Store:

It turns out a few small pieces were missing, which was not entirely surprising given that this was one of the first complete kits that they shipped. MakersToolWorks quickly shipped me the missing pieces.

I’ve been extremely impressed with the support available from the MakersToolWorks guys. They have an IRC channel, and between the MTW guys and their customers, all of the minor issues I had were quickly addressed.

Now to put it all together.