Peachy Printer - The world's first $100 3D Printer
3ders.org
3ders.org
This is such a cool concept -- I backed it! I do not want to highjack the conversation, but I think it is worth mentioning, that this is kind of a "grinds my gears" [1, 2] moment when someone links to a summery, which borrows the video and images of a Kickstarter campaign, you are essentially diverting the campaigns traffic, why not just link to the campaign? This article was kind enough to at least link to it in the last paragraph. This summery is currently #1 on HN, which it likely driving tens of thousands of people to this suboptimal page [3, 4].
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grinds%20my%2...
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHtRnOXXZ0w
[3] http://aberrant.me/front-page-of-hacker-news/
[4] http://www.backwardcompatible.net/179-traffic-hacker-news-ef...
I really like what i've seen so far :)
But i do not understand why they are running a kickstarter and an indiegogo campaign at the same time for the same product with the same setup and rewards. Only the campaign duration is slightly different. Anyone got any ideas why this would make sense?
PS.: On indiegogo the early bird special is still available ...
Although, I feel like the indiegogo should have some sort of outreach to it as well. Like, "$25 gets you resin or a t-shirt and you (along with 5 other people) will sponsor a printer for a school" or something like that. Or perhaps focus on how the money from indiegogo will be used to make the software more accessible and easy to use for all people, not just those skilled in CAD.
EDIT: The indiegogo uses a fixed-funding model like kickstarter. I wasn't aware that projects could do that there.
Aside from the lower price of the remaining early bird specials, is there any reason to fund it through indiegogo instead of kickstarter?
This is refreshing, it's simple, clever. A true hack in the best meaning of the word.
The reason is that it is actually a novel approach that I can see is in its very infancy...and it's clever as hell. The reality of 3D printers is that at this stage of their development, they aren't useful for a lot of people; at least not useful enough to make them a cost-effective purchase.
This, however, begins to make it seem a reasonable purchase for a wide variety of people. Any hobbyist or artist that builds things would find this an awesome tool for taking their ideas to the next level. Table top gamers can make their own models. People who work on electronics can make their own boxes and internal parts. The possibilities are pretty broad. They've always been broad...but the printer options have always been expensive, or required you to build it yourself.
We're getting close to a 3D printing revolution. I'm not the first person to say that. But, this is the first time I've ever said it, because it's the first time I saw a glimmer of hope that it would actually soon be in the same league as laser and inkjet printers in terms of cost.
And, this may be the time when I finally opt to jump into the pool and try out this new tech. If I can think up something I'd actually want to regularly use it for, I probably will.
Anyone know how tough the resulting objects are? Could I use it for something, such as gears or a chassis for an outdoor computer, that needs to take a lot of abuse and expect it to hold up?
You would be better served with an FDM printer if you want to be able to use it as you describe, but then you need to be careful of the direction of the grain (or rather, the layers) so that they're opposite the direction of stress if there's specific ways it will take stress.
This is true (at least on the SLA printer I've used). The problem is that the resin never stops UV curing, so it just gets more and more brittle over time. Small parts get really fragile (Maybe you can paint/cover them to avoid this - I'm not sure). FDM or SLS printers are generally better with functional parts, while SLA is better for prototypes that don't need to last.
>Build volume: There is no certain limit on build volume. In the same way that a flashlight beam gets bigger the further it shines, so does the build volume of the Peachy Printer. Although this has not been tested, we have high hopes to print a full size canoe! This will require a build volume of approximately 3'x3'x16'. The real limiting factor in build volume is time... It could be possible to calibrate the Peachy Printer to print a house, but it would take years![1]
And here I am thinking it was to save money on the rods and stepper motors.
[1]: http://www.peachyprinter.com/?_escaped_fragment_=printer-spe...
The resolution will look like the graph of dθ/dx with theta being the angle of deflection of the laser. The plot of the resolution with respect to height and displacement can be seen here: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=h%2F%28h%5E2+%2B+x%5E2%...
What would be awesome is if they made their model printing software optimize the placement of the model in order to maximize accuracy where it was needed but without putting the laser so close that the outside features are crappy including rotating the model maybe upside down if the more precise portion of the model is on the bottom and it is physically possible to print it that way. That'd be a really interesting software engineering project in my book.
P.S. in case anyone was wondering about the math behind the plot, if you integrate the function for a fixed value of h and take the area from x=0 to h you get pi/4 for any value of h which lines up perfectly for a 45 45 90 triangle.
(for background, I just want a 3D printer to tinker with, and if it works at all for $100 I'll be satisfied - I might have as much fun building it as using it)
Does a 3D printer like this not actually require high-precision data to work correctly?
