Totally unrelated to and completely different from the usual fare that I fill these columns with, that is, but well within the things I fill my time with.
I was offered this video the other day, and unlike 99.99% of the videos that
YouTube offers me, I watched with interest. A top-ranking manufacturer of 3D printers, Prusa, put out a video on how they printed an electric guitar body and made a playable guitar. More impressive than that, they spent over a year on the project ensuring the guitar would survive the forces it lives under, and hold its shape. They went into the choice of components, showed where they got the ones they used and an economical way of getting the parts to make it.
Now you may be saying, "are you going to make a one of these Fender Telescaster-clone guitars?" While I don't want to rule it out completely, chances are I'm not going to. It's the marginal utility function - to borrow the idea from economics. Another guitar in the collection doesn't make my family of guitars that much more useful. If you have one guitar, another one can bring a lot of useful differences. Adding an acoustic guitar to an electric, or vice versa, opens a wider array of kinds of music you can make. If you have one of both kinds, a different brand and model might still add different sounds to your repertoire When you have a few of each kind, an additional guitar of either major type just doesn't return much for the investment.
When I went shopping for my 3D printer, I wasn't quite sure I wanted one around the house. While it seemed like an obvious thing to have when you think that a large portion of all the plastic things in our houses could be printed, there's that aspect of printers that they seem to be used for trivial things. Can you even make useful things like they sell? Because of that, I went with a cheaper, entry-level printer although I might look for a better one now. Dear daughter-in-law, a research biochemist, knows they exist and has friends that own printers, but when we mentioned having one was taken aback. All of her friends print the trinkets and little decorative things that are so widespread; nothing that was a usable tool or even something as simple as a box. She asked about things we've done and was surprised that they were all practical things, like my 2" vacuum hose adapter or my battery connector. I told her about the Thingiverse and the thing I use the most at a couple of times every day is the electric toothbrush holder that I printed last fall. Not a trinket or decorative thing in the mix.
While I could certainly use a plastic printer, I'm more geared to my 3018 router for wood, plastic, and even light metals. 30cm X 18cm is enough for me, although I could always follow your build if I needed something bigger. The operative word here is NEED.
ReplyDelete[dammit! I had a 500 word comment here, and blew it away by going off-tab for a lookup...I'll try to summarize concisely]
ReplyDeleteThe value of a 3D printer is that it lets you design something for a need that doesn't exist anywhere else. I am printing parts and accessories for a small greenhouse that the company doesn't make, and planting systems that cannot be purchased at the local nursery. Specialized parts bin sizes are very useful.
There is no reason to print something that somebody else sells, but there is every reason to turn your own ideas into reality to fill an unsatisfied need. Quick example, I needed a bracket to attach my rectangular sound bar to my curved big screen TV...of course it didn't exist, but twenty minutes in CAD and a couple hours of printing and bingo, a safe, effective, and relatively attractive way to put the dang thing right where it needed to be.
Note: the "usefulness quotient" of 3D printing goes up dramatically as the build volume. I can't do much with my 8x8x8 printer, but my 15x15x17 never gets a chance to cool down. I think there is a reason printing filament supplies can be put on Amazon's "Subscribe & Save" ;-)
May I ask what brand that 15x15x17 printer is? Or the brands of both printers?
DeleteSiG, I have friends that use them to print tabletop role playing figures. Although I have no need for more of them, it is fascinating to see what they can do.
ReplyDeleteWe have also had some feed back 3-D printed for the rabbit shelter I volunteer at. Easily a savings of $50 per box for something the individual already had lying around.
Over at the Chicago Boyz blog there was a post the other day on the impossibility of finding a part for a foreign classic car, and finally ending up having it 3D printed:
ReplyDeletehttps://chicagoboyz.net/archives/69063.html
I suspect there will be a lot of that happening.