Making A Treadmill Into A 3D Printer

May 31, 2025 by 7 Comments

A treadmill-style bed can be a great addition to a 3D printer. It allows prints to be shifted out of the build volume as printing continues, greatly increasing the size and flexibility of what you can print. But [Ivan Miranda] and [Jón Schone] had a question. Instead of making a treadmill to suit a 3D printer, what if you just built a 3D printer on top of a full-size treadmill?

The duo sourced a piece of real gym equipment for this build. They then set about building a large-scale 3D printer on top of this platform. The linear rails were first mounted on to the treadmill’s frame, followed by a gantry for the print head itself and mounts for the necessary stepper motors. The printer also gained a custom extra-large extruder to ensure a satisfactory print speed that was suitable for the scale of the machine. From there, it was largely a case of fitting modules and running cables to complete the printer.

Soon enough, the machine was printing hot plastic on the treadmill surface, thereby greatly expanding the usable print volume. It’s a little tricky to wrap your head around at first, but when you see it in action, it’s easy to see the utility of a build like this, particularly at large scale. [Ivan] demonstrated this by printing a massive girder over two meters long.

We started seeing attempts at building a belt-equipped “infinite build volume” printer back in 2017, and it took awhile before the concept matured enough to be practical. Even today, they remain fairly uncommon.

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Gaze Upon This Omni-directional Treadmill’s Clever LEGO Construction

January 7, 2025 by 16 Comments

Want to see some wildly skillful LEGO construction? Check out [Banana Gear Studios]’ omni-directional treadmill which showcases not only how such a thing works, but demonstrates some pretty impressive problem solving in the process. Construction was far from straightforward!

A 9×9 grid of LEGO shafts all turning in unison is just one of the non-trivial design challenges.

In principle the treadmill works by placing an object on a bed of identical, rotating discs. By tilting the discs, one controls which edge is in contact with the object, which in turn controls the direction the object moves. While the concept is straightforward, the implementation is a wee bit more complex. LEGO pieces offer a rich variety of mechanical functions, but even so, making a 9×9 array of discs all rotate in unison turns out to be a nontrivial problem to solve. Gears alone are not the answer, because the shafts in such a dense array are a bit too close for LEGO gears to play nicely.

The solution? Break it down into 3×3 self-contained chunks, and build out vertically with gimbals to take up the slack for gearing. Use small elastic bands to transfer power between neighbors, then copy and paste the modular 3×3 design a few times to create the full 9×9 grid. After that it’s just a matter of providing a means of tilting the discs — which has its own challenges — and the build is complete.

Check out the video below to see the whole process, which is very nicely narrated and illustrates the design challenges beautifully. You may see some similarities to Disney’s own 360° treadmill, but as [Banana Gear Studios] points out, it is a technically different implementation and therefore not covered by Disney’s patent. In an ideal world no one would worry about getting sued by Disney over an educational LEGO project posted on YouTube, but perhaps one can’t be too careful.

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Here’s How That Disney 360° Treadmill Works

May 3, 2024 by 19 Comments

One thing going slightly viral lately is footage of Disney’s “HoloTile” infinite floor, an experimental sort of 360° treadmill developed by [Lanny Smoot]. But how exactly does it work? Details about that are less common, but [Marques Brownlee] got first-hand experience with HoloTile and has a video all about the details.

HoloTile is a walking surface that looks like it’s made up of blueish bumps or knobs of some kind. When one walks upon the surface, it constantly works to move its occupant back to the center.

Whenever one moves, the surface works to move the user back to the center.

Each of these bumps is in fact a disk that has the ability spin one way or another, and pivot in different directions. Each disk therefore becomes a sort of tilted wheel whose edge is in contact with whatever is on its surface. By exerting fine control over each of these actuators, the control system is able to create a conveyor-belt like effect in any arbitrary direction. This can be leveraged in several different ways, including acting as a sort of infinite virtual floor.

[Marques] found the system highly responsive and capable of faster movement that many would find comfortable. When walking on it, there is a feeling of one’s body moving in an unexpected direction, but that was something he found himself getting used to. He also found that it wasn’t exactly quiet, but we suppose one can’t have everything.

How this device works has a rugged sort of elegant brute force vibe to it that we find appealing. It is also quite different in principle from other motorized approaches to simulate the feeling of walking while keeping the user in one place.

The whole video is embedded just below the page break, but if you’d like to jump directly to [Marques] explaining and showing exactly how the device works, you can skip to the 2:22 mark.

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Hackaday Prize 2022: Treadmill Becomes Human-Powered Generator

September 3, 2022 by 11 Comments

Running on a treadmill is a great way to workout, but what if the effort you put in could be put to use? This treadmill generator from [Amitabh Shrivastava] does just that.

