My Journey to Building a 3D Printer

I've wanted a 3D printer for a long time. In university, I couldn't justify the price. I did, however, have an old 2D printer ripe for teardown. With a few 2N2222 transistors, an Arduino, and parts from the old printer, I was able to cobble together a stepper motor driver and a first axis.


In university, I had no means of creating the custom parts required to Frankenstein together 3-axis from old 2D printers. The project was put on hold. When I graduated and moved back closer to my parents, I had access to tools. However, in-between jobs, I still couldn't justify spending any money. My parents also weren't as excited about tearing apart dirty old printers in their garage as I was. One weekend, I found myself tearing apart old cd drives to build a 3-axis plotter. I wrote minimal firmware and a little python API for it here.


I figured that the enjoyment I got from this weekend project more than justified buying Aliexpress components to make a real 3D printer. I designed the printer as a Prusa/Ender 3 hybrid. The printer ran off an old computer power supply and a custom build of Marlin. I made all of the non-standard parts out of wood because, well, I didn't have a 3D printer to print them.


I'm in the process of replacing all the wooden parts with 3D printed ones; taking my time to learn FreeCAD.