Wood You Build Your 3D Printer Like This?

When we think about modern technology, we envision materials like aluminum, stainless steel, and high-performance engineering plastics. And 3D printers are quintessential modern technology, so we associate them with those materials. But what if we’ve been thinking about it all wrong? Mitsu Makes decided to find out by building a 3D printer with a wood frame.

The idea here is easy enough to wrap your head around. Instead of building a frame out of the usual aluminum extrusion or steel, Mitsu Makes built his from good old fashioned dead tree.

That sounds crazy at first, because that beaver food is only good for furniture and humble abodes, right? Mostly yes, but also no. Wood is actually a fantastic material, because it is strong for its weight and its flex is beneficial in many situations.

But “flex” is not usually a word you want associated with a 3D printer frame. So, Mitsu Makes used thick solid wood (in glue-ups when necessary), cut on a CNC router and then sanded by hand. While that is technically still more flexible than both steel and aluminum of equal dimensions, it is very thick and shouldn’t flex at all during printing. Mitsu Makes also cheated a little bit by using steel backing plates in key locations, such as opposite the linear rails.

The rest of the build is pretty standard. It has a cross-gantry motion system with two steppers for the X and Y axes (four total), plus three steppers for the Z axis (like a Voron Trident). Those operate under the control of a BTT Manta M8P mainboard running Klipper. The bed probe is a Beacon, the extruder is a Sherpa Mini, and the hot end is a Dragon UHF. The heated bed is for a Voron Zero.

After tuning (input shaping, in particular, made a huge difference), the print quality is pretty amazing. From what I can see in the video, I’d say the quality is on par with any decent Voron build. That’s impressive, considering the frame is “inferior” wood.