I designed and made a 3D printer… but not just for me. I sourced and tested all of the parts, obtained educational and quantity discounts, and shared a bill of materials with the MSOE bookstore to order enough for twenty-five printers (2016-2017). All of the custom parts were made from laser cut MDF, for which I assembled all of the part layout files and operated the laser. The printers were sold to students at just above cost $356 ($9 markup for the bookstore effort) and they were used for printing homework assignments for my first self-proposed technical elective - Design for Additive Manufacturing.

During the course students surprised me with how much they moved their printers around, some moving them to and from school daily. In preparing for the second offering of the course, I moved to machined aluminum parts for key motion and structural components so that students could move their printers without needing to recalibrate their printers. I also added alignment features to most parts to prevent incorrect assembly and expedite the process.

I created all the CAM programs, made a fixture for clamping material, and operated the vertical machining center. The second time around I sourced materials and parts for thirty-five printers (2017-2018) and through all of the improvements cut in-class-only assembly time from 3 weeks (v1) down to 2 weeks (v2).

During the process of designing v2, I obtained a grant from the Society of Plastics Engineers to purchase 4 of the printers so they could be used by any MSOE students. I developed an automated email system that downloads any .stl attachment from MSOE email addresses, slices the file for all 6 main rotation possibilities, and automatically starts the fastest printing option. This system saves considerable time from technicians needing to operate the printers and from significantly reduces print errors by enforcing print settings with higher success rates.

The original printers lasted for about 6 years and printed over 3000 parts for students automatically. While the printers were decommissioned in late 2023, the email system has been adapted to work with the ME department’s new Prusa mk4 3D printers.

Software used: Solidworks
Languages used: C++, Python