Aluminium Extrusion 3D Printer

thingiverse

This is my 3D printer, designed and built by me as a matriculation project in the fall of 2016. My main goal was to design, build, and use my own 3D printer. Additionally, I wanted to incorporate as many 3D printed parts as possible because I was intrigued by the idea of printing a 3D printer. Although I don't have a comprehensive tutorial, I'll try to provide some essential information about the printer. The main structure is built using 40x40mm aluminum extrusion and the bed structure is made from 20x20mm aluminum extrusion. The overall result has been an extremely robust and reliable printer. These were my intentions since I wanted the structure to be as rigid as possible, preventing problems with frame twisting and axis misalignment. I used 123D Design for all of the CAD work and I'd be happy to provide the original files if anyone chooses to build this printer. I printed all of the 3D printed parts using Velleman PLA on my Vertex k8400. To my surprise, the PLA parts have held up very well so I didn't feel like reprinting them in ABS. It took me approximately 130 hours to print all of the parts (excluding prototypes). The electronics are based on an Arduino Uno with a Ramps 1.4 shield. On the software side, I'm running a version of Marlin which I've configured for my setup. The extruder is a remix of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1764815 and the smart controller holder is a remix of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:563515. If you're genuinely interested in building this printer yourself, I'd be more than happy to provide you with all of the information needed to do so. However, I don't recommend this printer for beginners as it requires a lot of hacking and tweaking. Since taking these pictures, I've added a heated bed to print ABS parts and flat PLA parts more reliably. I also added a second Z-axis stepper driver and changed its location to the sides of the printbed to prevent the printbed from sagging.