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Peachy Printer - The world's first $100 3D Printer
- agumonkey 13y agobeautiful approach. love the audacity 'model preview'.
- antr 13y agowhy does the site, before it finishes loading, want me download a *.torrent file?
- jstanley 13y agoI didn't experience this.
- anigbrowl 13y agoNot here (and I tried it with my sandboxed adblock-free honeyypot browser). Maybe an ad?
- tluyben2 13y agoChrome downloads this http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html as torrent.
- andrewcooke 13y agothis may be obvious to everyone else, but took me a while... stereo! [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.]
- pcowans 13y agoIt's even called stereolithography :-)
- MrBuddyCasino 13y agoHa, glad I wasn't the only one. I feel less stupid now.
- ibrahima 13y agoHmm, this is pretty much getting into impulse buy territory (for a 3D printer), and it even helps with my #1 problem justifying getting one which was that I haven't really learned any 3D modeling, by being capable of scanning (though I guess you could also do something similar with a Kinect). Could anyone with more insight into these things explain further why this is unique and whether there might be drawbacks? This almost seems too good to be true. (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)
- jevanish 13y agoIf you watch the videos in the kickstarter and on his site, you'll see he removed a ton of parts every other printer has to have. For example, the Z axis is now water...that's a lot cheaper than all the parts you need for a bed and the precision motors to normally raise/lower a platform. He did this in quite a few areas, which quickly plummets the price.
- tinco 13y agoThis is great stuff. I have no idea what I'd use a 3d printer for, but this guy's awesome approach to engineering has me wanting to buy one just to reward his work.
- elteto 13y agoWhere I work (large university) the instructors and professors teaching engineering labs build pretty much all the setups for the experiments using 3D printers and off the shelf components. It allows them to iterate very fast on designs and can also change the experiments year after years, since they are not stuck with some expensive machine or piece of equipment. It really is an amazing technology. 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.
- kevingadd 13y agoI wonder how much error is introduced by the use of the headphone jack to drive the printer - you've gotta deal with line noise from the computer's sound card, mixing latency/glitches from the OS, and the device sampling rate, along with any noise introduced on the audio cable. Does a 3D printer like this not actually require high-precision data to work correctly?
- SwellJoe 13y agoAudio output of modern computers is high precision. 16 bit resolution is pretty damned precise...even once converted to analog. I'm certain the mechanical parts being driven by it is a much, much, larger source of errors than any decent computer output would be. 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...
- kevingadd 13y agoI'm not referring to 16 bit precision per sample, more to 44khz and the potential for multi-millisecond audio glitches on most modern PC configurations. Glitch-free audio is pretty tough, still.
- jlgreco 13y agoPerhaps, with slightly more hardware, you could rig it up to kill the power to the laser if the sound level dropped to zero (which is typically how computer audio hiccups manifest). Printing would stop for a moment, but you wouldn't have the laser curing anything it shouldn't.
- oakwhiz 13y agoThis doesn't really work, though, because to the 3D printer, 0 volts is a valid signal in the domain of the input. Never use a value in the domain of your input as a null value. Additionally, it is difficult to define what the sound level of a continuous signal really is, since it is usually computed using an averaging, integrating, or low-pass filter (not sure which.) Just like an old-fashioned VU meter, it takes a moment for the needle to fall down to 0. By the time this happens, the glitch is over. 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.
- WestCoastJustin 13y agoKickstarter link @ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-pri... 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%20Gears http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grinds%20my%2... [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHtRnOXXZ0w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHtRnOXXZ0w [3] http://aberrant.me/front-page-of-hacker-news/ http://aberrant.me/front-page-of-hacker-news/ [4] http://www.backwardcompatible.net/179-traffic-hacker-news-effect http://www.backwardcompatible.net/179-traffic-hacker-news-ef...
- simias 13y agoMan, I got used to the kickstarter campains that try to sell me hot water and make it sound like it's the greatest thing on earth. This is refreshing, it's simple, clever. A true hack in the best meaning of the word.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Kliment 13y ago3ders is a summary site. All their articles are on this level. And yes, they are scummy like this with most of them.
- queeerkopf 13y agoIndiegogo link @ http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-scanner http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the-fir... 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 ...
