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Topic: Printer enclosure. (Read 1623 times) previous topic - next topic

Printer enclosure.

This is an overview of my ongoing 3d enclosure project. It is nowhere near complete and probably never will be.

It started off with an Anet A8 printer which I got as a kit from Gearbest.
It took about 8 hours to assemble due to my OCD which meant that everything was squared multiple times as it was assembled.
Unfortunately the printer only printed for 20 minutes due to a faulty main board which was diagnosed to have a faulty y-axis stepper controller. Gearbest replaced the board with no issue but this meant a further wait of 10 days to get up and running.

During that time a plan formed to build an enclosure. I ordered the parts I thought I would need and made the decision to use 3 Ikea Lack tables which I bought for €7 each.



The table legs were too short so risers were needed to make enough vertical room for the printer.

The sides ended up being plywood as acrylic sheeting was working out ridiculously expensive.

I decided to move the power supply outside of the enclosure to reduce the chance of it overheating. This required hangers to be designed. I also printed a terminal cover for the PSU and installed a switch.


A Raspberry pi zero w was also fitted with a camera and I remixed a design from thingiverse to mount this. Octopi was installed and set up to allow access and monitoring remotely, even from mobile networks.


I installed a surge protected power point which also has 2 amp usb sockets, allowing the pi to be run without a separate adapter.

I bought and fitted a set of colour changing led lamps which were originally designed for under counter use.

Finally, I ran all the cables through some trunking I had in the house to keep everything tidy inside the enclosure.

As it is I am reasonably happy with it. Future plans involve a door, filtration system and filament storage system on top of the enclosure.