My DIY 3D Printer Frame (2 of 9)

The place to start was the DIY 3D printer frame. Everything else is attached to the frame and so it was the obvious choice.

More Parts

I was hoping to see some quick progress at the beginning of this project and that’s what happened with the frame. The parts are in metric sizes so they are a little harder to find around here. Our Menard’s doesn’t carry them, but a local Fastenal store did have a limited selection. I picked up:

4 – M6 x 1 meter threaded rods (basically a long bolt)
100 – M6 hex nuts
100 – M6 washers
20 – M6 Nylon lock nuts

I was able to cut the threaded rods to the right length using a Dremel with a cutting wheel. (I put red tape around the threaded rods to mark where to cut. You can see the red on the ends of some of the rods in the picture.)

My DIY 3D Printer Frame

I picked out the plastic pieces that I would need for the frame and put them on the table with the threaded rods, nuts, and washers. My sons helped and we made the two triangles that form the sides of the frame. Connecting the triangles was a little more time consuming. Tho top part is easy – it’s just two rods holding the triangles together – but the rods at the bottom front and rear have several smaller parts. The main problem here is making sure things go on the threaded rods in the right order. There is always a washer between a plastic piece and a nut. I needed to find references on the internet to make sure the pieces were in the right order and oriented correctly. If you look at where all of the nuts are on the reds, you can imagine that it took some time to spin all of those nuts to get them to the right place on the threaded rods. We were ready to be done with that part. It wasn’t until later that we realized we could have used a cordless drill to spin the rod while holding the nut. That would have saved some time.

If you look at where all of the nuts are on the reds, you can imagine that it took some time to spin all of those nuts to get them to the right place on the threaded rods. We were ready to be done with that part. It wasn’t until later that we realized we could have used a cordless drill to spin the rod while holding the nut. That would have saved some time.

That’s my DIY 3D printer frame so far. It needs some adjusting – the base needs to be square and the sides should be equilateral triangles. More about that later.