This Maker Spent Six Months Building a 3D Printer Out of Wood

Mitsu Makes spent six months on one of the more unusual 3D printer projects in recent memory. The result stands as a working machine with a frame constructed primarily from wood rather than the aluminum or steel common in most DIY and commercial designs. An interest in exploring alternative materials drove the effort. Standard builds lean heavily on rigid metals to maintain alignment under the forces of rapid movement and heating cycles. This project tested whether careful design and added supports could let wood succeed in the same role.

Cutting the first layer of wood was necessary, so he began with massive, thick solid wood stock and then put unique drawings through a CNC machine to create the frame components. Hand sanding was a labor of love that took seven hours to complete, as he needed to ensure a flawless fit and no flex in the finished structure. He used conventional wood glue as the primary bonding method for the frame and avoided using screws throughout the vital drying period to guarantee everything was secure. Clamps were needed to maintain the structure square for a few days, as he wanted to ensure that the enormous assembly did not warp. We didn’t begin staining until it was finished, and even then, he tested the finish on some spare pieces before applying it to the rest of the frame, top plate, steel backer sections, and bed mount.

Steel backing plates were utilized to reinforce the points where the linear rails met the wood. These were laser cut and pre-drilled by Justway, adding much-needed stiffness to the wood sections, which can be rather thin in places (about 3mm). The printer’s mobility is caused by a cross-gantry setup. We have two stepper motors for the X and Y axes, and a third for the Z axis, which powers the lead screws (150mm long). This gives us 110mm of vertical travel and the ability to automatically tram the bed, which is a game changer.

On the control electronics front, he went with a BigTreeTech Manta M8P board with Klipper firmware. This combination gave him various advanced tuning options and made it much easier to maintain the wiring clean. Regarding the toolhead, he modified an Annex Engineering K3 carriage and fitted a Dragon UHF hot end and a Sherpa Mini extruder, which is a wonderful piece of kit. He also has a Beacon RevH probe, which helps with accurate bed mapping.

Turning on the power gave him quick smooth mobility, as well as useful functions like auto homing, Z axis tilt adjustment, and entire bed mesh probing. His initial test prints, a Voron calibration cube, were quite impressive, and he refined things a bit to improve the output even more, but one thing that really stood out was how quiet the printer was running, as the wood helps to dampen vibrations, which is far superior to your average metal frame.
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