3D printing vinyl

[Reversed]

http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/news/interna ... record.htm

Discuss.

Of course it's not perfect yet, but in a few years the precision of 3D printers might actually make this viable. What do you think? What level of precision would be required to make an OK-sounding vinyl record with a 3D printer?

[Brothulhu]

My university has a £50,000 3D printer, I'm gonna go print some dub plates next year

[wub]

Mate of mine has a 3D printer.

He refuses to make me a gun

[Electric_Head]

They made playable ceramics back in the.........
true story

[wolf89]

http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/news/interna ... record.htm

Discuss.

Of course it's not perfect yet, but in a few years the precision of 3D printers might actually make this viable. What do you think? What level of precision would be required to make an OK-sounding vinyl record with a 3D printer?

It's not perfect yet in the way that a pencil drawn stick figure isn't a photograph in terms of sound quality

It's also entirely pointless. I mean you'd still have to go through the same process of mastering, lacquers and metallics up until the final product if you wanted a good sounding record before you could then duplicate it with a 3d printer which is the expensive part anyway. So all you'd be doing is trying to reach an insane level of resolution to print something that can be cut easily in a factory from the master plate cheaply and quickly. Especially as you're aiming for reaching an "Acceptable" quality which we don't want anyway. We can already make fucking good sounding records. This will only reduce quality,

Fucking stupid. Just a technology wank and nothing more. Even in the title "cut an mp3 to vinyl". An mp3? A fuking MP3?! Retards.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

I agree with wolf tbh. its never going to replace a cutting lathe and press.

[Aphile]

Someone posted this on my FB news feed. I looked and was instantly WTF'd much like wolf.

[baddis98]

but it’s a dramatic first step to a personalised and potentially much more efficient form of record production.

1) there's nothign this process can do that traditional dubplate cutting can't do.
2) it's definately not more efficient. 3d printing is expensive as fuck and takes HOURS. especially with a high level of detail.

besides that i really doubt that they can achieve an "acceptable" quality anytime soon.

[nameless133]

I think the 3D printers are evolving so fast and soon we can print everything for very cheap. Dubplates will be printed as well.

[swerver]

I welcome this technology personally. The quality is shite currently but it will only get better and 3D printers are already vastly cheaper than things like http://www.vinylium.ch/page/content/ind ... &Item=10.1

I'd love to be able to cut my own dubplates and this technology will make it more affordable.

[wolf89]

Cutting your own home made dubplates with a 3d printer will sound like shit though. Even that vinylium dubcutter think is likely to sound like pants too.

Most of what makes vinyl sound good is the actual mastering process done by a proper mastering engineer. I'd rather play cds than a shitty printed record and this is coming from someone who owns thousands of records

[Genevieve]

The market and technology will adapt to it, though. We can 3D print objects with moving parts, we can send a crew to Mars, we can find a way to 3D print great sounding physical mediums for live playback and DJ'ing. If you want "vinyl" to have a future, you betta adopt it.

Send the record to the mastering house, have them test their cut on their own 3D printer, send you the master and just print it yourself.

[baddis98]

I welcome this technology personally. The quality is shite currently but it will only get better and 3D printers are already vastly cheaper than things like http://www.vinylium.ch/page/content/ind ... &Item=10.1

I'd love to be able to cut my own dubplates and this technology will make it more affordable.

1) 4,500? good luck finding a decent 3d printer for that price. the Objet500 Connex that they used costs about 250,000 usd. http://www.3dprintingera.com/object-con ... ce-250000/
2) 3d printing or rapid prototyping has been around for a while. of course it's gonna get better, but there are different limitations, depending which method you're using. some methods are selective laser sintering, stereolithography, or fused layer modeling.
for the latter you have a tiny nozzle that prints molten material. so you can't create higher details than the diameter of your nozzle.
the first two use a laser beam that fuses small particles (sls) or polymerizes a photopolymer (stereolithography), which is the process they were using in this case as far as i can see. in both cases the focus point and quality of the laser limit the level of detail you can achieve.
3) industrial lasers are really expensive, use x-amount of energy (for stereolithography probably less), while having a really poor efficency. they're not made for home use.
4) on top of that these processes are really slow. printing a 12" gonna take you multiple hours.
5) you're basically printing multiple layers onto each other. the result will be more digital-wise (steps) than analogue.
6) even if the 3d printer can create that requiered level of detail, you still need decent software, that transfers the audio data into geometrical data properly.
7) and even if they finally improve all these things to a point where the quality is really good (and not just 'acceptable'), you won't be able to afford it. you could probably cut hundreds of dubplates at transition before reaching the break even point for your printer and all the costs for the production (energy, material).

