Neat 3D Printer Hack Makes Printing Multiples Possible

One of the promises of 3D printing is that you can mass produce objects at home, printing out multiple copies of whatever you want. Unfortunately, the reality is a bit different: once you have printed something out, you usually need to remove it manually from the print bed. Unless you are [Replayreb], that is: he’s come up with a neat hack to remove a print from the print bed by using a custom bit of G-code to move the print head to knock the print off, into a waiting box.

[Replayreb] came up with the idea because he sells Lightsabre pen caps on Etsy, and wanted to automate the printing as much as possible. So, he wrote a short piece of G-code that keeps the print bed warm, moves the print head close to the print bed and moves it up. knocking the print off the bed. He also came up with a short Windows script that loads the print G-code, adds the extra code to knock it off and creates multiple copies of both. Set this printing, and the printer will produce multiple copies of the object automatically.

This method has its limitations, though: it will only work with tall, thin prints like the Lightsabre of [Replayreb] that have a small surface area that will come off the print bed cleanly when pushed.  The print also has to be set to print near the edge of the print bed. So, it will require some tweaking and practice to work for each different print.

Back in the good old days, Makerbot did produce a belt print surface to do something similar, and we have seen a number of similar ideas in the past, but both of these require extra hardware. This approach uses the printer itself, and doesn’t need anything but a bit of G-code cleverness.