CoreXY 3D Printer Has A Scissor-Lift Z-axis So It Folds Down!

October 19, 2025 by Dave Rowntree 25 Comments

We don’t know about you, but one of the biggest hassles of having a 3D printer at home or in the ‘shop is the space it takes up. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could fold it down? Well, you’re in luck because over on Hackaday.io, that’s precisely what [Malte Schrader] has achieved with their Portable CoreXY 3D printer.

The typical CoreXY design you find in the wild features a moving bed that starts at the top and moves downwards away from the XY gantry as the print progresses. The CoreXY kinematics take care of positioning the hotend in the XY plane with a pair of motors and some cunning pulley drives. Go check this out if you want to read more about that. Anyway, in this case, the bed is fixed to the base with a 3-point kinematic mount (to allow the hot end to be trammed) but is otherwise vertically immobile. That bed is AC-heated, allowing for a much smaller power supply to be fitted and reducing the annoying cooling fan noise that’s all too common with high-power bed heaters.

Both ends of the cable bundle are pivoted so it can fold flat inside the frame!

The XY gantry is mounted at each end on a pair of scissor lift mechanisms, which are belt-driven and geared together from a single stepper motor paired with a reduction gearbox. This hopefully will resolve any issues with X-axis tilting that [Malte] reports from a previous version.

The coarse tramming is handled by the bed mounts, with a hotend-mounted BLTouch further dialling it in and compensating for any bed distortion measured immediately before printing. Simple and effective.

As will be clear from the video below, the folding for storage is a natural consequence of the Z-axis mechanism, which we reckon is pretty elegant and well executed—check out those custom CNC machine Aluminium parts! When the Z-axis is folded flat for storage, the hotend part of the Bowden tube feed is mounted to a pivot, allowing it to fold down as well. They even added a pivot to the other end of the cable bundle / Bowden feed so the whole bundle folds down neatly inside the frame. Nice job!

If you want a little more detail about CoreXY kinematics, check out our handy guide. But what about the H-Bot we hear you ask? Fear not, we’re on it.

A blue and white, 3D printed rose sits on a black surface with a fuzzy tan background behind it.

Thermorphs: Self-Folding 3D Prints

February 27, 2025 by Navarre Bartz 3 Comments

Prints separating from the build plate or warping when you don’t want them to is a headache for the additive manufacturer. [CNC Kitchen] walks us through a technique to use that warping to our advantage.

Based on a paper by researchers at the Morphing Matter Lab at UC Berkeley, [CNC Kitchen] wanted to try making 3D printed objects that could self-assemble when placed in hot water. Similar to a bimetal strip that you find in simple thermostats, the technique takes advantage of the stresses baked into the print and how they can relax when reaching the glass transition temperature of the polymer. By printing joints with PLA and TPU layers, you can guide the deformation in the direction you wish, and further tune the amount of stress in the part by changing the print speed of different sections.

[CNC Kitchen] found that Hilbert curve infill slows the printer down sufficiently to create relatively stress-free sections of a print to create flat sections which is an improvement over the original researchers’ all TPU flat sections with respect to rigidity. We’ve covered how to reduce warping in 3D prints, but now we can use those techniques in reverse to design self-assembling structures. These parts, being thermoplastic, can also be heated, reformed, and then exhibit shape memory when placed back into hot water. It’s very experimental, but we’re curious to see what sort of practical or artistic projects could be unlocked with this technique.

We’ve seen a few other interesting techniques with folded objects like laser cutter origami, some flat-to-folded 3D prints that might be interesting to try with this technique, and also folded hybrid mechanisms made with laser cutting and 3D printing.

Continue reading “Thermorphs: Self-Folding 3D Prints” →

Printable Keyboard Dock Puts Steam Deck To Work

February 19, 2024 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

Whether or not you’re into playing video games, you have to admit, that the Steam Deck is a pretty interesting piece of hardware. We’ve seen hackers jump through all sorts of uncomfortable hoops to get Linux running on their mobile devices in the past. The fact that you can pick up a fairly powerful x86 handheld computer right now for a reasonable amount of money is certainly exciting. The Linux steam deck gets even more enticing when you consider the software support it enjoys thanks to its large and vibrant user community. No wonder we’ve started to see them dotting the workbenches during Hackaday Supercon.

