Development and Design of a Cylindrical 3d Printer

3D printers offer many possibilities in manufacturing and prototyping. While being able to print complex structures, the most common Cartesian 3D printers lack the ability to print mechanically durable rotationally symmetric parts, such as pipes with fine surface quality. In this study a solution for this problem is presented by designing and building a 3D printer where traditional planar printing surface is replaced by a rotating cylindrical surface (mandrel). Challenges brought by this change included proper alignment of the axes, removal of printed pipe from the mandrel and designing a proper structure for the printer. Consideration was also required in programming the printer and printing different patterns for each printed layer. The resulting pipes were strong and they had better surface quality than similar Cartesian printers.