This 3D Printer Was Designed from the Ground Up to Be Truly Portable

Portable 3D printers are nothing new—a lot of makers want the ability to take their printers with them to events, after all. But, the vast majority of portable 3D printers on the market are simply small models that have a limited print area in order to reduce their size and weight. John Diamond wanted a 3D printer that was portable without sacrificing print area or usability, so he designed his own.

The printer is called the Bergen Makerspace Transportable 3D Printer in honor of the hackerspace Diamond belongs to, and which helped him with the build. The design is a variation of the extremely popular RepRap Prusa i3, which most 3D printing enthusiasts are familiar with. Because the Prusa is open source, Diamond was able to adapt the design to his own needs.

In this case, that meant switching to an aluminum extrusion frame and making it foldable. The entire upright portion of the printer (the Z axis) can be folded down and locked into place, making it flat and compact. Once it’s be folded, it can be stowed in a custom, rigid plastic carrying case for safe transport.

The entire thing was designed in Autodesk Fusion 360, which allowed Diamond to also learn the new CAD software throughout the project. As you can see from the high-quality renders, he was definitely successful in that pursuit. Subsequently, all of the CAD design files are available for you to use yourself if you like, and Diamond has even provided the BOM, firmware, and a detailed build log to help you make your own Transportable 3D printer.