Maker Farm Prusa I3 Build

After doing the Wake Robotics build, we got the 3D printer bug pretty bad so I ended up looking for a reasonably priced DIY kit and decided to buy a Maker Farm Prusa I3. The I3 offers a simpler build than the previous iteration with better rigidity which translates (in theory at least) to faster and more stable builds.

When I ordered the lead time was a week with roughly a week for shipping (UPS ground from UT), however they managed to get it shipped out within a few days which meant we had a box full of printer bits nearly a week early. Due to Britton and I’s eagerness, we got almost zero pictures of the process, the few we did get are here.

The kit as sold with almost everything we needed, just had to pick up a power supply and some glass for the heated bed. I went with the Antec power supply recommend and a small sheet of glass from Lowe’s which I cut to fit. I also picked up a good soldering gun along with heat shrink tubing and other various useful bits since my supplies were low. Thankfully I’d ordered everything at the same time so we were ready to go when the kit arrived.

<rant>The only build instructions are in the form of YouTube videos. There’s a PDF provided with parts needed for each step along with links to the relevant videos and files. The videos aren’t bad, but I would have much preferred written directions with videos to supplement.</rant>

Overall the build process was pretty straightforward, however we were fresh off a similar build so most of it was pretty familiar. The videos do assume at least some knowledge of the printer type as well as terminology so we likely would have been a little lost otherwise. The build took us roughly 15 hours over the course of several late nights. It really should have taken us longer. Our haste ended up costing us more time once we started trying to get successful prints, but I’ll get into that more in another post. Britton and I had a blast doing the build, even managed to get Tiff and Blythe involved at a few points.