Pandaprint - A 3D Printer from Scratch

July 30: Pandaprint is born (~3 hours)

Alright, so here we go again.

Since Outpost ended recently (I wasn’t able to go 😭), I’ve been waiting 2 weeks for the forms to reopen or Stardance to start so I can get Stardust and funding for my other projects.

I’m slowly losing hope, and complaining about it all the time isn’t gonna help, so I needed a new project before I went insane and/or spiraled into depression.

Unfortunately, I had no ideas.

I kept gravitating towards another cyberdeck or dashboard thingy, but I was getting bored of those. Then I came across the videos from Outpost.

There were SO MANY 3D PRINTERS.

I’ve always wanted one of my own—until now I’ve only ever used the one at my makerspace—so this became my next project.

The first thing I did was ask in #infill (an old Hack Club event where people built 3D printers) and got a ton of help from @anicetus and @java (shoutout to them!).

Then I watched about 4 hours of YouTube videos on how 3D printers work and how to build them. The best one was Dr D-Flo’s 2½-hour marathon, which explained everything really well. After that I watched a few build videos and browsed the Voron Trident and Legacy for inspiration.

Then came planning:

• I chose a CoreXY design, where the toolhead moves in X/Y and the bed moves vertically.
• For the frame, I went with 2020 aluminum extrusions, roughly the size of a Voron Trident, with overall dimensions of 500 × 350 mm (not the print volume).
• I also decided on linear rails for the gantry instead of rods.

I’m leaving things like the extruder, toolhead, motors, and hotend for later after more research and asking around on Slack.

With the planning done, I downloaded models from similar printers and started designing my own frame.

At first I planned to use visible corner connectors, but I didn’t really like how the little cubes looked, so I switched to hidden internal connectors instead.

After aligning the extrusions, I added the gantry rails and borrowed some feet from another printer.

Here’s the result after day one.

Tomorrow I’ll add the corner brackets that support the gantry (the devil’s in the details… and in my touchpad 😭) and hopefully start on either the printhead or bed movement system. I’ve also got a lot of personal stuff to do, so we’ll see.

To whoever’s reading this, goodbye!

July 31: Frame revision (~2 hours)

I spent a bit more time revising the frame. I changed the dimensions to 500 × 370 mm, which meant redesigning basically everything and took way longer than expected.

I also did some visual tuning and decided to go for an all-black theme. I swapped the extrusion model for a black one (I’ll probably just spray-paint the real extrusions since I’m not sure if black ones are easy to buy).

Finally, I adjusted the feet, made everything match the theme, and added the corner brackets that actually support the gantry.

Next up: the Z-axis motion system. That’ll be tomorrow!