In Autumn 2022, I designed my third experimental 3D printer. This one is for printing fabric for 3D printed fashion and for 3D printing Origami.
It is a scratch-built flatbed Cartesian printer with a build volume that is 640mm wide 480mm deep and just 44mm high. That’s 6 times the bed area of a typical desktop 3D printer like Prusa. It’s an experimental test rig, so there are no cosmetic details here, everything is modular and accessible. I designed a load of custom 3D printed functional parts and used 2040 Aluminium extrusions for the frame.
It features a E3D Hemera direct drive print head for flexible filaments, automatic bed levelling, Raspberry Pi 4, Octoprint, and Marlin firmware.
Some of the challenges were:
- Integration of the whole system took weeks – Mechanical, Electrical, Electronic, firmware and software.
- Creating a flat bed this size and automatic levelling.
- Cable management and wiring – connections take so much time.
- Klipper firmware was painful to set up… I got it working, but after too long spent battling with it, I ditched it in exchange for….
- Marlin firmware with a custom configuration.
- Calibration, configuration and optimising settings and print variables.
- Using Rhino, Grasshopper and a custom Prusaslicer profile to create the gcode.
More examples of things I have made with it are on my 3D Printed Origami experiments page.
I would like to collaborate with fashion designers on 3D printed fabric or clothing projects. If you are interested, contact me on Instagram or any other social media.