Our Mendel has been printing successfully in the study for a while now, but how will it fare on the road? We decided to take it on a jaunt to the office to test its metal…

Not knowing what state the printer would arrive at the office in, it was tempting to take the kitchen sink with us just in case. Settling instead for the basic tools and all necessary consumables, the Mendel packed pretty neatly into the boot of the car and we were off.

It was the longest 14 mile journey I’ve ever had, and I felt every single bump along the way. So it was with great trepidation that we opened the boot on arrival. What a relief, still in one piece! However the next problem was immediately apparent – how do we carry it? Especially since the only space available in the car park was the furthest from the front door. We definitely need to put some thought into a carry case.

Setting it up in the office went without much incident, and before long we were ready to print. Feeling overconfident after a successful powering-on and testing of the motors, and not having Skeinforge installed on the laptop we decided to upgrade to the latest version, number 40. What a mistake! Not realising the huge significance of the change to volumetric 5D in the Dimension tab we generated some GCode and sent it to print. Major panic ensued as no plastic came out and what did wouldn’t stick to the bed. Oh no! A run through of all the usual suspects revealed no answer. What on earth was going on?

Eventually we realised our error, reverted to Skeinforge 39 and hit print:

(Please forgive the dodgy camera work! It was the first time I had used my phone’s camera in anger and as you can see I had a little trouble keeping my fingers out of the way.)

Fantastic! We have proved Mendel can handle life on the road. Next stop – a mounted spool system for automatic feeding.