Idea: Ikea frame for a 3D printer

I'm thinking about designing my own 3D printer from scratch. After having built two Prusa Mendel I2's I'm looking for something a bit more rigid and a bit larger. I've been thinking about a design using aluminium extrusion but it's a bit hard to source where I live unfortunately. I've been looking into alternatives, and found this at Ikea:

[www.ikea.com]

It's a pretty nice rigid metal construction that can carry ~15kg of weight, the dimensions are near-perfect at 35x55x65cm, and it's pretty cheap at eur 20/$25. I'm thinking of mounting an xy core or h-bot construction at the top, with a moving print bed for the z-axis. The table has two horizontal bars both at the top and bottom, which are perfect for mounting the z-axis. I'm aiming for roughly a 30x30x55 print volume.

Since this would be my first design, I would like to hear any ideas, suggestions?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2014 01:02PM by fhuisema.

I have that exact Ikea side table. It is not the stablest of coffee tables. I think that the metal bars would flex too much for a printer.

That would make a good frame base for a DLP printer.

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As long as the aluminum tubing is fairly strong, it might be possible. I have built a 3D printer frame from outdoor solar light stands. It did require me to use a combo of metal brackets and printed brackets in the corners to strengthen the frame. That build was called the JunkBot and can be found here on the forums or by going to my site that is linked within my signature. Once I reinforced the frame it was super strong and worked great. being inspired by that build a guy in Australia built a junkbot out of display stands from his store. If you ever need any help with your build or have any questions please feel free to get a hold of me. As I'm always available to help a fellow builder and I have a lot of experience with building repraps out of all kinds of random materials.

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Assuming that the table arrives as a flat pack and needs to be assembled, why not just consider it a source of raw material and eliminate the assembly hardware and either:

1) have the frame pieces welded together
or
2) design a series of gusset plates to reinforce the corners that are through bolted on both sides of each corner.

Just a thought.

Hi guys.. I searched for this a week ago as we´ve already done one and I thought youd all want to have a look at it

We use OpenBuilds for the HBOT/corexy gantry and the rest is coming along fine.. and it´s SUPER CHEAP and super easy to assemble

www.3d-seed.com

glad i found this thread.

i'm developing a different ikea table bot. i think it might have a stiffer frame than yours.



it consists of 2 LINNMON table tops connected by 4 ADILS legs. its scalable to larger table tops but i went w/ the smallest 60 x 75 cm. i'm actually printing the leg mounts now and should have the XY finished sometime next week.



let me know if you want more details.

Cool, let us know how it turns out.

IKEA reprap

don't mean to hijack this thread... i'll start my own soon.

Love the design! Can you still use it as a table top? If you can, that would be PERFECT for my tiny apartment!

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greghoge.com

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i just had an epiphany. i don't really need the clamps around the table legs. the screw holes (5 of them) on the leg plates have a hole going 45 degrees towards the center of the table top. i made Z-axis bearing caddies for the upper motors for the lower motors to thread through and realized that i don't really need to make clamp mounts because of the plate holes.



not sure this is making any sense but i no longer need a lower tube frame to square up my 4 lower Z motors because i can design a similar NEMA base to attach directly into the plate. i might be able to do that for the top as well, but that needs the aluminum tubing for the bearings to slide across. it also means that my threaded rods would span the entire Z-axis and extruder implementation might get tricky.

again, i apologize for hijacking this thread... i'll make my own soon.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2015 11:05AM by fASE-2.