3C Printer Enclosure
I have three printers one is a nice little Hictop Pruser i3 clone, like in the picture below.
It’s in my bedroom, well was in my bedroom because I wanted to move it to the living room where it might be better appreciated. 3D printers should be on view to all and sundry because they are a great talking point.
“What’s that?” It’s a 3D printer! “Blimey, what’s a 3D printer? Well, funny you should ask!
Obviously, it doesn’t come with an enclosure and I had been looking for an idea to bring it into the living room but not just plonked down anywhere. Instead, I wanted to put a little bit of thought into it first. I bumped into a couple of posts on the web form clever types who had taken the idea a little further. So, I decided to create my own using the same general idea.
If you want to do something along the same lines I hope this post will help you.
First off, you need to web over to IKEA and look for the “Lack” table. Available in a multitude of shades.
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/tables/coffee-side-tables/lack-side-table-black-art-20011408/
It’s five old English pounds and great value for what you get. You will need two of these, so all together that’s £10 for the tables.
Next, you will want to 3D print four leg holders that you can screw to the top of the bottom table. These will hold the table you’re putting on top, in place and makes it much more study and keeps it from moving around.
In my case, my Hictop printer was about 43cm high (that’s 17inches in old money) and the tables were shorter than this. So, I made some inserts to drop into the plastic cups to raise the table up enough, so I had enough room for my printer to fit in.
Once you have printed them, line up the leg holder at the four corners of the bottom table. Then drill two small holes in the bottom of the holders. You don’t need to make them too big. I think you could probably get away with one say in the middle, but the legs are secured with a large screw type fastener right in the centre and I didn’t want to fall foul of trying to compete with that. Hence, I decided to put two either side of the centre.
Once you have screwed these in you are just about done. If you need to make leg extenders pop into Tinkercad and make some. If you want mine and the corner leg locators I made for the Lack table legs, you can download them from here. I zipped them up for you, i’m helpful like that. Leg_extender
I did take the spool holder off the printer because that was way to high otherwise. Below is the printer in place, I will do the rest of the build as soon as I order the rest of the parts.
Things left to do include, getting four bits of clear acrylic to make the sides. I will hinge the one on the front to make a door. I will also get some LED lights to put inside the enclosure and mount Raspberry Pi running Octoprint with a camera so I can capture a time lapse of my prints. Would like to stick a temperature indicator to the door as well if possible.
Soon as I update the build I will add it to this post to show you how it’s coming along.
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