Building the Printrbot Simple

Last year, shortly after building my first 3D printer, I came across a tweet from Printrbot about an opportunity to test a new printer called the Printrbot Simple. The Simple was particularly attractive because it was small enough to be portable and it was only $250 for complete a beta tester kit.

The build process is seen in the images below and was fairly straghtforward with one exception: it was rather difficult to get the flexible tubing onto the z-axis threaded rod. The Simple worked decently, although the y-axis started to sag as time went on and the flexible tubing on the y-axis motor compressed which led to drift during prints. Ultimately, the Simple was disassembled and its parts were reused to create the 3DR Simple Delta!

One quick aside before getting to the pictures below. If you’re reading this because you’re building or commissioning your own Printrbot Simple Beta, I recommend taking a look at Zheng’s great ‘Calibrating the Printrbot Simple’ post.

Box full ‘o Printrbot Simple parts
Lasercut frame parts along with some linear bearings
X-axis bearings and z-axis motor installed
X-axis motor installed
Controller board installed
Z-axis smooth rods installed
X-axis platform installed
Build platform installed
Y-axis motor installed
Y-axis frame
Build completed!
First test print – success!

The time lapse video below demonstrates a sample print on the Printrbot Simple Beta v1.


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Pierre Baillargeon

Pierre Baillargeon is an engineer from South Florida who holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering, having graduated from Florida Atlantic University in August of 2005. Pierre currently works as a Robotics Engineer at a non-profit biomedical research organization and is known to enjoy photography, gadgets and skillfully constructed pizza.

1 Comment

  1. Pingback: House of Engineering Funk – Building the 3DR Simple Delta

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