Pretty nice. It looked weird when Seth was playing it, but I realized that's because the keys that you would normally close with your right hand did not seal. So he was restricted to the three or so notes that you can play with your left hand.
Also, the article says: the flute itself sounds beautiful acoustically when played by player Seth Hunter.
Personally, I think it sounds like those plastic recorders that you got in 3rd grade music class. But that's not the point; it shows that 3d printing can produce something that used to take a skilled craftsperson days.
This will be great for applications like elementary school band, though, because kids can lose interest quickly, and a $5 mass-produced instrument is perfect for learning. Once you know you are going to stick with it, then you can pay the $2000 for the real thing :)
>because kids can lose interest quickly, and a $5 mass-produced instrument is perfect for learning
It took 15 hours to print and had to be manually cleaned. Sure the process will improve but then how much does it currently cost to make a basic flute? The cheapest retail I found after a very brief search was $70, http://amzn.to/dQGdzI (aff link); so I'm going to guess $35 direct manufacture costs. Mind you it gets very poor reviews whilst $100 gets you a Hisonic one with pretty good reviews (http://amzn.to/eV9a6q).
The only price I found was $50,000 USD for the printer - even if it ran everyday for 5 years without breaking or needing materials or maintenance that's $20 or so of your $5.
It is awesome though how it prints composite pieces and the way the removable scaffold materials are used, love the concept of these things.
It costs about $1.2/cc, if you own the machine. A tube of: 40cm length, 3cm OD 2.5cm ID - ~80cc, $96 - which is the absolute bare minimum this would probably cost to 3D print.
Also - I'd bet the yield would be low - meaning you'd need to print a few times, and it'd break pretty quickly. The Objet rubber is not functional for prolonged use.
You're probably right, but keep in mind that mass production imposes some costs of its own. There are the up-front costs you allude to when you say "short-run" --- even if you're cutting your mold from aluminum, that's an expensive way to make five instances --- but there are also costs associated with the "mass" nature of the production.
First, mass production must be geographically centralized. This means you have shipping costs. For fragile or bulky objects, the shipping cost can sometimes exceed the material cost.
Second, mass production involves inventory at every stage of the supply chain, although you can cut inventory down quite a lot from what we used to do 60 years ago. Maintaining inventory is expensive.
So it's possible that 3-D printers will beat molding for mass production. It's just not likely in the foreseeable future.
Molecular nanotechnology will, of course, make 3-D printers beat molding.
> Molecular nanotechnology will, of course, make 3-D printers beat molding.
It will?
Fiction and facts don't mix in the same discussion, molecular nanotechnology if it will ever be a reality will possibly make 3-D printers beat molding.
Injection molding is very fast, extremely cheap and can be used for very large runs. We do not know any of those parameters for nanotech yet assuming that we can can actually implement it.
Well, I didn't mean to imply that it was a certainty that MNT would exist, and of course it's possible for it to exist but only in some limited form, with limits we can't easily predict today. So you are correct: everything about it is uncertain.
On the other hand, it seems very likely that at some point we'll have flexibly programmable universal assemblers capable of relatively rapid self-reproduction (say, less than three months) and of making materials at least as strong as the cheap thermoplastics we use in injection molding out of relatively common elements. There are a lot of different avenues that could get us to that goal.
The intrinsic cost of making something consists, as I understand it, of amortized capital costs, marginal raw material costs, marginal energy costs, and marginal labor. Self-reproducing assemblers eliminate the physical part of the capital costs; automated manufacturing of any kind eliminates marginal labor, leaving only the labor component of the capital costs; and the raw material and energy costs probably will be about the same for artificial molecular assemblers as they are for natural ones such as potatoes.
The labor component of the capital cost is simply the R&D required to automate the making of the thing. It seems very likely to me that this will be similar to what we do today for injection molding, a guy building 3-D models in a CAD/CAM system, but with much less in the way of concerns about taper and the like.
I recognize that you know a great deal more about modern manufacturing than I do, so if I am wrong about something, please do not hesitate to correct me.
>Molecular nanotechnology will, of course, make 3-D printers beat molding.
Why bother with the nanotech when you can buy a flute in a 4D immersive environment and use it via a haptic interface (with feedback) that to your brain is no different than using a regular flute. Oh and it costs equivalent of an iPhone app and an orchestra comes bundled with the flute.
Why bother with the intermediation/illusion of an 4D immersive environment when you can have a richer/more nuanced experience playing a "real" flute. ;)
I'm going to guess that there are a lot of people that would use a holodeck if they had one, why bother if you can live real life?
If you've got a 4D immersive environment on hand then why bother buying a real flute? If you can't tell the difference I mean. In the case of the flute you could have the best flute in the world [for you], break it and it doesn't need fixing just re-rendering, the pads wouldn't wear out, you could alter the weight/tone/colour/taste at will, you could play along with an orchestra without the trouble of hiring one etc.. VR theoretically will give as far more nuance than real life.
Off-topic: I played flute for 7 years, stopped when I was 17, and I had no idea they were this cheap! We always had to rent or borrow one because we couldn't afford to buy one at home, but with these prices, I might just buy one and pick it up again. After 8 years I won't remember how to play it, but for $100 I'm willing to risk trying to get "it" back on my own.
Thanks for renewing my interest in an old friend of mine
It may not be able to compete with traditional instruments but you could fill a shop with exciting designs like the multi-pipe trumpet and quickly cover the cost of the machine.
By my count, you're able to play 15 or 16 notes with the left hand alone on the flute (without considering alternative fingerings), ignoring the use of the right hand's pinky finger for all but one of them (fourth octave B).
I wasn't particularly impressed by how it sounded either. But man is it cool.
That is awesome, the flute looks like the gun from the toon-world in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".
They gave themselves quite a challenge trying to 3d-print a playable instrument: as you can see from the video, on the modern flute most keys depress one or more other keys when pressed, so the mechanism has to be adjusted just so in order for all of the pads involved in a key press to seal at the same time (in fact thin pieces of paper are used to shim pads to get a good seal, so it's quite a precise thing).
I really, really hope they fabricate some new and amazing Dr. Seuss instruments and commision some student composers to write pieces for them.
Cool, but it seems like they missed a bit of a chance by not printing a simple system keyless flute. Less impressive looking, I suppose, but as long as they were careful with their CAD model design, it probably would have worked perfectly on the first try.
It's nice to see this development, but replicating existing designs is not where this technology is at its best, prototyping is.
That said it's an extremely impressive piece of work, and just like with the pig, the fact that it dances at all is what makes it amazing, the quality of the dance is secondary for now.
Although really - the jetting issues are pretty big with this process. The materials and print heads are tuned with much effort. You could get around the jetting issues by using one material and do the EnvisionTec process (i.e. DLP projecting on a bath of UV cured plastic) - but it'll be more expensive materials wise - though you will be able to print hundreds of things at one time...
For now the FDM (MakerBot / RepRap) process are the best start for accessible printing.
No, the process is fundamentally different. You can think of the RepRap process as being like a glue gun on a robot arm, whereas what PJet stuff does is more like printing a page of paper, but instead of ink, it's resin. Then shine some UV on it to cure it.
Also, the article says: the flute itself sounds beautiful acoustically when played by player Seth Hunter.
Personally, I think it sounds like those plastic recorders that you got in 3rd grade music class. But that's not the point; it shows that 3d printing can produce something that used to take a skilled craftsperson days.
This will be great for applications like elementary school band, though, because kids can lose interest quickly, and a $5 mass-produced instrument is perfect for learning. Once you know you are going to stick with it, then you can pay the $2000 for the real thing :)
(And yes, I do play the flute!)