Boy, would our grandfathers have loved to see this!

While 3D printing’s roots only date back to the 1980s, do you ever wonder what an additive manufacturing machine would’ve looked like had the processing power of today been available 70 years ago? Fortunately, Maker Chad Bridgewater has given us at least a faint idea.

The Maker recently took the shell of a post-WWII Craftsman table saw and modded it with modern-day technologies to create a fully-functional 3D printer. As you can expect, the antiquated piece of equipment that he had bought for $5 at a tag sale no longer worked as its motor was shot. So, Bridgewater decided to gut the entire thing and house a set of electronics inside the machine’s original motor casing.

At the internal base of its shell, the Maker bolted together a set of laser-cut panels that would hold its components, which consisted of an LCD screen, a power supply, an SD card slot, an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and an Arduino shield. He then disassembled the stepper motors and powder coated them white, and used a 1941 lathe to machine pulley shafts, aluminum spacers, and motor shaft extensions.

Sure, the Maker could’ve stopped there. However, channeling his inner DIY spirit, he decided to go on by retrofitting the old post-WWII Craftsman table saw into a working laser engraver.

To accomplish this, Bridgewater employed a Mr. Beam Shield on top of an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) and hooked up the device’s 16 x2 LCD screen to a Raspberry Pi B. Once again, a 1941 lathe was used to machine steel and aluminum spacers, motor shaft extensions and pulley shafts. Finally, the Z-axis is controlled manually by a rotary encoder, which is mounted to the original chromed blade adjustment knob on the unit’s front panel.

Want to learn more? Head over to the project’s official page here.