Mitosis

Mitosis is a 3D printer than can self-replicate and print everything you need to build another 3D printer besides the electronics! I am the electrical project lead where I am in charge of configuring the custom Marlin firmware that our printer runs on, as well as wiring up the entire printer and all of its accessories.

Mitosis Printer

Marlin is open-source firmware built for 3D printers. There are many pre-configured binaries of Marlin that you can download online for specific printers, but since ours is custom, we had to define our own Marlin configuration. We first began by creating a base configuration that could control the 5 different stepper motors the printer used. One motor for the X direction, one for the Y direction, two for the Z direction, and one for the extruder. The video below shows us controlling the motors for the first time using Pronterface, which is another open-source software that lets you connect to and control your printer from a computer.

Link Coming

We then hooked up the X and Z motors to get a first glimpse at how the printhead moves around. The video below shows how shaky the printhead was, but we have fixed that in version 2!

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We then configured Marlin to enable the extruder heating up and did a first test of the extruder, which you can see below.

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Along with the main printer, we are also working on a ‘Filastruder” which is a machine that will take in plastic beads, and dispense filament that the printer can use. This is super cost efficient because you can buy 10kg of pellets for only $100, and if you bought 10kg of spooled filament, it would cost you upwards of $200!

We are currently working on Version 2 of the printer, where we are designing a custom control board along with major upgrades to the frame of the printer to make it more stable.