dari's tips n tricks

Hi there! This page is pretty much going to be a braindump of every useful thing I can think of to put here. Won’t be super organized but hopefully it should help

First and foremost: I’m basing this entire YSWS off of my experience with creating Neutrino, and it’s more or less what I’m looking for. It’s a good reference.

Generally useful stuff

Join the discords of people/groups who do custom 3D printers - they’re an insanely useful resource because they’re entire communities dedicated to a particular set of 3D printer designs
- VORONDesign
- Annex Engineering
- Rolohaun 3D
- Armchair heavy industries
- That being said, please be extremely respectful in these communities! Ultimately they’re still dedicated to their respective projects and we don’t want to invade / cause drama
Watch YT videos of people building 3D printers! Gives you a decent idea of how it all fits together
To that end, watch people doing experiments with 3D printing in general - it’ll give you some inspiration for what stuff you might want to try out in your printer. CNCKitchen and Thomas Sanladerer in particular are great ones.

Actually designing

First and foremost: PLAN!!! every single one of these steps will require research.
- Try and find a specific set of goals with your 3D printer. What do you need it to do to call it successful? I.e:
  - be enclosed
  - print exotic materials
  - be solar powered
  - under $X price.
- Write notes. Create mind maps. Look at what I initially did for Neutrino. Image here. Everything in there was largely done in a single sitting.
- Sketch out your design! Draw specific mechanisms, the overall design, etc. It doesn’t have to be perfect at all, but it should give you the right idea of what you want to do
Look at existing 3D printer designs and see what they do and how they come together. SO many of them are open source so it’s really useful. It’s alot and alot of research.
- Once you have an idea w/ sketches, approx measurements, etc, then you can start your CAD model! It’ll take a lot of trial and erorr. Neutrino had over 160+ savefiles
You can reuse 3D models for off-the-shelf components from other projects to avoid redesigning them. (screws, linear rails, etc).

Sourcing parts

The VORONDesign sourcing guide is the singlehandedly the best one out there IMO
The Annex Engineering Souricing guide is also really useful
Try to also look at the BOM of other 3D printers and look at where they sourced their parts - it can save you a ton of time digging for prices. Feel free to use Neutrino!
In general with these lists, it’s moreso where they’re getting their parts then what specifically. I.e if they link a 200mm rail but you need a 150, if its from the same place the quality should still be pretty good!

Resources

DIY 3D printer designs