Aluminium Extrusion 3D Printer

thingiverse

This is my 3D printer I've built as my matriculation project in the fall of 2016. My goal was to design and build my own 3D printer. Furthermore I wanted to use as many 3D printed parts as possible because I was intrigued by the thought of 3D printing a 3D printer. I don't have a full tutorial but I'll try to give you some information about the printer. I used 40x40mm aluminium extrusion for the main structure and 20x20mm aluminium extrusion for the bed structure. Overall the printer has turned out to be extremely robust and reliable. These were also my intentions since I wanted the structure to be as rigid as possible so I wouldn't run into problems with the frame twisting and the axes being misaligned. 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 3D printed parts with Velleman PLA on my Vertex k8400. The PLA parts have held up really well, to my surprise, so I didn't feel like I need to reprint them in ABS. In total it had taken me about 130 hours to print all parts (excluding prototypes). The electronics are based on a 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 The smart controller holder is a remix of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:563515 If you are genuinely interested in building this printer yourself I'd be more than happy to provide you with all the information to do so. (Please write a comment) I do not recommend this printer to a beginner since it requires a lot of hacking and tweaking. Since I've taken the pictures I've added a heated bed in order to print ABS parts and flat PLA parts more reliably. I also added a second Z axis stepper driver and changed the location to the sides of the printbed to prevent the printbed from sagging.