Show HN: I designed my own 3D printer motherboard
7 comments
·December 6, 2025bb88
Really cool.
I found myself traveling recently and missed my 3d printer. There were a few neat things I could have done if I had a printer in a carry on. It would be kinda awesome to have a self contained 3d printer with a battery to take wherever I go.
If you're near a harbor freight, they have cheap rugged cases. Maybe design around that form factor, since they're easy to get?
kaipereira
That's a really cool idea!
I have a couple idea's on how I wanted to do it: - Belt printer fitted into a briefcase (the harbor freight case form factor would be good for that!) - Positron style - Maybe mess around with double four-bars
Making it self-contained with a battery is also a really cool concept I'll have to explore!
littlestymaar
For some reason my brain read the title as “3D printed motherboard” and I was really curious about how this was even possible, and I ended up being disappointed by the lack of detail on the github readme.
It's only after a few more seconds back on the HN front page that I realized my mistake.
Less exciting than what I read but cool project nonetheless.
kej
I don't know what the state of the art is, but 3D printing circuit boards is a thing people are doing: https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printed-circuit-boards-pcb/
rancar2
Nice work; I’d love to see a V2. Quick tip: try Flux AI to help accelerate the V2 work!
aeve890
>This is one of the first PCB's I've ever created, so it might have some flaws.
>4 layers
That's quite the jump for a noob. Would you mind sharing how you learned to produce such advanced output so fast? I mean my first ~50 PCB we're still just 2 layers.
Edit: nvm I just saw the journal.
kaipereira
4 layer boards actually make it easier instead of more advanced in my opinion. You can have a dedicated ground and power plane which makes routing much simpler, and the fields are much easier to predict.
It's also just double the price, so I can get 4 layer boards for like $8 from JLC and it just makes everything much more easily.
You still do want to build up to it though, I made a macropad, then a keyboard, and then made this, so it's definitely not just an immediate jump, but I built those 2 projects within the span of a couple months!
3D printing is such a fascinating field of technology, so a couple months ago, I decided to take a deep dive and learn how they actually work!
This took me to one of my very first PCB projects, a small, cheap, 3D printer motherboard. While it's not the most cutting edge board, I learned a lot and I fully documented my process designing it (https://github.com/KaiPereira/Cheetah-MX4-Mini/blob/master/J...), so other people can learn from my mistakes!
It runs off of an STM32H743 MCU, has 4 TMC stepsticks with UART/SPI configurations, sensorless/endstop homing, thermistor and fan ports, parallel, serial and TFT display connectors, bed and heater outputs and USB-C/SD Card printing, all in a small 80x90mm form factor with support for Marlin and Klipper!
Because it's smaller and cheaper than a typical motherboard, you can use it for smaller/more affordable printers, and other people can also reference the journal if they're making their own board!
If I were to make a V2, I would probably clean up the traces/layout of the PCB, pay more attention to trace size, stitching and fills, BOM optimize even further, and add another motor driver or two to the board. I also should've payed a bit more attention to how much current I would be drawing, and also the voltage ratings, because some of the parts are under-rated for the power.
I'm still actively refining it and fixing up some of the mistakes, but I plan on using this board to make a tiny foldup 3D printer I can bring to hackathons and 3D print on the go!
The project is fully open source, and journaled, so if you'd like to check it out it's on GitHub (https://github.com/KaiPereira/Cheetah-MX4-Mini)!
I absolutely loved making this project and I'd love to hear what you guys would want to see in a V2!