Plywood 3D Printer

July, 2019

During my sophomore summer, I worked to develop 3D printing technologies at Formlabs. The company has an annual hackathon, and our office decided to utilize the three days to create a wood laminated sheet printer. This idea came from a simple desire: a wooden benchy. For those who don’t know, a benchy is a test part used in 3D printers to benchmark their performance.

The overall project was documented well by the video below, by Hackaday, and by Arduino.

I helped to design the Z axis, which was capable of continuously raising and lowering up to ~350lbs of plywood and apply additional pressing force to bond together sheets. We used four lead screws chain driven by a single large stepper.

I also designed parts for the XY gantry. The gantry uses extrusion and V wheels for the linear guides and stepper motors and lead screws for the actuators.