MATTER VOLUME 2 ISSUE1 1

BUILDING A HOMEMADE 3D PRINTER

Baran Tunç1
1
Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, METU, 06800 Ankara, Turkey

ABSTRACT

3D printing has been attracted much attention around the world due to its high potential of new application fields. In this respect, developing
and inventing new filament materials for 3D printers or new techniques of 3D printing are the main interest of the many materials scientists.
This paper reports a comprehensive overview of 3D printing followed by a summary of my ongoing study of building a composite homemade
3D printer. At this stage of this study, a CNC router was successfully converted into a fully-functional and high-specifications 3D printer. Result-
ing device has 600mm x 500mm x 200mm (L x W x H) of printing capability and 100 microns of precision. In addition to its extended printing
capability, this 3D printer is highly cost-efficient and it can be adaptable to other CNC instruments and customizable by every means. Open-
Source software, modular hardware and replaceable parts are the main advantages of our home-made 3D printer.

Keywords: 3D printing, Polymer filament, Homemade 3D printer

INTRODUCTION1

As the world constantly seeks the most efficient and

the quickest ways of production, 3D printing has recently
become the rising star of rapid prototyping industry. The
roots of the 3D printing can be traced back to 80s with the
first “Rapid Prototyping” technique developed by Dr.
Kodama, in Japan [1]. 3D printers are mostly used in rapid
prototyping, custom medical-dental prosthesis (Figure 1),
custom design plane-automotive parts, spaceship supplies
(Figure 2) and many new fields are being added to the list
every day.
Figure 2. NASA’s 3D printer on the International Space
Station made a wrench, here seen after its return to the
agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala-
bama (Figure adapted from [3]).

After the invention of modern 3D printers, prototyping

made a huge improvement as it does not require any
molding, casting, cooling, sculpting, finishing etc. Also it
does not make mass-producing systems to stop their
production just for a prototype. Instead, the prototype can
be produced with 3D printer and tested easily.

Another major advantage of 3D printing is the direct

Figure 1. 3D printing a kidney (Figure adapted from [2]). use of end-users. If you need to have a part or a product
that is custom designed, meaning you cannot buy it from
1
Junior Undergraduate student at Middle East market, you can create it with your own imagination. This
Technical University, Ankara, Turkey particular advantage is used in the spaceships, as well.
Email Address: e1678374@metu.edu.tr Astronauts are provided with 2 special 3D printers to
provide any tools they might need in the space. The rea-
 MATTER VOLUME 2 ISSUE1
son that there are 2 of them is very fascinating: if one is
broken or malfunctioning, other is printing the replace-
ment parts and fix the other one.
But how does the 3D printing work? The easiest an-
swer would be “it is an additive manufacturing process”,
metaphorically it is like building a house with adding up
small bricks. And this is a milestone because this method is
a radically different manufacturing method based on
advanced technology that can builds up parts, additively,
in layers at the microns scale. This is fundamentally differ-
ent from any other existing traditional manufacturing
techniques.
There are many different types of 3D printers with
very own solutions to the specific fields. Some are pro-
cessing powdered materials like nylon, plastic, ceramic,
metal with sintering/melting/fusing while others process
filament polymer resin materials with melting. But the
main logic is nearly the same with all the types as sche-
matically described in Figure 3.
3D Model created
with a CAD Software
or 3D Scanner.
Layer by layer the
printer will create the
predetermined shape
And the final product
will be the exact
replica of your 3D
model
Figure 3. Operation of 3D printer (Figure adapted from [1]).
One of the main problems with the 3D printers is that
the ones with the medium/high properties have very high
2
prices in the market. So, if you would like to create some-
thing different, it is very unlikely that you can buy one
without saving up for months and even forget eating.
The second problem is that they are not very customi-
zable due to their non-editable software and hardware.
Generally hardware limitation comes because of the re-
strictions in working area. 3D printer companies create
compact designs to save as much as space as possible.
These two problems constitute the motivation of my
study. In this respect, I tried to build a low-cost homemade
robust 3D printer which can be adapted to CNC routers.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The 3D printer is based on 3 main modules as shown in
Figure 4:
 XYZ-router
 Electronic Control Board
 Extruder
Figure 4. XYZ-Router, E.C.B. and extruder modules.
Movement
Commands
3D Model
CAD File
Figure 5. The working schema of the modules.
For the setup, I used a mini-CNC router as XYZ router,
RAMP 1.4 with Arduino Mega as Electronic Control Board,
and Heacent MK8 as extruder. The extruder includes a
step-motor to drive filament, a heater to get filament to
the pre-determined target temperature, and a thermo-
couple to detect real-time temperature of the nozzle
which acts as filament thinner (Figure 6).
 MATTER VOLUME 2 ISSUE1 3

Figure 7. First test of the custom-made 3D printer.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

After the testing and calibration, a fully functional 3D

printer was ready to operate. It has a very large print area
and surprisingly low total cost. The detailed technical
Figure 6. Extruder Schematic (Figure adapted from [3]). specifications are given in Table 1. Its detailed technical
specifications are:
Original control board of the CNC Router and its en-
graver module was disassembled from the router to make
Table 1. Technical Specifications
space for the extruder and the new 3D printer control
board. Then the new parts assembled, wired and config- Print area 600x500x200 (mm)
ured as needed. Filament 1.75mm PLA
Nozzle 0.3mm
Ramps 1.4 shield was flashed with the Marlin software Resolution 0.015mm
which is an open-source 3D printer G-Code interpreter. Precision 0.1mm
After some time and tests, I found out that Marlin is not Ejection Temperature 300°C
the best solution for me as it has a more complex software Filament PLA
structure which makes it hard for editing. Then Splinter
software turned out to be the right choice for the given
aspects. After the calibration of the axis motors and ex-
truder motor, 3D printer was ready to be tested.

Figure 8. The first print of the 3D printer with unfinished calibration.

 MATTER VOLUME 2 ISSUE1 4

REFERENCES

[1]http://3dprintingindustry.com/3d-printing-basics-free-
beginners-guide/history, 2015.

[2]http://www.space.com/29051-3d-printed-parts-from-
space-video.html, 2015.

[3]http://www.businessinsider.com/five-fields-3-d-
printing-is-already-transforming-2013-9, 2015.

[4]http://3dprintingsystems.freshdesk.com/support/soluti
ons/articles/4000003132-how-does-the-up-3d-printer-s-
print-head-extruder-work-, 2015.

Figure 9. Close-up view during printing. AUTHOR INFORMATION

Our homemade 3D printer is ready for development

for so much more as it is compatible with every kind of
customization and the limit is my imagination. Figure 8-10
show examples of complex pieces that were built using our
3D printer.

Baran Tunç is a junior METE student. His advisor for this

project is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Y. Eren Kalay from Metallurgical
and Materials Engineering Department. His academic
interests include 3D Printing, 3D modelling, mechanical
and chemical properties of materials, electronics, micro-
processor applications, software developing, system
communications. In his free time, he likes to build mecha-
tronics, drones and modify his car.

EDITOR’s NOTE:

You can watch a short-clip of Baran’s study by clicking on

the following link.

Figure 10. Drone-arm printed by our 3D printer.

CONCLUSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX6bpcX2LU4

We built a homemade low cost 3D printer which can

be adaptable to any CNC router. It uses PLA as the filament
source with a precision of 0.015mm. Further studies in-
clude the advancement to build polymer based composite
materials.