Student builds working LEGO 3D printer for under $180

A printer built almost entirely from bricks

Adam Turaj, a mechatronics engineering student at the University of Waterloo, has built an open-source 3D printer in which LEGO accounts for 92% of the construction. According to Tom's Hardware, the machine is called Studprint, a name that refers to the studs on a LEGO brick, and only 13 components in the whole build are not made from the toy bricks.

The project was shared through a GitHub repository, where Turaj posted computer-aided design images and a full bill of materials. At first glance, the CAD views look like a virtual LEGO builder rather than an engineering drawing, which underlines how thoroughly the design sticks to the toy as a building material.

Turaj set himself an extra constraint: he used only what he describes as classical LEGO, steering clear of LEGO Technic parts wherever possible. Technic is the more mechanical branch of the toy system with beams, axles and gears, so avoiding it makes the achievement considerably harder.

How the Infill challenge shaped the project

The build began as an entry to Infill, a challenge run earlier this year by Hack Club, a community for young makers and programmers. The challenge invited people to design a 3D printer from scratch and offered a $350 grant to help cover the cost of building it.

Entrants who submitted a benchy, the small boat model commonly used as a test print, had the opportunity to attend the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival 2026 with travel covered. Turaj was among those selected, according to Tom's Hardware.

At the festival he presented Studprint to an audience of more than 4,000 people and met Zack Freedman, the chief marketing officer of Prusa, a well-known 3D printer manufacturer. The RepRap festivals are gatherings for the DIY 3D printing community, so the venue suited the project well.

The electronics doing the real work

Although the structure is mostly toy bricks, the printer relies on standard hobbyist electronics. The bill of materials shared on GitHub comes to $173.35, of which $30 covers the LEGO pieces. Three main electronic parts cost roughly $25 each.

The control board is a BTT SKR Pico V1.0, a board frequently used in open-source printer designs such as the Voron V0. Wireless connectivity comes from a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, a small single-board computer, and power is supplied by a Mean Well LRS-150-24 switching power supply.

Motion is handled by five NEMA 17 stepper motors, the same motor type found in most consumer printers. Four of them drive the axes of the machine, while the fifth pushes filament into a Trianglelab V6 extruder, the part that melts and deposits the plastic.

What it can print

The only print shown in the repository so far is a benchy, sliced with Klipper, the popular open-source printer firmware, and completed in 1.25 hours. Tom's Hardware describes the result as surprisingly good, given that the leadscrews, the threaded rods that convert motor rotation into precise vertical movement, are themselves made of LEGO.

That detail is the most remarkable part of the build. Leadscrews need to be accurate for a printer to produce clean layers, and LEGO parts are not manufactured to that kind of tolerance. Even the build plate, the flat surface that supports the printed object, is a block of LEGO.

Why the project matters

Studprint sits in a long tradition of RepRap-style DIY printers, where hobbyists build machines from accessible parts and share the designs openly. Because the repository includes the CAD files and bill of materials, other builders can study the design or attempt their own version.

The project also shows how far low-cost, open-source electronics have come. With a control board, a small Raspberry Pi and off-the-shelf motors, almost any sturdy frame can become a working printer, even one assembled from toy bricks. For readers interested in building rather than buying, the Hack Club Infill challenge and the Studprint repository are both worth a look, though anyone attempting a similar build should expect the same compromises in precision that LEGO construction brings.