If there’s a downside, it’s that the Steam Deck was very clearly designed to be a handheld gaming system, not a portable computer. Sure you can plug in an external monitor and keyboard, but things can quickly become ungainly. This is why a printable dock from [a8ksh4] caught our eye.

It’s officially designed to let you mate the Steam Deck with the Corne keyboard, a split ergonomic design that’s graced these pages a few times in the past. [A8ksh4] has included links for all the hardware you’ll need outside the printed parts, from the hinges and keyboard PCBs, all the way to the keycaps and stainless steel screws. If you’re looking for a turnkey experience, this is it.

Continue reading “Printable Keyboard Dock Puts Steam Deck To Work” →

Sundial Collection Is 2D Printed

February 5, 2023 by Al Williams 3 Comments

We see a lot of clocks, and many of the better ones have some 3D printed elements to them. But [Carl Sabanski] shows us his kits for making sundials for either hemisphere using a conventional printer (you know, one that puts ink on paper), some styrofoam, and possibly some other materials like wire coat hangers, threaded rods, thumbtacks, glue, and different papers like transparencies or card stock.

In all, there are 21 different kinds of sundials. Some are pretty standard-looking fare, but there are others, like the pinwheel equatorial sundial or the cycloid polar sundial, which might be surprising. One even uses a CD as a kind of indicator.

Continue reading “Sundial Collection Is 2D Printed” →

Laundry Bot Tackles The Tedium Of T-Shirt Folding

January 30, 2022 by Dan Maloney 13 Comments

Roomba aside, domestic robots are still in search of the killer app they need to really take off. For the other kind of home automation to succeed, designers are going to have to find the most odious domestic task and make it go away at the push of the button. A T-shirt folding robot is probably a good first step.

First and foremost, hats off to [Stefano Pontoglio] for his copious documentation on this project. Not only are complete instructions for building the laundry bot listed, but there’s also a full use-case analysis and even a complete exploration of prior art in the space. [Stefano]’s exhaustive analysis led to a set of stepper-actuated panels, laser-cut from thin plywood, and arranged to make the series of folds needed to take a T-shirt from flat to folded in just a few seconds.

The video below shows the folder in action, and while it’s not especially fast right now, we’ll chalk that up to still being under development. We can see a few areas for improvement; making the panels from acrylic might make the folded shirt slide off the bot better, and pneumatic actuators might make for quicker movements and sharper folds. The challenges to real-world laundry folding are real, but this is a great start, and we’ll be on the lookout for improvements.

Continue reading “Laundry Bot Tackles The Tedium Of T-Shirt Folding” →

Remoticon Video: Making Glowy Origami With Charlyn Gonda

December 21, 2020 by Kerry Scharfglass No comments

Hacking is about pushing the envelope to discover new and clever ways to use things in ways their original designers never envisioned. [Charlyn Gonda]’s Hackaday Remoticon workshop “Making Glowly Origami” was exactly that; a combination of the art of origami with the one of LEDs. Check out the full course embedded below, and read on for a summary of what you’ll find. Continue reading “Remoticon Video: Making Glowy Origami With Charlyn Gonda” →

Robot, Sudo Fold My Laundry

July 22, 2020 by Al Williams 11 Comments

[Ty Palowski] doesn’t like folding his many shirts. He saw one of those boards on TV that supposedly simplifies folding, but it does require you to manually move the board. That just won’t do, so [Ty] motorized it to create a shirt folding robot.

The board idea is nothing new, and probably many people wouldn’t mind the simple operation required, but what else are you going to do with your 3D printer but make motor mounts for a shirt folding machine? The folding board is, of course, too big for 3D printing so he made that part out of cardboard at first and then what looks like foam board.

Continue reading “Robot, Sudo Fold My Laundry” →