Musical motors are a thing, musical 3D printers as well but not while they print. (as far as I know)
The annoying noise a 3d printer makes (including solo music frankly) could be masked if you could put on soothing classical music that a controller would hear, analyze and send instructions to your 3D printer so it would match the notes in the music simply by speeding up, stopping, slowing down as necessary. It would sing along while printing your piece.
The movement matching the music would be a bit of a mechanical ballet as well. Relaxing to watch I'd think.
I'd think The Blue Danube would be a nice song to have your printer work to. Or rock and roll if you're in the mood.-- doctorremulac3, May 04 2022 This only while actually printing. https://www.youtube...watch?v=Bdf9NHAuO0wAnd automatically tracking and matching any music you play next to it. [doctorremulac3, May 04 2022] Mozart on Printer https://www.youtube...watch?v=N76RMIR1kCc [Voice, May 04 2022] Beat it on Floppotron https://www.youtube...watch?v=6B522GbH3D8 [Voice, May 04 2022] 3D printing in metal. https://www.youtube...watch?v=UdiwBiw5dyoYup, it's a thing. [doctorremulac3, May 05 2022] What is tow https://www.definit....net/definition/TOWIn the composites industry, a tow is an untwisted bundle of continuous filaments, and it refers to man-made fibres, particularly carbon fibres. [Voice, May 05 2022] For [RayfordSteele] https://techcrunch....s-instead-of-hours/One article I found about multi-laser 3D printing. I've definitely read about it elsewhere. [neutrinos_shadow, May 05 2022] I don't know a lot about 3D printers, but I would expect the movement speed it quite critical to the process. So if you're changing the movement, you might have to also modulate the filament feed and/or temperature to compensate.-- neutrinos_shadow, May 04 2022 Yea that's true, but all that stuff is connected. I've got a couple of 3D printers for prototype stuff and they're actually pretty simple. The temperature doesn't have to change, the flow stops and starts constantly as the nozzle moves from a printed area across a non printed area. If it's moving faster, the feed just increases. Slower the feed decreases.
Like I said, for there being so many musical printers out there I'm surprised nobody's put the extra effort into making them make music while they actually print. While the prints would take longer, they'd be much less annoying to have running all day and all night. (which they do, especially when you have lots of supports for a particular piece)-- doctorremulac3, May 04 2022 WOW! Dang V! The Floppotron beat it is friggin' amazing!!!!!!! Eddie's solo is perfect!!! There aren't enough exclamation points!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-- doctorremulac3, May 04 2022 Forget about the 3D file inputs, and just enable the printer to generate its own 3D structures in response to the subtleties of a human voice.-- xenzag, May 04 2022 Hmm. I like that. You could have voice recognition and have the motors follow your melody.
You could have it basically sing along with you while making something. Sing about what you're making.
(singing) "I'm making, a plastic horsey, a little plastic horsey.." while it's making a little plastic horse.
That's both beautiful and extremely weird. But mostly beautiful.-- doctorremulac3, May 04 2022 I quite like the noises my printer makes, good background stuff, like an android coffee shop. The whole 3D printing thing has become quite addictive since I learned Fusion360 and I can just take things from my imagination and make them real. I was promising myself a 32-bit board upgrade, but I might miss the noise. I wouldn't miss the smell of my resin printer however.
I can see another printer in my future, I might go DIY. Temperature controlled enclosure, Peltier cooled steppers for free heat, maybe even Peltier bed heating. I have a couple of those black-magic solid-state humidity pumps on order from the UK ostensibly to make a humidity- controlled filament box, but why not go for the whole enclosure?-- bs0u0155, May 05 2022 They are pretty satisfying, my first was a kit, Prusa that was a bunch of bags of nuts, bolts and parts. Took 2 days to put the thing together. Then got an Ender but just updated to a nice 12" bed Crealty.
And yea, it is kind of relaxing hearing it whirring away. Little robot bringing stuff form concept to physical existence.
But here's the one I really want, those new metal printers. (linky)-- doctorremulac3, May 05 2022 //those new metal printers.//
I can see why you might like metals for high-temperature & surface hardness, but, that's a lot of post-processing. I get how it would sit with manufacturers already doing sintered metal injection molding, great for prototyping etc.
