Building My Own 3D Printer

I have been using a Monoprice MPSelect Mini for four years as my main 3D printer. It is a great printer but has a very small print bed. One of the things I’d like to do is print larger objects to mix fashion design and interaction design, so, I’d like a 1m cube printer. However, those don’t exist and I knew I’d have to build it myself. Having no experience with “building” 3d printers, I decided to follow an online tutorial and create one from scratch.

And I mean SCRATCH. Using the MakerMashup Bill of Materials as my guide, I sourced aluminum bars, bolts, gears, hotends, extruders, timing belts, and lots and lots of stepper motors. I also needed to use a 3D printer to construct parts for the machine. The Select Mini did about 80% of what I needed but I did need to borrow a bigger one for a few parts.

There was a lot to learn and I hope to document more of it in the future. I have replaced almost all of the big parts because I kept breaking pieces though shorting wires or just jamming it up.

After three months, I’m now at the point where I’m able to reliably print.