Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi folks,
Long time lurker, not nearly often enough participant, but came across this today and HAD to post. These 3-d printers are going to steepen the curve on what we can do at home dramaticaly. It will be enjoyable to observe, learn , and participate over the next few years. And to boot, this will make the shop cleaner and our lungs safer!!! If any one else has a cool one, let us know.
rover

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:76369

This turbine rotor seems brilliant, and I want one. I wish one were for sale, as I don't intend on buying a 3d printer (of course, maybe some day soon, they will be as simple and common as a normal paper printer). Keep us up to date when these things will be available for purchase!

3d printers (rapid prototype machines) have been around for quite some time. In manufacturing they are used all the time for one off parts, test parts, and pattern making, etc. I don't know why there has been a sudden realization of these machines by the average person (my guess is the political side of things that have happened regarding guns recently). But the thing is these machines are not cheap, though they are cheaper than before. They also take a lot of training to operate and you have to have the solid modeling software and the know how to operate that before you can produce parts. Sure they are becoming more affordable and more accessible to the public but no more do than CNC machines and you don't see everyone with one of those in their garage. These rapid prototype machines are in the same realm as CNC and though they seem like magic and you can print out anything the fact is they are not magic and it's going to be quite some time before the average joe has one in their house and is able to operate it. It's just not realistic.

Don't rain on my parade Zeke. I'm getting one of these to print some goat..err..some stuff.

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PMoMC

3D printing isn't the next manufacturing revolution that people are hoping for, nor will it ever be, but it does have a niche for sure. It's both cheaper and much more accessible than CNC- you can get a fully built turn-key machine under $500 that will produce parts up to a 6" cube, ABS filament is so cheap it's nearly free, operation and setup is 'press a button and watch that the part sticks'. There's still the same problem of getting the 3D files, or making them yourself, but Thingiverse has enough nick nacks going up every day to keep someone busy printing other peoples' stuff forever.

Content creation is a problem with any automated manufacturing method, and it'll stay that way forever. It's not that the 3D software available isn't intuitive enough or well designed, it's that there comes a point where you actually need to have an intuitive understanding of the real 3D shape of things. Most people make a mess of things trying to design a workable house plan using very well designed hand-holding architectural software, and that's in two dimensions and nothing more complicated than a 45 degree chamfer. No knitting needle, no matter how advanced, will ever let me knit without putting my time in.

Lots of cool stuff happening, but extreme exaggeration of where things are going. Fact is that all the technologies being used for 3D printing now are pretty close to their lower limit for time and cost due to materials. ABS can only be extruded so fast at safe temperatures, it's physically difficult and expensive to produce graded metal powders and weld them in a vacuum, and the resins used in the nicer plastic printers all have limited shelf life and other handling issues that make them a real pain...because of these things, rapid prototyping isn't going to have the sort of exponential increases in capability that things like computing power have.

It's more like the nail gun than the CNC or your cellphone: it makes certain things waaaaay quicker but the one you get in ten years isn't likely to be much faster or better than the one you get today, just might have a nicer grip and jam a bit less. There's no way on your life I'm installing trim without a nail gun, but houses didn't drop in price 10% because of them

This guy wrote a good article on it:
http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I should have mentioned one other thing: medical devices. That's going to change. They're already hyper-inflated price wise, so who cares if your knee-replacement is going to cost an extra $2000 for a joint custom-built to fit your body if it was going to cost $10,000 anyways?

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Wood is a complex matrix of proteins, resins and carbon fibers all arranged in a very nonlinear manner. Don't know how a machine will be able to print that. And what type of material do you need to feed the machine to get wood out of it? All I have seen out of one of these things is light weight plastic .I just don't see it replacing anything I have done in my lifetime, besides there will always be a customer base for the genuine handmade article for those who can make.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

+1 on Brian`s post.
It can`t reproduce Mother Nature, nor the Human factor.
Not that it isn`t useful in the right situations, in fact, I think it`s great.
Coe

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

I think this is close but not quite - Hospitals have been hammering med device companies on price for years now and the pricing has come down dramatically. $10k total knees are way in the past. That said, what they do is introduce new features to hold price or push it back up to where it was.

There is an outfit now that uses knee MRI's or CTs (can't remember which but CT would make more sense) to make custom cutting blocks for the distal femoral cut...just another way to keep the price up.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

p.s. I will be adding a 3D print head to my CNC machine one of these days....

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

+1

It has its uses no doubt , but I DONT see it replacing our work any time soon . Its Like the attitude of Many Bluegrass Pickers , If it aint an "F" it aint a Mandolin. If it aint Handmade , It aint a Premium Product !

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He posted about an air turbine spindle that sucks up dust, and how neat it is that such a thing can be 3D printed...how's that a threat to hand-building wooden instruments?