Given that cars have part-plastic engines nowadays, I'm interested in the carbon-fiber reinforced stuff, especially the nylons. But, like I mentioned, upgrades required, probably less hassle to go with a new printer.
A technique I've been messing with for structural parts is designing in grooves along axes of stress, then adding in glass/carbon fiber tow, tensioning it and glueing it all in place by filling the groove with epoxy. A bit like how some concrete structures are made. Carbon tow is ludicrously strong stuff.-- bs0u0155, May 05 2022 I'm still waiting for an actually self-replicating 3-D printer. Get on it, makers!-- Voice, May 05 2022 //actually self-replicating 3-D printer.//
This might not be possible. Depending on your definition of course. But take an FDM printer, how can you make something out of a material that, by design, operates above it's own melting temperature?-- bs0u0155, May 05 2022 //how can you make something out of a material that, by design, operates above it's own melting temperature?//
It can do so by allowing degradation of the nozzle, and then replacing the nozzle when overly degraded. As long as a nozzle can be replicated with less degradation than can be withstood this will work. Contactless deposition of material is also physically possible.-- Voice, May 05 2022 We allowed to process the 3D printer after it's created by the parent 3D printer? Have the aggregate of the metal and whatever's temporarily mixed with it baked out and the metal fused and bonded for instance?-- doctorremulac3, May 05 2022 Post-manufacture processing, such as aiming a microwave emitter at the child printer, is permissible.-- Voice, May 05 2022 Don't they have printers that operate based on laser intersections or somesuch?-- RayfordSteele, May 05 2022 Like in a clear plastic solution or something? Sounds familiar.-- doctorremulac3, May 06 2022 Making the printer "sing along" with music that you're playing sounds difficult without add a lot of processing power to the 3D printer, and has a lot of potential for unexpected results since music is not too predictable.
I think a more realistic goal would be to select the song and mix it into the G code using a modified slicer program. I hear that Cura is open source...
Now maybe the quality of the music we can make using just the printer is not so great, so you'd like to play the real music and have the printer noises harmonize with the notes and synchronize with the rhythm. In that case, select your playlist based on how long the print is going to take and generate the G-code, then start the soundtrack at the same time as the printer.
Of course getting it to start together is tricky and the timing will likely drift too much over the course of a multi- hour print, so you'll probably also need some mechanism to keep the printer and computer in sync. From what I've seen, most people use the printer stand-alone: they just print files from a USB stick or SD card. In that case, the simplest hardware the could make this work with a range of 3D printers might be to use the computer microphone to listen to the printer and fudge the timing of the music player to keep things together (not the simplest bit of software to write).
Alternately, I hear that Cura can print directly to some (many?) printers over USB. In that case, just modify Cura to also play the soundtrack at the same time that is sends the commands to the printer. That makes the synchronization relatively simple. I guess with this setup you could probably have near real-time control of the music. If you don't feel like listening to the song being played currently, tell Cura to skip to the next track and have it reprocess. It can simply insert small delays into the print process to keep it lined up with the rhythm of the song.-- scad mientist, May 06 2022 Yes, if time lag becomes an issue the program could guide the mechanical and audio portions simultaneously so there wouldn't be any sync problems.
And like I said, there's no issue with adjusting tempo, stopping and starting as the speed of the nozzle is matched with the rate of flow. If the nozzle has to slow down to lower a note, the flow simply slows down at the same percentage.
I'll go out on a limb and say this will eventually be done. I'll further say you'll be able to buy musical G-code that matches the piece like playing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" while printing a sleeping lion.
This is a simple software programming challenge. Think I might suggest it to some 3D printing social site and see if somebody does it.
And here's a crazy thought, how about the music guiding the printer so it makes a 3D rendition of the music so you can actually see the music in another dimension? You'd look at an abstract sculpture and say "Oh, that's the Bach fugue in D minor."-- doctorremulac3, May 06 2022 The journalist Jim Lehrer was working at a Dallas newspaper when it was announced that JFK had died. He said that it was so silent that even the teletype machines went silent.-- 4and20, May 06 2022 This is how old I am, when I was a kid, as I think I've mentioned before, my dad was a member of the Home Brew Computer club that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were members of. He had an Altair computer with an old fashioned machine gun sounding typwriter printer. I programmed it in basic to draw pictures with the characters. I think I also played around with it doing drum beats.-- doctorremulac3, May 06 2022 random, halfbakery