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 transistors, an Arduino, and parts from an 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 and my parents were not excited about tearing apart old dirty printers in their garage. One weekend, I tore 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. 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.


Slowly, I was able to bootstrap the printer. I replaced most wooden parts with 3D printed ones; taking my time to learn FreeCAD.


I was 3D printing a lot but my design left lots to be desired. I used cheap parts, and the design was minimal. It had no automatic bed leveling, poor cooling, it wasn't enclosed, and I always felt the need to keep the printer within earshot. I started designing a new core-xy printer when I learned about Voron printers. Meticulously engineered printers where every issue either came with a community mod, or in a revision. I bought a Formbot 2.4R2 kit and named him Perry.


At the time of writing, I have designed over 90 parts, all in FreeCAD. Some of my models I upload to Printables. Some of my models are being produced at volume for a friends business.