In this Instructable, [Wayne Mason-Drust] shares the step by step guide on how to make a cool, good-looking, 3D printer based on the Ikea LACK table. From an Ikea lantern weather station to a fully printed CNC based on an Ikea table, it’s almost safe to say that a 3D printer Ikea hack was overdue.
The idea to use a Ikea table as a base for a 3D printer first came to [Wayne] as he used this table to support other 3D printer he had working in his business. He realized that, even after five years of use, the table showed no signs of wear or distortion. So he decided to start to work on a 3D printer based on this precise table, the one that used to hold the printer.
[Wayne] stacked two together and named it Printtable (pun intended?). This open source, cartesian rep-rap 3D printer looks pretty slick. With a build area of 340mm X 320mm and 300mm on the Z axis and a price tag for the parts starting as low as $395, seems like a pretty decent 3D printer. With some work sourcing the parts, maybe it can be even lower.
Or we can just wait until Ikea starts selling them.
You can watch a working Printtable here, printing and looking good:
[Thanks Quick] [via IkeaHackers]
Good plan, I have this excessively metal framed dining chair I keep eyeballing…
Seriously?? That thing showed up on Instructables and Thingiverse about 6 months ago, and you only now find it? Rant aside, it’s a very nice implementation of a 3d printer, and something that I’d consider making myself.
Did you submit this to Hackaday?
“Ooh, this thing is cool. I wonder if I should submit it to hackaday… eh, nah, they probably already have had a bunch of people sending it in”
-Everyone, for months
I have a couple problems with the design. No heat bed, not hot end fans, and no support on the front side, something that really annoys me, since puts all the weigh on the back.
The original has since been upgraded to include a heated bed, bed levelling, and part cooling fans with a mention in the you tube videos of an enclosure.
There is a fan on the hot end – seems to be a e3d or clone. And a cantilever design is quite common.
Should have been more specific on the fan part. What I meant to say was, it needs a fan duct to cool the filament, which is something needed in PLA and in printing overhangs. Like this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:432726
$80 for the current STL files — and he calls that a “SMALL” fee! He sells the printed parts for $150.
Ridiculous pricing for STL files that you still have to print.
Nothing quite like building a business of closed source and pay-to-play from freely available open source designs.
An error I believe they was previously priced at £10.00
Price aside – I paid for it as I was in the middle of designing my own and got into a crisis. However, the design is horrible.
It uses welding to put the parts together for Y axis, uses a LOTS of bearings (6 INGUS per 1 side of Y axis, 12 in total), the design of X carriage is simply bad. The only thing I like is the design of the Z axis, but that’s about it.
I copied the cam-lock design of his based on the very first youtube video.
The worst thing? There is no reply on the email, the forum part is “coming soon” for 6+ months, there was no license attached to the files, yet the author claims it’s “fully open”…
So I went ahead and got back to the design of my own version.
It’s on github, if you’t like to check it (https://github.com/sanchosk/My-PrintTable).
So far, I have the X and Y working no problem, extruder works too, I have a problem with Z axis (wobbles like crazy as all the rods were just purchased at local Bauhaus and are simply unusable). Electronics is also way cheaper. The cam-lock system, on the other hand, is simply fantastic – I had to disassemble the top 10 times over (testing of new designs, etc.) and it is still rock-solid.
Is the lack table a good frame for a 3D printer?
I don’t know. I can only compare to my cheap i3 clone and conparing to it, it’s fantastic, sturdy enough and quite big.
Did I mention cheap and versatile?
At instructables you can download the stls for FREE along with build instructions.
That’s quite attractive.
This thing is a total oversell at best and downright shit at worst! The lack table is based on cardboard. It’s by no means stable enough to support a proper fast 3D printer. Just look at the print speed in the video: slow as a dead duck. Furthermore, one of the axis steppers is constantly moved together with the other axis. And to make matters worse, it also drags a direct extruder around. Have fun with all the ringing around corners.
And the Z-axis! Holy mother! It’s designed against all good practices for bearing placement, having unilateral support with far too short bearings for this terrible load imbalance. It’s either gonna kill the bearings, get constantly stuck and ruin the Z-smootheness or oscillate. Probably all at the same time. And than he charges money for stls? What the literal? Tar and feather him!
Could you recomend a home brew system? My son is asking for a 3d printer for his upcoming b-day, I can buy or build but would like to come in under $300. Not super coputer savy, but the mechanical is easy for me
Realistically anything at that price point is going to be pretty hard work getting set up, calibrated and actually printing.
Look for a hackerspace with a reasonable approach to children, attend a few open sessions to get a feel of what’s involved, and see if anyone will help you print out parts for something like a prusa i3 mk2, but be advised by the expertise available.
Do not expect to print anything you actually want to print for a good 20-30 hours of printing, and much much longer if you want quality results, multi materials, or complex parts.
3D printing has brought me lots of joy and experience, but the best thing to do if you want to actually print stuff is probably a replicator 2 clone, or the premium premades such as the lulzbot taz 5/6 or ultimaker 2+ / original +
All of the above is opinion. Your mileage may vary, but 3 months of membership and attendance at a good hackerspace worth more than $90 of failed printer construction
If he’s ok with a kit, printing out improvements (layer fan, some bracing) and a fair bit of tweaking (all good fun and a good learning experience) then the Tevo Tarantula is good. There is a lot of support via a Facebook group (community) so plenty of help available. Bought mine for $230 a few months ago,
I have a Reprap Prusa I3 3D Printer Kit from ALIexspress That is all I could aford as well. I am a good hacker so I got it going. Once going start ordering extra parts like fans, extruder stuff. Will not cost much for extra stuff. $25 dollars here and there every so often will get the extra stuff in no time. I am have problems with the soft ware now, not very good at software like I use to. and They are not help much. I know I will get it going again.