That said, there is measurable and audible differences between a stock audio output and a high end (or even prosumer) audio output. A nice 24 bit audio box could, possibly, be a useful upgrade in the future...when the mechanics finally catch up. But, I suspect it'll be years before the mechanical side of this design is precise enough to even show the errors in a 16 bit output. If ever...
Certainly, it would be bad if this thing relied on every last available bit of audio bandwidth all the way up to 22.05 Khz, but there's no particular reason to do that.
The people I talk to who do professional audio recording and mixing insist that it is still a difficult problem; it was back when I did mixing (early to mid 2000s, not 'the 90s'). The prevalence of custom APIs for glitch-free low-latency audio playback like JACK and ASIO suggests to me that you still can't rely on just feeding samples to the OS and having them come out of the sound card at the appropriate rate 100% of the time.
FWIW, Windows introduced an entirely new audio stack in Vista that was tuned specifically to address these problems. Their first iteration managed to cripple ethernet bandwidth because of the scheduling requirements imposed for glitch-free audio.
I still can't use Linux as my primary OS for audiovisual work because there are still issues with getting many channels of low latency, high resolution, audio playing and recording reliably.
But, the issues you describe as they apply to this task are mostly a long solved problem, at least for very simple tasks, like reliably playing 16 bit, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio. Honestly, there's never been a time that I can remember when I couldn't reliably play a stereo 16 bit, 44.1k, file back on a Linux system...going back to 1995, or so, when I first started using Linux. The problems come when you demand a little more of the system.
Once again, errors of the level that exist today (which are completely inaudible to even trained ears in most cases), in terms of latency, jitter, dropouts, etc. are so tiny and insignificant that they would be impossible for the current hardware to replicate. The hardware is so much slower than the input signal that noise from the audio signal will be lost in the much larger noise of the hardware. You can see the hardware noise in the printed objects. It's vastly larger than anything the computer output is going to screw up, and it'll be many generations before that stops being true (and, by then, maybe Linux will finally have its act together on audio).
Windows, BTW, finally does have its act together on audio, and has for five+ years. I can reliably play a couple dozen 96k 24 bit tracks while recording more on slightly high end laptop. Obviously Mac is also solid on this front.
When professional audio people talk about the difficulties of glitch-free playback, they're talking about running their CPU at near 100% utilisation with 64 or 128 samples of buffer. Playing back a clean and glitch-free audio stream is trivial and has been for years.
Latency and glitching can become an issue when you're trying to record and monitor in real time while also operating plugins and multiple tracks. That's not the case here.
In passing, I'll tell you what is really a problem on current iterations of Windows: MIDI over USB. Audio is OK, MIDI is atrocious.
But, it's sad that any MIDI device can possibly have problems anywhere so long after its invention. I have a MIDI interface on a Commodore 64 that works reliably! Likewise, I used to do sequencing on an Amiga...worked fine for MIDI. Multi-track 16 bit audio was more of a challenge on such a small machine (started doing digital multitrack work with an Amiga 2000 with a 7.14Mhz CPU).
Boots Riley of the Coup talked about using an ST for many, many years after it was out of date. I think he was using it up until Party Music (released in 2001, but it might have been the prior record. Atari Teenage Riot also keep pounding away on their STs well past their prime.
I use a C64 and a Game Boy for music production these days; but I mostly play the 64 live (using the keyboard...not even a MIDI keyboard of piano overlay) and the Game Boy just exists as an independent music device. I've never tried combining its output with anything else. But, probably will eventually. If I were to find an Amiga 1200 or one of the latter day STs, in really good shape for not a lot of money, I'd probably pick it up. But, there are so many collectors of the old machines now, and so few remain in working condition, that it's not common to find them. I need to acquire a backup C64, though, for sure. I don't think there's good resources for repairing them the way there were when I was a kid.
Also, consider that not all audio glitches are of the type that cause zeroes to be emitted. Some audio glitches are known as buffer underruns, where the ring buffer holding audio is not filled up in time, and eventually runs out, causing the same few milliseconds of audio to play over and over again until more audio makes it into the buffer.
Only if you consider a centered rod of minimum thickness "valid".
Note also that the audio input allows playback from an mp3 player or other sources, suggesting the audio can be wholly precomputed. Imagine how useful that could be in places like Africa so that you could print thing without necessarily needing a high-power device like a laptop.
This is an awesome idea. You could broadcast objects over FM radio! Just like they used to do for software when early home computers used cassette tapes for storage.
