Hey /diy/ I am rebuilding my Mendel90 3d printer frame. The creator of the mendel90 has variants made of acrylic,dibond, and MDF. Due to ridiculous price of acrylic and dibond and the fact I don't have a laser cutter I made mine out of MDF. And let me tell you do I fucking hate particle board more so than ever now. Practically every part that screws into the wood has stripped or become very loose. I plan to rebuild it using oak plywood. Now as far as I can tell no one has made the mendel90 (wood version) out of anything but MDF, is there a reason? The Plywood looks like it would hold screws much better although slightly more expensive, the creator mentions warping but would woodstain be fine? MDF is nice because its perfectly flat but as far as I can tell these boards are pretty damn straight. I think if I cleaned up the printer and stain it with a nice dark stain it would look really nice with some white ABS parts.
TL;DR Carpenter/Wood Expert opinion on using oak plywood for a relatively high tolerance 3d printer?
You're not supposed to screw into the wood. Use machine screws and nuts.
Also your MDF frame is better than acrylic.
Wood stain won't help with warping caused by plywood. It will warp no matter what you do.
>>991674
According to the Build of Materials the guy who designed it uses wood screws to go into the MDF
Will it warp even with indoor humidity and temperature? How badly? Minimal warping can be compensated with recalibration
>>991690
instead of rebuilding can't you just drill out the screw hole areas and pound in threaded inserts and machine screws. if everything else is fine with the machine and there are possible drawbacks to using plywood such as warping then it's probably easier to just fix the issue with the mdf, no?
>>991717
I mean I could but all the hardware is already there in wood screws if I were to replace every screw with machine screws and threads it would probably cost a lot and I would have to put in about 30 of them. Along with that it has been through the ringer and has holes all over it from me not using all the holes that came with the drill guide.
>>991734
Could you just drill through the MDF and put nuts/washers and machine screws/bolts in?
>>991739
I guess I could but a lot of them go through the bottom so I would need to have some sort of risers to make clearance for the bolts
>>991739
Is plywood really that bad though I would really prefer it to MDF
>>991744
Plywood is fine but screws would rip out in similar ways, I bet in a few years you'd be in a similar plave
They'd be better stuck through the layers of board and much worse on end pieces
>>991749
Ok I am going to go ahead and try the oak plywoood worst case scenario I pay $15 and redo the MDF frame.
For the future do you have any suggestions for a very stiff material that is relatively cheap, easily cut, and thin? I like acrylic but the amount I would need would cost over $100 dollars