And I have printed off a sh%# load of stuff.
This was the best price at the time I was looking. And Look again for a better price. At this price rang you are going to get garbage but if your are smart you can get this garbage going good.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Acrylic-frame-RepRap-Prusa-i3-3D-Printer-DIY-kits-Desktop-3d-printer-with-detailed-install-video/32663740619.html?spm=2114.13010608.0.0.YChSP5
So In that price range You are going to be looking at a lot of hacking if things start going wrong.
But you know get your kid involved they are smarter then we give them credit for most of the time.
One more thing.
DON’T USE YOUR CREDIT CARD!!!!!!!
I use disposable credit cards, Always have and always will.
I use VIsa and mastercard. Never had problems with them.
I’ve heard good things about both the folgertech i3, and the monoprice prusa.
amazon has plenty of printers in that price range. some as kits, some as complete systems.
I just placed an order for this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HNMSTZU/
it’s not for xmas, but a co-worker got an 8″^3 print volume heated bed for $350..
browse some of the amazon options.
Mono price mini is about $230 on amazon. There are a few dvinchis in that range too.
As long as you / your son are fine with medium print speeds, Prusa i3 mk2 clones are the best deal for the money. I’d stay away from commercial printers which come assembled due to issues with later mods. A Prusa i3 can always be modded. The very best deal, if you can afford and have time to wait is the original Prusa mk2 from Prusa Research directly. They have gotten really good reviews for hassle free assembly and there are plenty of vids on youtube for the assembly.
Those be bushings, mate.
The whole design set up is not dissimilar to 3D systems Cube X and Cube Pro those printers print fast. And cost in excess of £2000.00 which is all closed down and proprietary. Even the filament cartridges which are a rip off.
Surely this design makes upgrading a breeze with multiple options for upgrading stability if required, switching to a Bowden setup etc. A big print area with swappable nozzles and filament sizes using the E3D titan with volcano.
The Lack table is a fine example on how through an advanced understanding of engineering you can take materials like paper, cardboard, hardboard and chipboard and create a product with extraordinary capabilities. There is a concept design on Thingiverse done in sketchup which you can download for free. Many of your concerns where actually dismissed early on. You can choose to throw the weight of a direct drive extruder with better retraction and ooze control or a light weight Bowden with problematic retraction and ooze settings. If you choose a printer with a Y Axis which moves backwards and forwards the inertia energy still has the same problems with speed which need to be compensated with jerk and acceleration settings.
look at the youtube channel you can see many examples of the printers speed and print quality.
98 dollar the .stl for that printer, LOL. Thingiverse has better printers designs for free. You can buy a Anet A8 (Prusa i3 based and has a decent modding community) kit for just about the same price he is selling just the 3D printed files for.
They are supposed cost £10.00 for the STLs and £80.00 if you purchase a set of printed parts directly from them.
ripoff anyway
£10.00 for many hours of CAD design is a ripoff?
Even if it was total rubbish its worth £10.00 to find out how not to do it and therefore easily worth £10.00.
It’s not like paying him for the CAD design, but purchasing a file that can be copied over an over. You seem to have some problems understanding open source. The whole printer is based on work by people who didn’t “sell hours of CAD design” but released it for free. And this unspeakable person now wants to make a quick buck from it with a shitty design.
The files are FREE and open source if you go to instructables to download. The website charge a small fee to download an upgraded set of stls for the S Series model which seems to address a lot of the issues you commented on. Check out the video link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiC9kV1TgKY
You can Download the files for free at this link.
http://www.instructables.com/id/PRINTTABLE-the-Affordable-Attractive-IKEA-Lack-Tab/step4/STL-Files-For-Download/
A friend of mine did this “compact” 3d-printer also based on some IKEA furniture
Here’s a few pictures of it (there’s also quite a lot of other interesting designs on this forum): https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usinages.com%2Fthreads%2Fikeah-bot.75371%2F&edit-text=
He also filmed it while he was testing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j51ONe0ey4
Nice build too. Your friend should put a fan on the hotend though to avoid clogging
Ok I liked it until I see there is a charge to download the stl’s. There is for instance this one :
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1752766
Hypercube has corexy design which is way better in the sense that you don’t need to drag the weight of 2 nema’s forward and back using the y motor and it’s free ;). You could also just put that design under a table instead of using aluminium rods : it’s just a matter of taking longer rods and belts and a small mod on the z-clamps at the bottom…
Also here you see the mechanics of hypercube are more than fast enough and it shows most pc usb connections can only support 45 mm/sec properly without errors and sd card printing to about 65 mm/sec before introducing errors. The machine (even a regular prusa reprap) easily travels 120 mm/sec so it’s not worth the effort in getting any faster if you’ve got an atmega based board like 90+% of all 3d printers currently around… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySqj3gPqfrs
If think this video shows a benchy being printed in 20minutes that seems fast to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3kbDXnTMos
This one is better and shows that it’s actually the usb not the corexy calcs that have the issue : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBZ7MfvAsGc. In other words printing with sd card is currently the best way to go…
My printrbot simple metal prints 80 mm/s with no issues! Same for TAZ4. Both 8 bit.
How would you measure slow, medium, fast and super fast?
What do think is a good build volume?
Could you attribute a price point to each of the features?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.