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Feb.7, 2012

If you have a desktop CNC machine and you wish to convert to a 3D printer, what items do you need to add to the CNC machine? Nuri Erginer, an industrial engineer with a CNC background, and a 3D printing enthusiast has written a tutorial helping people to convert their existing CNC machines to a 3D printer.

The differences between a desktop CNC machine an a 3D printer are the tool head and the heated build platform. CNC machines uses spindles but 3D printers use plastruder - hot plastic extruder.

With his CNC background Nuri views a plastruder as the 4th axis. So if you have a 3 axis machine you will need to add a 4th axis and an additional one axis motor driver so that it can be allocated to the plastruder. Besides you will also need to add a heated build platform, a hot plastic extruder, a temperature controller and temperature sensors for your project.

As to software, Skeinforge is a preferred CAM software for generating the G-code for 3D printers. Nuri made a modified version of Skeinforge for
switching G-code file with from letter "A" to letter "E" for 3D printer's extruder. It is available for download here. You can also download an Add-on for Mach3, a popular CNC software. This Add-on is written by Nuri and needs Microsoft .net Framework installed. It includes modified Skeinforge and after installation you can just click buttons to directly start 3D printing your objects inside Mach3.

Check out Nuri's detailed explanation and installation instruction for the process here. This project is Open Source Hardware and is licensed under the GNU GPLv3. This is an excellent idea and work to convert the CNC machine to a 3D printer.

"Dan Mauch" from www.camtronics-cnc.com shared a video and his mach3 and Slic3r software settings. Watch the video after the jump.

 

images credit/ Source: cnc2printer3d

Posted in 3D Printing Technology

 

 

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