- scoofy 13y agoThis is a bit too good to believe, but at $100 i'll bite. I've been into 3d printing for years now, and my main concern is material. If this resin is durable, and doesn't get soft in the car on a warm day, this design could be really groundbreaking. If not, it'll be a waste of everyone's time. The quality looks pretty decent given how awful low end 3d printers can be without a ton of tinkering. My current printer cost me about 2K and ABS/PLA at $40ish/kg actually adds up when prototyping. I'd love to have something really cheap like this to test out prints before finalizing them in ABS.
- jlgreco 13y agoIt looks like the resin they are using is "Makerjuice" (http://makerjuice.com/ http://makerjuice.com/). I don't know anything about that resin though.
- reustle 13y ago$40 for one liter of red, that doesn't seem too bad.
- rorrr2 13y ago$40/liter for small prints $45/liter for large Not cheap if you want to print anything larg-ish.
- Groxx 13y agoEh, only if you make the large-ish thing solid - this can easily make hollow / drain-able structures. And since it's partially supported by the liquid as it's built, you don't need as much temporary supporting structure as an extruded plastic version.
- jonhohle 13y agoIn this case, the suspension is some with salt water, which would provide very little support.
- noonespecial 13y agoThat's the "Woz-est" engineering I've seen in some time.
- daeken 13y agoI got my first ever 3d printer today (Makerbot Replicator 2). It is seriously the coolest piece of tech I've ever seen, which is really saying something. I can't wait for the price to drop, and for damn near everyone to have a 3d printer of some sort.
- SwellJoe 13y agoThis is the first 3D printer I've been excited about since the very first one I saw maybe a decade ago. 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?
- jevanish 13y agoI've heard the resin resultant objects are pretty brittle at least on the Form1, so I'm not sure it could do what you're hoping. 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.
- 542458 13y ago> pretty brittle at least on the Form1 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.
- jlgreco 13y agoI wonder if this will work with a combined headphone/microphone jack. Regardless, I love the approach taken here; really quite clever.
- lumberjack 13y agoDamn I didn't quite realize the ingenuity of using a mirror instead of fixed axis until I read this: >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-specs/c1gk6#!printer-specs/c1gk6 http://www.peachyprinter.com/?_escaped_fragment_=printer-spe...
- MBCook 13y agoBut the larger the build area, the harder it would be to control accurately. If you double each axis, could this printer still hit the previous layer when making thin walls?
- MertsA 13y agoYou're right but the thing is if you're printing some object that is 5x5 feet you probably don't need 0.5 mm thin walls and if you do need smaller features on a larger design you can print the object with the precision portions directly under the center where you have really fine grained precision and the bulk of the object can still be a couple of feet from the center as long as you don't have a need to print a canoe with 0.5 mm walls. 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%29+x%3D0+to+5+h%3D1+to+3 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.
- scotty79 13y agoAwesome idea. But isn't mirror inertia a problem? 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.
- jimktrains2 13y agoMy wager is that, especially for this initial release, that's being tossed into the sure-but-adds-complexity bin. Perhaps later versions will have a variable drip rate to speed up the process, but the complexity isn't needed in this version.
- maxerickson 13y agoIt's on a feedback loop, so you could probably manually twiddle the water valve to speed it up.
- bookface 13y agoJust print the box titled a few degrees :-)
- bookface 13y agos/titled/tilted/
- jimktrains2 13y agoMount a Raspberry PI to the side of it (with a USB microphone)and you could treat it as a network-attached printer :-)
- dmpayton 13y agoUse the RaspberryPi Camera, and you've got your scanner!
- makomk 13y agoThe Raspberry Pi only has 12 bits of audio output resolution and - at least historically - has had problems with latency-related audio glitches due to Pi-specific drivers spending too much time with interrupts disabled.
- jimktrains2 13y agoI wonder if the precision would matter a lots. Lots of lag may cause problems:-\
- BetaCygni 13y agoCouldn't you fix that with an USB sound card? My headphones included quite a nice compact one.
- zapt02 13y agoRaspberry Pi audio output is pretty bad though. Low quality and glitches..
- NonEUCitizen 13y agoCost just went up by ~$30 if you do this...
- fudged71 13y ago$130 for a network connected 3D printer is still a steal.
- codehero 13y agoI really like it and its entirely analog nature is refreshing. It makes sense to set aside something like a raspberry pi for it (I would never use a PC, especially on update tuesdays. And I would not want to set my PC audio to full blast so the output swings the full +-2.5V). 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.