* a friend of mine recently printed a prototype for a project at uni. generic plastic, no high details, probably the size of a radio, thin walls. he paid about 600 euros.

[wolf89]

The market and technology will adapt to it, though. We can 3D print objects with moving parts, we can send a crew to Mars, we can find a way to 3D print great sounding physical mediums for live playback and DJ'ing. If you want "vinyl" to have a future, you betta adopt it.

Send the record to the mastering house, have them test their cut on their own 3D printer, send you the master and just print it yourself.

It will be the death of good sounding vinyl though.

Just finishing a tune and printing it would sound like crap regardless of the printer resolution. Mastering for vinyl is a process that takes a lot of knowledge and experience as vinyl has a number of limitations and characteristics inherentant in it not to mention the actual master. All this will mean is some tnuc putting shit through ozone then printing a track that then doesn't play back any good. I can't see this taking off seriously.

[AllNightDayDream]

Well then it'd just be a matter of purchasing the vinyl master, right?

3D printing is the future. It'll only get more cheaper and efficient. Plate wise I'm more looking forward to a stabler material that'll increase the life of it.

[ThisIsSovereign]

I'm just amazed that this is in it's beginning stages. I joked about shit like this so much.

[wolf89]

Well then it'd just be a matter of purchasing the vinyl master, right?
.

The process up to this point is the expensive part though. Adding in a printer after this point would probably just cost more (ignoring the fact accurate reproduction must still be a long way off

[swerver]

I welcome this technology personally. The quality is shite currently but it will only get better and 3D printers are already vastly cheaper than things like http://www.vinylium.ch/page/content/ind ... &Item=10.1

I'd love to be able to cut my own dubplates and this technology will make it more affordable.

1) 4,500? good luck finding a decent 3d printer for that price. the Objet500 Connex that they used costs about 250,000 usd. http://www.3dprintingera.com/object-con ... ce-250000/
2) 3d printing or rapid prototyping has been around for a while. of course it's gonna get better, but there are different limitations, depending which method you're using. some methods are selective laser sintering, stereolithography, or fused layer modeling.
for the latter you have a tiny nozzle that prints molten material. so you can't create higher details than the diameter of your nozzle.
the first two use a laser beam that fuses small particles (sls) or polymerizes a photopolymer (stereolithography), which is the process they were using in this case as far as i can see. in both cases the focus point and quality of the laser limit the level of detail you can achieve.
3) industrial lasers are really expensive, use x-amount of energy (for stereolithography probably less), while having a really poor efficency. they're not made for home use.
4) on top of that these processes are really slow. printing a 12" gonna take you multiple hours.
5) you're basically printing multiple layers onto each other. the result will be more digital-wise (steps) than analogue.
6) even if the 3d printer can create that requiered level of detail, you still need decent software, that transfers the audio data into geometrical data properly.
7) and even if they finally improve all these things to a point where the quality is really good (and not just 'acceptable'), you won't be able to afford it. you could probably cut hundreds of dubplates at transition before reaching the break even point for your printer and all the costs for the production (energy, material).

* a friend of mine recently printed a prototype for a project at uni. generic plastic, no high details, probably the size of a radio, thin walls. he paid about 600 euros.

lol i'm the first to admit I know absolutely nothing about 3d printing, I just looked on ebay and saw 3d printers for around a grand.

[Gribble]

lol soon 3d printing will be mainstream, once they get better. people saying otherwise are being short sighted and dont understand the economies of scale. they'll get more and more advanced and soon we'll be in a new era of piracy, where you can download a pair of trainers.

in the distant future we may even be able to make materials using nano technology.