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.

Re:I want one!

[MadKeithV]

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 [materialise.com] for an online printing service.
Disclaimer: I work for a sister company ;-), I've seen a lot of 3D printing stuff. This flute thing doesn't impress me that much - this folding chair is much cooler [chairblog.eu].

Re:I want one!

[Jarnin]

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?

Re:I want one!

[Anonymous Coward]

900£ anyone?
http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/

Re:I want one!

[GameboyRMH]

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/ [hacknmod.com]

(the source page is currently offline for maintenance)

Re:I want one!

[smellsofbikes]

Our company got a 3Dsystems V-Flash, which I'm presuming is the $10K model you saw. It works pretty well, but some of the parts have significant distortion as the plastic cures. It also had a problem with the reel mechanism: it feeds out a layer of material on a plastic tape, cures some, then feeds back in, and if a flake of hardened material gets on that tape it'll shadow out and prevent curing of everything in the rest of the part above that, which can lead to swiss cheese parts. The feed material is also breathtakingly expensive. But it sure does clean up easily and nicely. We also got a Stratasys, which I believe is what's being sold by Hewlett Packard in the US, and it had *excellent* accuracy, within 10 mils, and has a very nice appearance. The printing material's pretty cheap, too. But you have to use weird solvents to get the part out of the backing/support material.

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.