Prusa i3 "exoskeleton"

thingiverse

When I assembled my Prusa i3 printer and started printing and experimenting, I encountered a problem. The wobbling of the aluminum frame, which was only supported by nuts down on the rods, caused layer height inconsistencies resulting in lower quality prints. So, I decided to do something to improve the printer's structural rigidity and came up with this design. I understand that this design is a little unorthodox, given the advantage of the Prusa i3 over its predecessor and other similar printer designs lies in its easier assembly and more elegant body, but it greatly improved my prints. If you plan to use your printer as a tool that can print for dozens of hours at a time without much maintenance - tightening bolts and nuts regularly to achieve better sturdiness - I advise you to implement this design or something similar. You will need a piece of wood 50x50cm, around 1cm thickness, to mount the printer and some bolts and nuts whose dimensions can be found in the pictures. I designed this using 123D Design. Along with the .stl files, there are included the .123dx files for some parts which can be used to effortlessly edit several parameters of the objects. I printed these with ABS at 40-50% infill but I recommend printing them with PLA for better layer adhesion. The holes of the part "roddowns.stl" are intentionally closed because as they tighten, it needs a surface for the printer to print on. You can open them easily with a screwdriver. Leave a like if this helped you!