I'll throw some fuel in the threadjacking fire, though, since I think it's sort of hilarious that someone -has- tried making a printer print 'wood' : http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/3d-printer-wood-filament/. Not sure there's much non-cosmetic use, there are already biodegradable plastic filaments available, but it's pretty impressive that they can get the stuff to extrude/adhere at all. I think it might lay a groundwork for more useful composite filaments like maybe glass-filled for high abrasion resistance.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

The OP had a link to that product, On a site for 3-D printers....... but it was actually in reference to the possibility of use in lutherie, hence being posted in this forum rather than "Off Topic" and the reference to keeping the shop cleaner. I view it as no threat at all as with current technology it is not possible. There has been a lot of blah blah from NASA lately about 3-D printing food for space missions.... but we don't eat PVC.... so again what do you put into it to get that out? What I see is a lot of folks getting all dreamy eyed over something that as yet remains science fiction.So I'll just go sharpen my chisels and get back to work

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

First thing that came into my mind was printing Jig pieces.

the printers themselves can print a number of different materials not just plastic. You can hook all sorts of different materials to print. There is actually research of printing cells and using the printers to make replacement organs for people, but I see that as something very far in the future.

The way the products that are printed assembled with moving parts is that a special material is printed into the open areas between the moving parts. Then that material washes away with water once the print is completed. With this sort of technology you can print entire assemblies of gears and moving parts all together. This opens possibilities of making things that were once impossible to make. But still I don't see it as any sort of threat to hand built instruments.

Yeah Todd, but you won't be able to 3D print a Glock or anything. Let alone the projectiles they use...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Believe it or not, one of my best friends was showing me all this stuff about 3D printing AR-15 components a few months ago at the coffee shop. An enthusiast uploaded a blueprint, and the printing/gun culture went at it. Now, the projectiles? No, can't print those. But the components? I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility.

of course you can print them. The problem is there are much easier and cheaper ways to get a gun. No one is going to spend the money and the vast amount of time it takes to 3d print guns when they can go buy one on the corner much faster and much much cheaper.

Or they could just go to New Mexico and buy them from the Justice Dept.

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Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement.

Maybe these printers could make my guitar building more fast and furious.

There are 4 in my department at work: a ZCorp, a Stratasys uPrint, and 2 RepRaps. They are all cool. They all have problems. Agreed that none will really replace other technologies, but instead establish a new niche. I don't see a big role for them in lutherie.

The ZCorp (powder based) is good for 'larger' parts, but the labor and care to get a good part are high, and the parts are delicate even after fixing. Obsolete technology, IMO.

The uPrint makes beautiful ABS parts with little labor, but their specific resin is something like $40/oz and proprietary (I imagine it can be hacked, but haven't looked into it). The machine is $20k and will probably be obsolete in perhaps 5 years.

The RepRaps are an exciting low-cost open-source effort but are currently very slow and require a lot of tuning and some modifications to reliably get good parts. We hope to contribute to the effort by working on the speed and quality issues. RepRaps have a long learning curve, but their typical users are usually interested in what they learn. With more evolution, the future designs will probably be more turn-key.

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David Malicky

You say you want a revolution?

A turbine is very capable of a "revolution", quite a few in a short amount of time, as a matter of fact.
I'm waiting for someone to build a "Tim the Toolman" version of the turbine--you know, 4" diameter to fit the dust collector hose. Yup, it makes guitar parts and sucks up the shavings all in one fell swoop. (Insert Tim's famous guttural here)

Besides soluble support, you can also just print break-away supports between the pieces. Most at-once assemblies are done that way because only certain ABS printers have soluble supports and it's an expensive option. Some of the Objet printers have a soluble support structure, too, but they're precise enough to print break-away supports more cheaply. The break-away supports can be quite the mess when you're really 'going for it', though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o1chNIFOXo

Powder-based printers like the Z-corp printers (which use plaster) and the sintering printers (like the plastic and metal powder-bed printers) don't need support at all to make multi-part assemblies; the uncured powder all around the part supports the new layers and just falls out during part cleaning after the print.



The ZCorp (plaster powder based) printers do make more accurate parts without visible layering compared to everything but the liquid-resin based printers, they don't need support structures, and they can print in full color, so they're amazing for parts that need to be checked for looks and size but not for functional testing. The real killer app for those printers, IMO, is that they can directly print metal casting molds! Not many companies using them for that, sadly. I almost made one for just that reason, but I'm going to build a liquid-resin based printer and make positive forms which can be burned out for casting instead.

The Stratasys printers like the uPrint and the Dimension series still make nicer parts than nearly all of the hobby-grade printers like the Reprap, Ultimaker, Cube, Solidoodle, etc, but I think it's mainly that they use an enclosed, heated chamber. When the hobbyist market starts being willing to pay a little extra for a heated build chamber and some low-cost companies start offering it, I think there's going to be a huge backlash against Stratasys from customers paying 5-10X or more the market value of consumables.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Very cool Bob! I've never thought of the break away supports. That's a good idea.

We've thought about getting one for printing out parts for making our matchplates but can't really justify the cost. Though our only good pattern maker is getting pretty old and we have been exploring other options. We are looking into CNCing the matchplates out. It seems to me this is our most cost effective way to go about it because we don't have to invest in any equipment to do so.

So you want to get into casting. Well study up! There is a lot going on that most people don't realize. Take a gating and risering course if you can. It'll help.