When you tell someone today that you're building or modifying your own 3D printer, the first reaction is fairly predictable: why? You can just buy a Bambu Lab, take it out of the box, and start printing.
And if the only goal is to have a good tool for 3D printing, that really does make sense.
But my printer came from a very different time.
It All Started with the Graber i3
I bought the plywood frame for the Graber i3 quite a long time ago, well before I seriously started building the printer. For a while, it simply sat there waiting.
I finally started putting the whole machine together in early 2021.
Today, that doesn't seem like such a distant past, but home 3D printing has changed enormously in just a few years. Ready-made printers have become more affordable, faster, and much more convenient. Things that once had to be assembled, configured, and modified by hand now often work straight out of the box.
In 2021, things looked somewhat different. Ready-made solutions were noticeably more expensive, while building a printer yourself not only saved money but also gave you a machine that could be modified to suit your own needs.
And, of course, we don't take the easy way.
So that old set of plywood parts gradually started turning into a real 3D printer.
Why the Graber i3
The Graber i3 is one of many designs that grew out of the Prusa i3 architecture. Instead of a metal frame, it used parts cut from sheet material and assembled into a rigid structure.
In my case, that material was plywood.
By today's standards, this kind of construction looks rather unusual. Even inexpensive printers are now typically built from aluminum extrusion or around a metal frame, while a plywood 3D printer feels more like a reminder of the early RepRap era.
But that was also one of the strengths of projects like this: the printer could be built almost entirely from readily available components, while most of its parts could be replaced, modified, or made from scratch.
I already had the foundation. All that remained was to turn it into a working machine.
The Build
The printer came together gradually. The plywood frame, linear guides, bearings, stepper motors, belts, print bed, extruder, hotend, electronics — piece by piece, it began to look like a recognizable i3.
And almost from the very beginning, it was clear that a printer like this would probably never have a truly final configuration.
That's one of the defining features of DIY 3D printers: first you build a printer to print parts, and then you start printing parts to rebuild the printer itself.
My Graber i3 was no exception.
Continue reading: Graber i3: The Second Life of an Old 3D Printer