- mcantelon 13y agoIs the resin for this a standard type of resin? Seems like you don't get much of it with the kit.
- tripzilch 13y agoYes. http://makerjuice.com/ http://makerjuice.com/
- DanBC 13y ago> The software we wrote as an add on to blender takes the data from that 3D model and translates it into an audio waveform. It then plays the audio file out to the printer through the headphone jack in your computer. This waveform drives a pair of electro magnetic mirrors. The higher the volume, the higher the voltage, the more the mirrors move. The purpose of these mirrors is to reflect and control the path of the laser beam. By using the audio waveform generated from the 3D model data to drive the mirrors, we are able to get the laser beam to draw out the shape of the object. That's takes care of the X and Y axes. 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.
- stinos 13y agoI look forward to people doing weird interesting things with this! 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
- fudged71 13y agoVery clever ideas in this design. I hope it can scale up the way he suggests!
- dm2 13y agoAwesome product! The beginning of the video needs to be redone, stop switching the camera angle and get rid of the techno music. I'd recommend starting the video with a timelapse of a printing with some basic explanation audio.
- ris 13y agoI wouldn't trust the dimensions of things made by this one millimeter.
- mrleinad 13y ago"Grayson wrote an add-on to blender which translate 3D model into an audio waveform". This guy probably has a t-shirt that reads "What would McGyver do?"
- twic 13y agoThis guy probably printed a t-shirt that reads "What would McGyver do?". Using a waffle iron.
- tocomment 13y agoSo why does it have to use audio? And why can't it use servos to move the lasers?
- ehsanu1 13y agoBoth were due to cost, especially the servos. But I think a microcontroller capable of usb would not be particularly expensive, though more expensive than not having it.
- peeters 13y agoIt also removes a lot of code complexity, or at least moves it to the computer where it's easier to write and update.
- marincounty 13y agoI just heard a few weeks ago that the patents on laser 3-D printers expired. I really hope this freedom from lawsuits will inspire many more Inventors. physibles!
- rbanffy 13y agoAfter a close look at the simple and clever design and the not quite practical printing method, I'm about to say this is the ZX-81 of 3D printers. Not quite an Apple II, but cheap and may serve to ignite some imaginations.
- iamgopal 13y agoIt will be fun to see, How "shine on you crazy diamond" finally looks like ?
- samstave 13y agoAt this price - I would love to see an array of these printing into a larger vat to produce large objects. 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.
- nanofortnight 13y agoI wonder if you're able to get accurately sized objects for gears and such. The resin for photolithographic printers normally suffer from shrinkage after printing.
- MertsA 13y agoOn makerjuice.com you could get the SubG+ resin that shrinks "less than 3.5%", but the shrinkage should be consistent enough to compensate for that by printing slightly oversized parts.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- robomartin 13y agoIt's clever and really neat. That said, please don't think you are going to get parts of the quality, accuracy, surface detail and durability attainable through other more established methods. 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.
- grannyg00se 13y agoIf you wouldn't mind, could you indicate which other methods you are referring to? I'd like to check them out. As far as I know stereolithography is the most accurate method known. And I can't foresee any accuracy issues inherent in this particular solution that can't be improve with a slight increase in materials cost.
- robomartin 13y agoIn talking to a number of people who've purchased or built a range of what I would characterize as hobby machines the common thread is that they are nearly unusable or a complete pain to use for real commercial work. Everyone I know who uses 3D printing for non-trivial business purposes either contracts out the work to 3D printing service bureaus with heavy duty commercial grade machines or they actually invest on such machines to do the printing in house. 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.
- ttty 13y agoWhy when I visit this website I get a torrent downloade automatically? widgets_tweet_button.html.torrent
- tonyarkles 13y agoThis is rad! As I looked through the list of people involved, I learned that one of the guys doing it was a close friend of mine through EE school. 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!
- grannyg00se 13y agoI was just talking to my mom about 3D printers on Friday, trying to explain the processes of the different types, and how the most accurate ones like this (lasers, laser-sensitive liquid, directed high precision curing) are the best but also the most expensive. That conversation would have gone much differently had I seen this project a few days ago. 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!
- aagha 13y agoIt should also be noted that this guy seems to be a genius.
- smokey42 13y agoNobody seems to get that this is the first 3D printer with which printing can be easily parallelized! This is going to be huuuuuuuge!