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MIT Media Lab Researcher Prints Playable Flute
What if making an acoustic instrument was a matter of hitting 'print'? MIT Media Lab researcher Amit Zoran did just that. He created a flute using the Objet Geometries Connex500 3D printer. The instrument is playable and the results are surprisingly good for a first attempt. As an aside, rumour has it that Amit has a bumper sticker that reads: My other printer prints food.
It's not really for home use yet, but you can have your stuff printed relatively cheaply (not yet printer ink "cheaply", but yeah) at some places. For example, see i.Materialise for an online printing service. ;-), I've seen a lot of 3D printing stuff. This flute thing doesn't impress me that much - this folding chair is much cooler.
Disclaimer: I work for a sister company
This was pretty disappointing; it's printed on a commercial 3D printer. We all know these can be used for printing complex objects like product prototypes. It's a bit like someone posting a news story about being able to play zork on a mainframe in the early 80s.
Now, if someone can do this on a reprap, fab@home, or some similar consumer-targetted 3d printer, that'll be really good news.
I just did a quick search and there's a manufacturer selling a desktop 3D printer for $10,000. It uses a different process in the build; more like laying clear tape and cutting it at each layer to produce a model. The next cheapest I could find used the more traditional "goop" like resin and was $15,000. The last time I checked prices about two years ago and they were hovering around $30,000. At this rate you'll probably see models in the $1500-3000 range in about 3-7 years.
The question then is, what do you build with it?
900£ anyone?
http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/
These 3D printers are for rapid prototyping, and they are far from new. They have been around for years.
They do NOT create durable goods. You will NOT be able to print working cars, bikes, computers, houses, women or whatever else you want. The output of these printers do not serve any real purpose other than a 3-dimensional prototype of an object. Even if this so-called flute is playable today, it likely won't be in a year's time if it's handled a lot.
I guess your username says it all, but how exactly do you think this will somehow magically be cheaper than printing in 2D on plain paper with standard ink?
Bottom line: You cannot "manufacture" durable goods using 3D printer technology. It's nice to dream, but dreams have their place.
"Husbandry" is "the management of domestic affairs and resources".
Historically, both your wife and your livestock were classified under "domestic affairs and resources". Today, we tend to step carefully around the lingering etymological implication that "husbands" are those who engage in wife management, unless some other sort of husbandry is specified; but that is still why the word is what it is, even though women have actually been promoted to human status in a number of parts of the world.
Um... Happy Wednesday, everybody?
Bottom line: You cannot "manufacture" durable goods using 3D printer technology. It's nice to dream, but dreams have their place.
Not yet anyway. Who's to say that in a century or so we won't be able to produce a lot of goods from home using 3D printers? Also there are a lot of areas where these can be put to good use, for example, I'm particularly interested in the modelling field right now, as in teeny tiny models of big things, these don't need to be durable. I'd love to know about the level of detail the printer can achieve, like rivets on a model airplane, or what.
Yeah there are way too many cheap/DIY options to be spending the cost of a car on a 3D printer for home use.
I particularly like this one:
http://hacknmod.com/hack/diy-high-resolution-3d-printer/
(the source page is currently offline for maintenance)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They can print durable goods, TODAY, depending on what it is you're printing, what materials the machine uses, and what finishing you do to the product. To say these things are categorically useless for printing durable goods is just wrong.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
With all tech advances we've seen in our lifetimes it amazes me that people can still have this attitude. Maybe not now, but give it 10 years. The next Steve Wozniak is out there somewhere, reading about this and being inspired. There will be some killer use for this thing that you or I haven't thought of, and I suspect in 20-25 years they'll be as common in houses as refrigerators.
--Obyron
If you ever meet someone from the MIT Media Lab, ask them what floor they work on. If they work on the first floor then you're safe - typical electrical engineers working in a basement lab. If they're from the 3rd, 4th, or 5th floor, then run away before they get a chance to show you cute but mostly useless demos in the academic equivalent of Q's workshop from any James Bond movie.
I wonder if the current tech of 3D printing can make an object of sufficient complexity/detail that could subsequently become the master in a lost-wax type casting process.
The end result of that would definitely be durable (being bronze, brass, or some other metal)
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
how exactly do you think this will somehow magically be cheaper than printing in 2D on plain paper with standard ink?
Have you seen how much printer ink costs? It's more valuable than gold! Everything is cheaper than printer ink!
No, but you can use the parts created by the 3D printer to make forms for injection molded plastic and dies for cast metal. And for something sophisticated with a lot of precision parts (like a car), printing the forms for the assembly line directly from the model, rather than trying to carve each one by hand will save you a LOT of time and money when trying to take something from model into production.
Not true, depending on the materials your final product requires. The Objet technology used in the article can't do metal etc, but it can do a wide range of plastics (including blends of different plastics) at a quality comparable to traditional plastics manufacturing processes. The resin-based process eliminates air enclosures and structural problems that plague other technologies like FDM (basically what the reprap project does).
Disclaimer: I am using a lower-end Objet on a regular basis, but I am not affiliated with these guys.
The next model that 3D systems offers, the ProJet, seems to have vastly better accuracy and stability during cure.
We build prototype cellphone cases, speaker cases, outlet switch boxes, light bulb reflector backing structures, to make sure everything fits mechanically and looks good, and then go to plastic injection molding companies to have the production runs done. We found that a single mistake on an injection molding die cost about as much as the V-flash. And meanwhile the two gamers at work are running off about a zillion RPG miniatures on the machine.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.