3D printer in a briefcase

Check out my newly finished 3D printer in a briefcase, which owes much of it's design to the Smartrap. I went with 8mm rods throughout because that was what I had but I might switch to 6mm for X and Y to make it a bit lighter. The eventual plan is to swap out that large 30 amp power supply for something more compact so that I can fit a small spool of filament inside the case as well. At present, when I want to shift it I can either just cut the length of filament I want and put it loose in the case, or I can leave my 1kg spool attached and carry it outside the case (but with the power cable jammed in the case to prevent the closed case from kinking the filament). Most of the plastic parts are new designs and many of them will need a bit of refinement before I'll be happy posting them online. I'm particularly pleased with the extruder drive which passes the filament across the face of the stepper motor (between one of the mounting screws and the spigot) to keep the overall height of the extruder drive below 80mm. With the filament passing so low - I was able to devise a one screw layout to adjust the load on the extruder idler. There is good leverage and a bit of flex in the extruder idler arm, so no spring is required. All plastic parts are in PLA and steppers are sufficiently over-sized/under-driven that they don't get hot enough to be a problem. The E3D hotend is positioned so that the fan nestles between the Z axis smooth rods when the X axis is zeroed.

I was thinking I would implement auto bed levelling for this machine but I have since spent a bit more time levelling it manually and it has now printed a couple of larger area objects without problems so I probably wont bother.

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My Prusa Mendel i2 inspired Repstrap with welded steel frame: [youtu.be]
And my Smartrap derived Briefcase 3D printer: [youtu.be]

That's pretty cool, so was it just for the challenge of making it, or did you need a portable printer?

My other machine weights about 16kg and because of it's weight and size it is a struggle to carry from my car and up the stairs to a regular meetup I go to. It will also be handy if I want to take it on holiday or demo it anywhere away from home. I am thinking that there is room in my life for a total of three 3D printers 1) my original based on a Prusa Mendel i2 but much more rigid with a welded steel frame, 2) a portable machine that is light, compact and easy to take places and finally 3) a large format (definitely not portable) 3D printer for production work (mainly PLA models for investment casting). I have pushed my original machine to the max. on production jobs and the dedicated production machine will most likely be a bowden fed core x-y with a 400 x 400 x 400 build volume but with a cold bed for PLA only.

On reflection - the portable machine could have had a much smaller build volume because let's face it - if you are taking a portable machine somewhere to use for an afternoon, you'd be unlikely to do a print that will fill a 200 cubed build volume. When you are limited to a few hours - your prints will be physically small. In the end I figured that if I could usefully fit a 200 x 200 x 200-ish build volume inside the briefcase then why not. At the moment my portable machine has a larger build volume than my original one due to the 2nd extruder on that machine.

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My Prusa Mendel i2 inspired Repstrap with welded steel frame: [youtu.be]
And my Smartrap derived Briefcase 3D printer: [youtu.be]

That's cool... Honestly, I've just come to accept that I like building these things... The briefcase printer sounds like a cool idea, and I may try it as a future project.

So... Until the divorce (lol, just kidding) I guess there will always be another printer project for me...