3D Printed 3D Printer

[AutoWiz]

I have a friend who is interested in 3d printing but really can't afford a printer. And I have all these parts left over from so many rounds of upgrades on so many printers so I am going to build my friend a 3d printer and give it to him so he can start making stuff, too. I have found an old design from 2013 of a printable i3 frame: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:146061 . And this thread is dedicated to the printing of this frame and subsequent building of a prusa i3 printer from spare parts.

[AutoWiz]

Of course we are gonna print the i3 frame on the i3..



I have my GEEETech i3 configured with an mks base control board, 0.9 degree stepper motors on X, Y, and in the mk8 extruder, and a 0.3mm nozzle diameter. It is laying down the filament nicely..




It is going to take a while to print this frame. This is the first of 8 large pieces just to make the main structure.

[AutoWiz]

Ok so here is the backside of the first piece just to illustrate that all these pieces are hollow and this is not using an insane amount of filament..



And the second piece of the frame finished printing today..



Up next for the GEEETech i3 to print out is the Lower Right corner of the frame.

[AutoWiz]

I have sifted through all the leftover parts from building my 3 and I think I have everything I need..



I have both a 200x200 and a 300x200 heated bed and glass but I think I am going to use the 200x200 because the only extra power supply I have is 12v 250 watt.

[AutoWiz]

Do you mind if I ask a question or two?

not at all. What's up?

[AutoWiz]

First off, great idea! Are you getting your friend involved in the printing of the parts or even the building of the printer? That way he/she knows how everything goes together. Even though the parts are hollow, have you thought about filling it with anything to make it more rigid or does it feel like it will hold up like that?

No I am building this alone and sending pictures of my progress. I am not going to modify the frame but I am saving all the sliced .gco files that I used to build the frame with so if any parts break my friend can re print it and keep going. If any part keeps breaking then I will address that issue. Today I have finished the 3 lower pieces of the frame..



And I think I am going to use one of the three wade extruders I have laying around left over from this idea went wrong: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...Mixing-Printer

[Nepherael]

This is fantastic! Exactly what I would do in this situation with spare parts at hand. I doubt I know anyone into 3D printing themselves but building one like this is such a learning experience. Look forward to the finished product.

[AutoWiz]

Thank you for the positive feedback guys. I am having a blast, getting rid of some parts I wont otherwise be using, and hopefully creating a friend with a like hobby. We will see how all this pans out. I reconfigured my printers often and a lot getting them to where they are now. Sometimes I just printed out and changed parts to change color. It kept me busy then and now I have a selection to choose from in building this machine..



Using these parts will save me time and materials. If my friend wants it all green that will make for a nice first project with his new printer. So these are the printed parts I will use and now we can really start to get a picture of what this printer is going to look like..



This e3d v6 mount was a design I found also on thingiverse. I really liked how it mounted the layer fan. This should make a good extruder for this machine..



I have an mk8 extruder but I feel with the printed frame it is best to try to keep weight off the gantry.

[AutoWiz]

I have a career that requires my attention for a large chunk out of each day: http://www.corvette-performance-expert.com/ And while the wife doesn't work and all 3 kids are home from school for the summer they all keep going out and doing stuff and I don't want to trust a printer to run without anybody at the home so this has created a limitation that coupled with the print time for each piece has me building this frame at ruffly 1 part per day. Here is today's part installed..

[AutoWiz]

At the end of the weekend I am one piece away from completion of the frame..



The ham on the right is my youngest child, Drew. Of my 3 kids he has taken to this hobby the best. The others I force my projects on but little 7 year old Drew knows how to make stuff in autodesk 123d design, export as .stl, load in repetier, configure and slice and print with all of my printers. I am very proud of him. And I started printing out the y axis carriage. I am printing that out with the monoprice printer in an effort to speed this along.