500mm x 500mm 3D Printer

grabcad

I have been interested in the concept of additive manufacturing, and more specifically FDM 3D printing. This is what lead me to design and build a large scale printer as a passion project over the last year and a half. The reason why I wanted to build such a large printer was that at the time, I thought that having the ability to print large scale parts, could have some practical applications in building robots, along with allowing a large number of small parts to be printed at once. Some of the problems I needed to overcome to achieve this however were to find out how to get the extruded filament to stick to the bed, and how to move the extruder(s) over the large build area. The way I solved the first problem was to install a silicone heat mat under the aluminum build plate as keeping the layers of extruded plastic hot kept them from peeling off mid-print. Also, the way I designed the motion system of the printer followed what is called a Cartesian model, which essentially means that the printer moves in 3 primary axes of motion. To minimize the size of the printer, while maximizing build space, and rigidity, I decided to have the extruders to move in the x, and y axes, while the bed would move up and down on the z-axis. From the experience of building this, I ended up learning a lot about precision manufacturing, and tolerances as I used a 3 axis CNC mill to machine out all of the intricate aluminum parts, along with a manual mill to face all of the t-slot extrusion for the frame.