Including a low cost USB adapter (even an audio one) that is tested and calibrated to work with the printer could prevent a lot of headaches in setting this up.
On the other side of the concept of using audio as their output system, what would a cube sound like if played through speakers instead of through their printer? And how would a Mozart symphony look when printed?
And yes, I am going to get one just so I can see how Pink Floyd compares to Daft Punk when printed.
I used one for a personal project I'm working on. I'm building a robot and had trouble finding wheels for it that fit my design, so I just made my own!! Got some silicon rubber strips from McMaster-Carr and now I have very fancy and functional wheels! Of course I am very fortunate to have access to a very good 3D printer, which is a few years out for most people.
This guy probably has a t-shirt that reads "What would McGyver do?"
[there are two mirrors to drive (or, equivalently, a point in 2D to target with the laser) and i couldn't see how to do that with a single audio signal.]
This will make it so meta-printers can be hacked together:
Mount the Peachy onto XY motion capabilities (whats the word for this?) axes? -- and it should be trivial to make a hydrolically lifted resin system that is quite large indeed. (that was the most ingenious part of this design, IMO.
It should be easy to create a resin vat calculator where you simply provide the XYZ dimensions of your container and it will calculate the drip-resolution for you so you know at what rate to adjust the flow to get whatever resolution you need.
I'm getting several of these.
One hundred dollars is a major game changer. I've been somewhat reserved on the 3D printing hype because of a lack of necessity for most people, and a lack of precision/usefulness at the lower price range. This can change all of that. For one hundred dollars you no longer have to worry about longer term entertainment value or interest for children. It's the cost of a couple of video games. And for project work, you don't have to worry about needing it for multiple projects. At $100 a single use justifies the cost many times over. I'm looking into spending $400 right now on a single 3D print for a small product I'm working on.
I love rewarding ingenuity. BACKED!
I look forward to people doing weird interesting things with this!
I have no idea how lissajous figures could work, but they're cool and in 3d resin print they'd be cooler.
my first thought was: do they have a reverse add-on as well? And then: I would love to see the output of various types of music :P
$45/liter for large
Not cheap if you want to print anything larg-ish.
So long as the liquid resin floats on salt water, I don't see why salt water should provide less support than liquid resin.
Lots of lag may cause problems:-\
The only reason I am funding it is to support someone thinking outside the box. I really have no use for it due to the issues listed above. I'll probably gift it to someone who might. I've done that a number of times with KS projects.
That's not to say that hobby-grade machines are useless. The degree of interest these projects garner on sites like KS means something. Perhaps it means that people are clamoring for significantly cheaper solutions. Or, perhaps, it means they are happy to have 3D printers that perform reasonably well with some TLC.
At some level I equate it to what happens with CNC machining equipment. I've built and purchased many low cost home-brewed CNC machining solutions. In retrospect they were always a pain in the ass to use in one form or another. It was always far more time and cost effective to send parts out to have them machined by capable shops with capable industrial-grade machines.
I eventually purchased my own industrial-grade machines. I had Haas VMC's and a lathes in house. That's when I saw the light. The difference between the hobby/garage machines and what the pro's are using is massive. It went from screwing around with the machine to make it work, maintaing tolerances, deal with software issues, repairing it, etc. to just using it and producing very high quality parts every single time.
CNC machining, at that point, became a source of creativity that did not detract from the design process but almost added to it.
This drip 3D printing gizmo is great. Like I said, I am supporting it. I could be lots of fun. A professional tool it is not. Not at this stage anyway.
They, and you, were absolutely right to observe that these devices were massively less capable than the existing devices, and to foresee that they would never become as capable, and to explain that the reduced capability translates directly into less freedom to create, and to predict that they would not replace the existing devices.
Where they might have gone wrong (i note that you do not!) would be to conclude that these devices were therefore never going to be successful. They did not displace the existing devices from their niches; they carved out an entirely new niche, surviving by making small profits from huge numbers of people.
The boosters are talking rubbish when they say that 3D printing will revolutionise manufacturing. But it might just revolutionise DIY.
Mechanically delicate though. Vibrations disturbing the surface of the liquid will skew the print and cause poor layer adhesion. And you have to make sure your surface is perfectly level.
And I have to chuckle a little bit about how much of a prairie farmer hack this is. People around here build crazy hacks like this all the time on their farm equipment, glad to see them getting some publicity!
Regardless, I love the approach taken here; really quite clever.
Also constant velocity of z-axis movement might pose some inefficiencies because if you want to print a box you have to set the rate of ascend low enough for the laser to create full bottom and you can't speed up when you are building sides of the box.
physibles!