This is my homebuilt DIY 3D printer. Made in 2016. It is a CoreXY design with a wood frame and 3D-printed parts. Some of the key features of the printer:
- 20x20x30 cm build volume
- MK3 aluminum heatbed with borosilicate glass print surface
- “3D-touch” -sensor for auto mesh bed leveling
- Genuine E3D V6 hotend (0.4 mm nozzle)
- Trinamic TMC2100 stepper drivers
- MKS GEN 1.4 control board
- Marlin version 1.1.4 firmware
The printer is using a larger 12V power supply. But I have turned up the voltage if it to almost 15 volts. This gives a lot faster heat-up times for the heatbed and hotend. To power the LED strips, electronics bay fan and hot end fan, small adjustable DC-DC step-down switching regulators are used. This prevents damage to the sensitive components and also allows me to adjust the speeds of the fans to achieve a low noise level. The speed of the part cooling fan is still controlled by the Marlin software, but since I only print PLA, I always run it at full speed. I have not yet found a reason to experiment with printing other materials.
I usually print PLA directly onto the borosilicate glass bed with a nozzle temperature of 200 degrees and a bed temperature of 75 degrees. Before starting a print, I always clean the glass printed with hot water and washing-up liquid.
I have no adjustment screws to manually level the bed, I rely entirely on the “3D-touch” sensor and the bilinear mesh leveling in the Marlin firmware. I have tried to mount the headbed as levelly as possible using a few washers, but it is still almost a millimeter of from front to back. This is not a problem since the automatic leveling with the sensor works very well. I always get a perfect first layer. It has never happened to me that the printed parts get loose during printing.
The printer is pretty quiet since I use the TMC2100 stepper motor drivers. Maybe not as quiet as the quietest printers you can buy, but still quite enough to have it in the living room, next to the TV, printing all evening without disturbing too much.
The printer works reliably and requires very little maintenance. Every other month or so a usually clean the 12 mm rods and leadscrew on the Z axis and put on new oil. At the same time, I also oil the fans. I check the belt tension and adjust it as necessary. That is basically it. The motion system for the X and Y axis is maintenance-free since I used self-lubricating Drylin Igus bushings.
Download
I have designed all the parts in SketchUp, and many parts have been replaced/updated with new ones as I learned from my old mistakes. All the parts are printed from PLA. I have made a zip folder with the original SketchUp file, all the STL files, and the Marlin firmware configuration files. You can download it here:
https://brinkeby.se/downloads/AxelsDIYcoreXYprinter.zip
Unfortunately, I have not made any detailed plans for the wooden parts. But the SketchUp file can be used to measure all the dimensions of everything, including the wood pieces. I have not made any detailed building instructions or step-by-step guide on how to build this 3D printer. And I will not do that. If you want to build this printer, it can be done with the information on the page as well as the SketchUp file.
Below are some detailed images of the printer. Click on the images to make them larger.
