Cookie Baker 3D Printer

• A programmable 12"×12" XY gantry, built at 13 as an attempted 3D printer
• The motion platform worked; the extruder was never added, so it never printed anything
• Re-attempted in October 2014 with design modifications
• Its name was later handed down to the Cookie Cutter CNC, the 36"×36" sheet-metal machine I built in its honor

Problem

I wanted a 3D printer and could not buy one. In 2013 a hobby printer still cost more than everything I owned, so the obvious move was to build one — starting, sensibly enough, with the part that moves.

Solution

A programmable 12"×12" two-axis gantry: a threadscrew XY table driven by stepper motors under Arduino control, sized so a print bed and an extruder could sit on top of it later. It reached the point where it would trace a commanded path across its working area.

Results

The gantry moved. The extruder never got built, so the Cookie Baker never baked anything — it ended its life as a 2D plotter that had been designed for a third axis it never grew. I revisited the design in October 2014 with modifications, and made a 3D animation of it rotating to show the mechanism.

Lessons

This was where I learned that the interesting part of a machine is rarely the part you start with. Motion platforms are tractable — steppers, leadscrews, a controller loop. The extruder, with its thermal control and filament feed, was the actual project, and I had budgeted my attention as though it were an accessory.

Two years later I built the Cookie Cutter CNC — a 36"×36" sheet-metal CNC with a full C# toolpath stack — and named it in honor of this one. That machine is where the software, electronics, and the electro-discharge cutting head story live; the Cookie Baker is just the gantry that came first.