The build starts with a regular old treadmill, which has a motor inside typically used to power the tread. Instead, the motor’s control electronics were removed, and it was repurposed to work as a generator. The output from the treadmill’s DC motor was fed directly to a DC-DC converter. This was then fed to an inverter that generates 120 V AC, which can power appliances that use up to 20-25W based on [tinkrmind’s] running performance.

It’s a fun way to generate power during a workout. If you don’t want your treadmill’s monitor to die in the middle of a Friends rerun, you’ll have to dig deep on those long runs. We’ve seen similar builds before too, with exercise bikes being a popular method of generating electricity. In fact, that’s [Amitabh]’s next project! Video after the break.

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Drill press modded with a treadmill motor, speed controller, lights, and a tachometer.

Drill Press Runs Faster On A Treadmill Motor

September 9, 2021 by 20 Comments

Are you tired of the same old video style from your favorite content creators? We can’t say that we were, exactly. But nevertheless, we appreciate this creative departure from [Eric Strebel]’s regular fare as he soups up his drill press with an old treadmill motor and a few extra features.

First off, that commentator in the video is right — 2.6 horsepower is a crazy amount for a drill press. Fortunately, [Eric] also added a variable speed controller and a digital tachometer to keep things in check. As an added bonus, he no longer has to get under the hood and mess with the belts.

We like what [Eric] brings to the drill press motor mod, which is already well-documented on YouTube. We love the re-use of an office chair bracket as a new motor mount. It’s probably our favorite bit aside from the 2-color forward/reverse switch plate idea: print it in whatever letter color you want with proud lettering, paint the whole thing black, and sand off the letters so the color shows. Check it out after the break.

There are many ways to make your own drill press, and one of the easiest is to mount a hand drill.

Did you miss the Industrial Design Hack Chat with [Eric]? It’s okay, you can read the transcript over on IO.

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Treadmill To Belt Grinder Conversion Worked Out

October 7, 2016 by 33 Comments

[Mike] had a bunch of disused fitness machines lying around. Being a skilled welder, he decided to take them apart and put them back together in the shape of a belt grinder.

In particular, [Mike] is reusing the height-adjustment guide rail of an old workout bench to build the adjustable frame that holds the sanding belt. A powerful DC motor including a flywheel was scavenged from one treadmill, the speed controller came from another. [Mike] won’t miss the workout bench: Once you’re welding a piece of steel tube dead-center on a flywheel, as happened for the grinder’s drive wheel, you may call yourself a man (or woman) of steel.

The finished frame received a nice paint job, a little switching cabinet, proper running wheels and, of course, a sanding belt. Despite all recycling efforts, about 80 bucks went into the project, which is still a good deal for a rock-solid, variable-speed belt grinder.

Apparently, disused fitness devices make an ideal framework to build your own tools: Strong metal frames, plentiful adjustment guides, and strong treadmill motors. Let us know how you put old steel to good use in the comments and enjoy [Mike’s] build documentation video below!

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Low Budget Omnidirectional Treadmill

February 18, 2014 by 34 Comments

Omni-treadmill

Moving around in space is one of the major hurdles in virtual reality. A holodeck wouldn’t be much fun if you kept walking into walls.  [Gamnaught] is working on a simple solution to this complex problem with his budget omnidirectional treadmill. Omnidirectional treadmills have been around in various forms for a number of years. The idea behind them simple: allow a person walk in any direction without actually changing their position. This is a bit different from the unidirectional treadmill models found at the local gym. Some very complex solutions have been used to create omnidirectional treadmills, including multiple motors and computer control systems as can be found in the US Army omnidirectional treadmill.  [Gamnaught] kept it simple. He built a circular 2×4 platform 13-15 degree bowl. The bowl is covered with carpet, and the user wears furniture sliders on their shoes. The low friction of the sliders allows the user to walk, run, and even walk backwards on the platform. Bungie cords provide resistance so the user doesn’t walk off the platform.

The early results look promising. [Gamnaught] says the balance felt a bit weird at times and took some getting used to. Anyone who has spent time with the Oculus Rift or other VR systems will tell you – many aspects of virtual reality take some getting used to. The treadmill is still open loop, however [Gamnaught] hopes to add motion tracking with a Sixense STEM system. We think a OpenCV based system would work as well. We’ve also seen carpet sliders sold as a children’s toy to be strapped over regular sneakers. Going the toy route would avoid needing a dedicated pair of footwear for the treadmill. More build information can be found on [Gamnaught’s] Reddit thread on the topic.

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