Wow, building a precision 3d printer is amazingly simple if you can get your hands on an industrial-quality robot arm. [Dane] composed in to tell us about this significant extruder printer made of an ’80s-era SCARA robot arm. It is capable of printing objects as big as 25″x12″x6.5″.
This 190 pound beast was obtained during a lab clean out. It was mechanically intact, however missing all of the manage hardware. building controllers was a bit of a difficulty because the it’s developed with servo motors as well as precision comments sensors. This is different from contemporary 3d printers which utilize stepper motors as well as no comments sensors. A working controller was developed up one element at a time, with a heated bed added to the mix to assist avoid warping with big builds. We like the Frankenstein look of the controller hardware, which was mounted hodge-podge as each new module was brought online.
You can see some printing action in the clip after the break. A Linux box takes a style as well as spits out manage directions to the hardware.