Hangprinter Turns Anywhere Into Your 3D Printer

Unless you’re willing to piece something together, the size of your 3D prints is always limited to your printer’s work envelope. On the other hand, what if you got rid of the envelope entirely and made the room, gymnasium, or football stadium that it resides in into the printer’s frame?

This is the goal of Torbjørn Ludvigsen’s open source Hangprinter, which works in a similar manner to a cable-tethered skycam and can print extremely large structures with a precision of better than 1 millimeter. Although that kind of tolerance wouldn’t be suitable for everything, for applications stretching across several feet, it could be more than enough for what’s needed.

As shown in the video below, he’s able to produce what appears to be a lamp shade that’s then installed on top of a light! If you’re interested in this technology, you can support his efforts monetarily on Bountysource and check out the Hangprinter on GitHub.

[h/t 3ders]