A hotbed I ordered before Christmas finally arrived, so I was able to start building a new 3D printer today.

The hotbed is 300mm squared, and the lead screws I ordered are 500mm long, so this printer is going to be quite large in comparison to the old one!

In the image, you can see the difference in dimensions. The old printer case was built around an Anet A8 printer which I had been changing and hacking at over the years. Most of the old printer case is unusable space. You can see for example that I have a roll of filament inside the case, and all of the electronics of the printer are inside it as well.

The new printer, though, has only 5cm margin around the hot-bed, and I will be able to use almost all space within the case.

The electronics for the new printer will not be inside the case, but will be mounted to its back on the outside. This is because electronics dont’ like getting very hot, and the point of an enclosure in a 3D printer is to keep the heat in.

It will be a few weeks before I can complete this project – there are still some parts to come. I am missing a PSU, for example, stepper drivers, and rails for the CoreXY part of the project.