LEGO Study: Student Builds Working 3D Printer From 92 Percent Bricks

A mechatronics engineering student has built a working 3D printer for $173.35, and only thirteen parts of it are not LEGO. Adam Turaj, who studies at the University of Waterloo, spent roughly $30 of his bill of materials on classic LEGO bricks. They account for 92 percent of the machine.

The printer is called Studprint, named for the studs on a LEGO brick. Turaj designed it in SOLIDWORKS, and the CAD images in his repository look like screenshots from a virtual LEGO builder. He imposed one further constraint on himself: classical LEGO only, avoiding Technic pieces wherever possible. The rule holds almost everywhere. The print bed is a block of LEGO. Even the leadscrews are LEGO.

What is inside the machine?

The electronics are standard open-source printer fare, which is the point. Turaj built Studprint on the backbone of a genuine DIY build rather than a novelty. Three major components anchor the electronics, each priced around $25:

• A BTT SKR Pico V1.0 control board, common in printers such as the Voron V0
• A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for wireless capability
• A Mean Well LRS-150-24 switching power supply

Motion comes from five NEMA 17 stepper motors, a staple of both open- and closed-source printers. Four motors drive the axes; the fifth feeds filament to a Trianglelab V6 extruder. Everything else — the gantry, the bed, the frame — is $30 worth of bricks.

How did the project get noticed?

Earlier this year, Hack Club posted a challenge called Infill. It invited makers and hobbyists to design their own 3D printers from scratch, offering a $350 grant to build them. Anyone who submitted a Benchy printed on their machine entered a draw for a trip to the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival 2026. Turaj was one of the winners.

The festival flew him out, where he presented Studprint to more than 4,000 attendees and met Prusa CMO Zack Freedman. Not a bad return on a $30 brick budget.

Does it actually print well?

Yes, within reason. The only print shown in the GitHub repository is a Benchy, sliced in Klipper and completed in 1.25 hours. The result is, in the words of our source, surprisingly good — a verdict made more impressive by the fact that the leadscrews doing the positioning are plastic bricks.

The Studprint is not the first LEGO printer we have seen. A project covered last year used a 3D printing pen and looked the part of a toy. Turaj's build differs in one respect: it uses the standard electronics, motors and hotend of a real open-source machine, with LEGO standing in for the structure alone. That is an old engineering trick. Build the frame from whatever is cheap and stiff, and spend the money on the parts that move.

The design and bill of materials are available on Turaj's GitHub repository. Anyone with a bin of classic bricks and about $145 of electronics can attempt a copy. Whether LEGO leadscrews survive a few hundred hours of printing is a question the repository does not yet answer, but as a demonstration of how little a functional printer actually requires, Studprint sets a fairly stubborn benchmark.