Home 3D Printer Fully Working 3D Printer Made with K’Nex Childhood Toy

Fully Working 3D Printer Made with K’Nex Childhood Toy

You may have already heard about 3D printers that were made of Lego or Lego-Technic. But there are also other building blocks out there, for example K’Nex. And exactly with these parts a student has now created a fully working 3D printer.

Mohammed Al Aryan is 19 years old and studies on the McMaster University in Ontario (Canada). As a part of a course he had used a 3D printer in a project and printed some of the parts he needed. After this experience the young student was astonished by the possibilities that 3D printing technologies open up. Following some research he decided to create ans build a printer for himself, the Prusa Mendel i3. After looking at some instructions how to build the printer he had an idea: Build it with K’Nex parts, because he had some of these parts. After more research he found out that there were not very much projects with K’Nex parts online and that motivated him even more.

The finished 3D printer has a print area of 100 x 140 x 105 mm and a size of 56 x 36 x 31 cm. For the movement of the extruder and the extruder itself, he used five Nema 17 stepper drives. He also used a GreenTech MK8 Extruder. The student got all parts for less than 250 Dollars.

There were several concerns I initially had, would I be able to properly mount an extruder onto K’Nex? and could K’Nex firmly hold NEMA 17 motors in stable positions? The answer was surprisingly yes to all and that is the beauty in K’Nex, there’s a thousand ways you can arrange these pieces. The trick is in figuring out which arrangement works best…Although it is not a printer I would yet use for professional prints, it’s still something I am really proud I was able to make. I learnt a lot through the process and had a great time working on it.

Of course a 3D printer made out of “toys” can’t wo miracles like printing organs or parts for jet engines. Anyway, it’s a big success for the student to create a 3D printer out of K’Nex parts and he was one was one of the first people in the world that have used these parts to build a 3D printer.


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