While the 3D printing industry in India has been on fire lately, Makemendel has been quietly producing well-regarded and inexpensive 3D printers for over two years. Though they may no longer be the only game in town, they’re still the one to beat and they are willing to ship anywhere in the world.
Makemendel offers a full range of RepRap based 3D printer kits for their machine called the RapidBot. They are available in multiple sizes,including the most affordable priced at $649, the unassembled RapidBot 3.0and its upgraded cousin, the PlusBot,which offers the same features for $749, but includes higher quality parts and the option to have it assembled for you for an additional $150.
If you’re looking for something a little bigger you can pick up the unassembled XLBot, which boasts a massive print envelope of 39.37in x 39.37in x 23.62in (1000mm x 1000mm x 600mm) and can be yours for only $3,999. If that’s too much printer for you, they also offer a smaller, yet still quite large 3D printer in the form of the MegaBot which has a print envelope of 27.55in x 8.66in X 7.28in (700mm x 220mm x 185mm) and can ship to you unassembled for only $1,299.
That is already a large range of products, but they also offer a large selection of electronic parts, so you can repair worn parts or just build your own 3D printer. Additionally, they sell a 3D scanner that can scan a full sized human body, a full range of filaments, and they even offer heated print bed upgrades. And, because that just isn’t enough, they also offer 3D scanning and 3D printing services.
Makemendel product specs read as comparable to many European and US 3D printer kits, but they may more affordable, and the company’s customer support seems to be on par or better than many RepRap printer manufacturers. As the profile of Indian-made 3D printers and 3D printer parts continues to rise, expect to be hearing the name Makemendel a lot more. They are in the best position to leverage the exposure in order to expand further into the US and European 3D printer markets.
You can find out more about Makemendel and their line of 3D printers and 3D printer accessories on their website. You can also watch the company’s range of products featured on Indian TV in the video below:
COMPLETELY DISAGREE: I could not disagree more with your article Scott. We bought a MakeMendel MegaBot 6 months ago to trial with the expectation of ordering 50 units. We still have never been able to use it. The shipping was packed poorly, there were many parts missing, and they did not include the tax exemption code on the DHL Airway Bill so DHL Customs Agents charged another US$200 tax on a TAX EXEMPT item. This was one of the many an errors of their shipping department. The manager does not accept any responsibility for failures and faults. He expects the customer to pay $45 to return 2 Nema 17 stepper motors that cost $10 each. He then wants the customer to pay for him to ship the 2 replacement motors. For 6 months we have tried to get MakeMendel to replace 2 faulty motors, a faulty power supply that turns off when the heater bed is turned on (this is only 1 heater bed – our printer should have had 3 but they short-supplied and lost 2), 2 missing heater beds, a faulty Printrboard with faulty USB port and faulty Z Axis stepper drivers. But they are silent when it comes to sending parts or anything to do with money. The 2 faulty stepper motors that were shipped (1 with internal wire broken and the other had the belt pulley hammered on and damaged that contacts inside) have evidence that they have been opened, so they knew they were sending faulty motors. From a design perspective, their electronics layout under the bot does not have enough clearance to allow the LCD screen to attach to the printrboard. Most recently the bootloader was corrupted and I had to build a Parallel Programmer to burn a new bootloader. In fact, every single problem I have had to fix myself – MakeMendel has done nothing. Polite staff – but fix it yourself. What makes it worst, is that this and the other printers are for the blind society to print braille signs. Yes their staff will answer (until they have to fix a problem) but the management is very selfish and immature. We have now passed this onto the legal team to take legal action against MakeMendel. I can assure you I am not an internet troll, and I am happy to provide all email corrospondence and Skype support logs to prove that hat I say here is 100% fact. Feel free to contact me is you wish to see this. My Review: DO NOT buy from MakeMendel. Their business ethics are all about take the money and avoid all responsibility. Incompetance from start to finish – but polite support staff.
I’ve had a similar experience with them. Bought a Prusa i3 kit (unassembled) from them 50 days back. Packaging was poor. Their model of Prusa i3 was different from the ones sold by others. They had no build manual, when contacted they gave me manual for a similar model (RapidBot), and to add to the confusion it was old and not updated to reflect latest parts/assembly. When we started assembling the kit, realized that certain parts were missing and there were a lot of faulty parts.They shipped replacements, after a long delay and several reminders, but they were only slightly better. Somehow managed to fix these, and guess what – the first print failed just a few seconds after starting. PTFE or whatever pipe they used in the extruder hotend melted damaging the temperature sensor. They just put in whatever cheap components they could find and shipped it.
Support staff is polite, but quite useless. You get stupid and useless answers/solutions. They ask me to visit their office with the printer – despite knowing I stay quite far in a different city. They sent replacements through a courier service which was awful. And I have to pay for sending back faulty parts to them. Despite all this they claim ‘customer satisfaction’ is their priority – what a joke.
Right now the printer is in an unusable state. I’m fed up of talking to them, planning to replace faulty parts from other sources at my own cost.