3D Printer from old printers

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3D printers is good way to learn Modern CNC controllers, Electronic, Electrical and Mechanical - Mechatronics. Even better is hacking into old hardware, now you learn all the more. So, here is my attempt to build 3D printers from old printers we have had in our houses for decades.

The aim is to utilise 3 old printers, every part possible from them and buy parts needed to be bought. So, frame of aluminium will naturally be bought out. I build a frame from aluminium, unfortunately I caught very light aluminium sections and they obviously failed to achieve stability, so opted for steel rectangle pipes welded together.

Motors can be controlled using the motor controllers from the printer. However, they turned out to be too much of a hassle for me, so opted for new Arduino Mega and RAMPS. But, those who are comfortable with electronics, may easily opt for Arduino along with controllers from the old printers.

Project Logs

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Action starts!
Ashish • 07/11/2015 at 07:41 • 0 comments

To build a 3D printer, you will need :
Bill of Material
1. Mechanical parts like linear rods, bearings, belts and pullies etc. The benefit with old DMP (Dot Matrix Printer) is that they are heavily built and are suitable for sturdy and rigid frame construction. For 3 axis you need 3 printers. Since, DMPs are heavy, I prefer inkjet for Z axis.
2. Electronics like controller, motors etc. - I opted for Arduino Mega and RAMPS for controller, ordered online but, still awaiting 3 weeks after order. So, once again, borrowed from friend for time being. Motors along with drive assembly was already there in DMP.
First step: went out to all my friends and my computer suppliers to collect old Dot Matrix printers. Could arrange 2 Dot matrix printers and 1 inkjet printer, in addition to my own stock of 1 DMP (Dot matrix printer) and few inkjet and laser printers, from my friends only. The computers sellers were asking ridiculous amount for old useless printers, for that amount, I would have got new parts for my project!
Here are the pix of all the junk that I collected