3D printing wood

noah katz said:

This looks really cool, you can even print grain.

Editor’s Pick: New additive manufacturing process for wood - Digital Engineering

Desktop Metal Forust wood additive manufacturing offers a new path to produce luxurious custom wood pieces for home decor, interiors, transportation and architectural design.”.

www.digitalengineering247.com

Not sure what the cost/cu. in. will be, but this could be great for curvaceous shapes and integral bracing.

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that's pretty sweet...

and probably cheap, right? lol

jcr159 said:

and probably cheap, right?

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Dunno.

Two things make 3D printing expensive now, material costs and speed.

The former has good prospects because of the billions of tons of sawdust generated every year, but I don't know the cost of the binder, nor if the overall process is faster than the current ones.

DIY wood flared ports.

noah katz said:

Dunno.

Two things make 3D printing expensive now, material costs and speed.

The former has good prospects because of the billions of tons of sawdust generated every year, but I don't know the cost of the binder, nor if the overall process is faster than the current ones.

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if it’s a mix as you print JIT process, that’s gonna be complicated…. If it’s a premix and use in x amount of time it might not be too bad.
to your point, it depends a lot on the binders and epoxy? Used to make it all happen and the working time…

id love to see more info about the final material properties…. Compressive/bending/torsional strength, etc…. Now I’m imagining printing over fine screen mesh for added tensile strength, lol

so when will someone make a concrete version that prints this level of detail…. I’ll take some concrete sub enclosures…. Can’t be much heavier than all these sheets of MDF, lol. and the dust is just as bad for you! Bonus! 🤣

I saw this almost a year ago:


3D printing for green products


They are reportedly mimicking the ultrastructure by using genetic codes and cellular structure of various types of wood. I don’t know if this is the same technology that is being used in the link in the original post. But I thought it was interesting.

I'm guessing that the build window is quite small though. You would be better off with a dense, structural resin in an SLA printer. It would be wildly expensive though. The resin I use at work is $175-$300 per liter and the $3,500 printer has a max print size of 6"x6"x8". I printed a tube yesterday that was 7" tall and 3" diameter on the lowest quality setting and it took 12 hours.

clint357 said:

I'm guessing that the build window is quite small though. You would be better off with a dense, structural resin in an SLA printer. It would be wildly expensive though. The resin I use at work is $175-$300 per liter and the $3,500 printer has a max print size of 6"x6"x8". I printed a tube yesterday that was 7" tall and 3" diameter on the lowest quality setting and it took 12 hours.

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Needs more cowbell... er, sawdust

filler could make it cheaper without sacrificing a lot of structural integrity...

totally squirreling here... seems like some sort of fiberglass/carbon fiber printer could be created that lays fiber in a resin extruded all at the same time...

back to the wood though, i wonder how they get it to work so well... most of the products that are manufactured with some type of resin/adhesive and wood fibers or sawdust also require pressure and heat to remove voids and cure...

I wouldn't get your hopes up. It doesn't really sound much different than "wood" filaments available today. I did like this sentence -

Unlike existing wood fiber 3D printing options—which rely on a polylactic acid filament that is a mixture of plastic and wood—the Forust process manufactures by placing layers of specially treated sawdust, joined by a non-toxic and biodegradable binder.

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So.... Your new filament is basically just a mixture of plastic and wood, like your competitors.

Suntan said:

I wouldn't get your hopes up. It doesn't really sound much different than "wood" filaments available today. I did like this sentence -

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That was my least favorite sentence because it was so vague, and the binder is key.

noah katz said:

Dunno.

Two things make 3D printing expensive now, material costs and speed.

The former has good prospects because of the billions of tons of sawdust generated every year, but I don't know the cost of the binder, nor if the overall process is faster than the current ones.

Click to expand...

For a DIY crowd, though, the speed is secondary. If you're only making a few units, and don't need to cover overhead with it, it could take a week and still be relatively fast and cheap, assuming you don't have to sit and babysit the thing. Plus, the shapes you can make compared to the average skill level. It might take the fun out of it, or you could also just use it to make pieces, like a waveguide/baffle that would be difficult with other methods short of a CNC machine.

If you could get one for less than a thousand dollars, I can see this becoming a new thing for the hobbyist.

(The Other) Colin Miller said:

For a DIY crowd, though, the speed is secondary.

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True, though I was thinking of the cost charged by a 3rd-party service provider.

(The Other) Colin Miller said:

For a DIY crowd, though, the speed is secondary. If you're only making a few units, and don't need to cover overhead with it, it could take a week and still be relatively fast and cheap, assuming you don't have to sit and babysit the thing. Plus, the shapes you can make compared to the average skill level. It might take the fun out of it, or you could also just use it to make pieces, like a waveguide/baffle that would be difficult with other methods short of a CNC machine.

If you could get one for less than a thousand dollars, I can see this becoming a new thing for the hobbyist.

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Most currently affordable models use extruding heads with not so great tolerance. Also, The compromise for cheaper resins is, there is a shrink factor that will continue the longer it’s exposed to uv. That’s if it’s in fact sla. I believe there is a future for diy, perhaps it may lie in laser sintering, maybe not. I’m surprised how well received and utilized laser apparatus has been for general use. I mean they’re building houses with it, we can surely build speakers with it..

All user names taken said:

Most currently affordable models use extruding heads with not so great tolerance. Also, The compromise for cheaper resins is, there is a shrink factor that will continue the longer it’s exposed to uv. That’s if it’s in fact sla. I believe there is a future for diy, perhaps it may lie in laser sintering, maybe not. I’m surprised how well received and utilized laser apparatus has been for general use. I mean they’re building houses with it, we can surely build speakers with it..

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everything is better with lasers!

3d printers.. sharks…. 😂

jcr159 said:

everything is better with lasers!

3d printers.. sharks…. 😂

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Lol, I couldn’t agree more..

That is awesome. Now once you have proof of concept you will have to scale it up to 8 or 10 inch ID.

That looks great. I am not sure what the flair rate or expansion rate should be but there must be information somewhere about that.

There's a thread about damping of box panels and ports, including interesting 3D printed ones, but can't remember the name of it or the OP.