Kaero Posted December 31, 2020 Posted December 31, 2020 Lego Boost + 3D Pen = Lego 3D printer! Lego Boost provided 3 motors to control 3 axis movements and a 3D pen provided the filament extruder. The precision of the printer was much better than diameter of the filament thanks to the Boost motors with angle positioning. The precision could be substantially improved by building proper carriage movement by a real master builder. I had no additional motor to switch on and off the 3D pen extruder, so the 3D pen is set to continuous mode. Thus only simple objects can be printed. The printer was a learning project for my 8 years old kid. He learned how 3D printer is built, how it works and how it is programmed. He was able to program motor movements to 3D print simple pencil stand. It is quite hard to program every motor movements to print some object. Many free and open source applications are available for conversion of digital 3D objects into G-codes, i.e. motor movement commands. This way someone could make a full feature Lego 3D printer. Quote
J_A_C Posted October 10 Posted October 10 Dear Kaero Your project looks great. Actually I am about to try something similar. Would you be willing to share some of your results? You write about "free and open source applications are available for conversion of digital 3D objects into G-codes," and I have no idea where to search and how to start. On the other hand I would be interested in more details, how you built it. It would be great, if you could share your learnings. Best regards, Andi Quote
Kaero Posted October 13 Author Posted October 13 Hi, unfortunately all I have got to this project is what you can see in the video. It was purely sit and build project with my kid without any planning or making notes. The important thing is to make the structure sturdy, because when the 3Dpen moves and stop it could cause vibrations. Also the wheels I have used are not the best, I belive the Technic, Gear Worm Screw 6L 73763 would make the best solution for movement in all three axes. Maybe next time I would try to move only the table in all three axes, moving the 3Dpen is bad because it is heavy and it is not a lego piece. Also I would open the 3Dpen, install some electric switch outside and controll the extrusion directly. The programming using Boost environment is useful only for kids. If I would do it myself I would use e.g. PyBricks and python scripting. Find some software to convert 3D stl file into gcodes on computer. I cannot recommend one now, but googling results in several softwares. Write pybricks script that implements gcodes into movement of three motors. Load gcode and run. Something like this. Start with minimum. Make the MOC, and try to print simple line in one axis. Improve. Persist! I hold all my fingers for you :) Quote
Toastie Posted October 13 Posted October 13 1 hour ago, Kaero said: Start with minimum. Make the MOC, and try to print simple line in one axis. Improve. Persist! I hold all my fingers for you :) @Kaero: I so love this council. I try to teach this very approach every day in class, in the lab, in private (when appropriate, of course). I also love your immediate reply - after 4 years of posting the original content. It tells a lot about this forum and its community. What a fantastic marvel. @J_A_C: Welcome to EB! Once you get started - with whatever you have available - making some progress, post here again! Pictures/photos (you should upload to any such hosting services and simply link here, as EB does not host such media), whatever comes to mind. And then unleash the wisdom of the community here! All the best Thorsten Quote
2GodBDGlory Posted October 14 Posted October 14 On 10/10/2025 at 3:27 PM, J_A_C said: Dear Kaero Your project looks great. Actually I am about to try something similar. Would you be willing to share some of your results? You write about "free and open source applications are available for conversion of digital 3D objects into G-codes," and I have no idea where to search and how to start. On the other hand I would be interested in more details, how you built it. It would be great, if you could share your learnings. Best regards, Andi I think what he means by an object to gcode converter is what is usually called a slicer in the 3D printing world, i.e. Orca Slicer, Prusa Slicer, or Ultimaker Cura. I'm not sure how getting Lego to understand gcode would work, but a slicer would be the first step! Quote
Kaero Posted October 18 Author Posted October 18 Ah, yes, slicer - different fields use different terminology. Gcodes can define many things, but for 3D printing only few are important. E.g. this code: G1 X0 Y0 F2400 ; move to the X=0 Y=0 position on the bed at a speed of 2400 mm/min So for a new 3D printer, it should be straightforward to translate this Gcode into motor movements. Of course one have to measure the speed, e.g. do the calibration or calculate gear ratios. Web page like this should help a lot: https://www.simplify3d.com/resources/articles/3d-printing-gcode-tutorial/ Maybe there are already some libraries with gcode parsers usable for any general 3d printer? One would have to search. Quote
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