
Peachy Printer - The world's first $100 3D Printer - jschwartz11
http://www.3ders.org//articles/20130921-the-peachy-printer-the-world-first-100-dollar-3d-printer-scanner.html
======
WestCoastJustin
Kickstarter link @ [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-
pri...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-
first-100-3d-printer-and-sc)

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%2...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grinds%20my%20Gears)

[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-
ef...](http://www.backwardcompatible.net/179-traffic-hacker-news-effect)

~~~
queeerkopf
Indiegogo link @ [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the-
fir...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the-
first-100-3d-printer-scanner)

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 ...

~~~
jimktrains2
Advertising in two similar, but not exactly the same markets at once?

Although, I feel like the indiegogo should have some sort of outreach to it as
well. Like, "$25 gets you resin or a t-shirt and you (along with 5 other
people) will sponsor a printer for a school" or something like that. Or
perhaps focus on how the money from indiegogo will be used to make the
software more accessible and easy to use for all people, not just those
skilled in CAD.

EDIT: The indiegogo uses a fixed-funding model like kickstarter. I wasn't
aware that projects could do that there.

~~~
boaarmpit
It's strange that they chose a fixed-funding model for indiegogo. Even though
the kickstarter has reached its goal, the indigogo project might not.

Aside from the lower price of the remaining early bird specials, is there any
reason to fund it through indiegogo instead of kickstarter?

------
SwellJoe
This 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
I'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
> 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.

~~~
nnnnni
What if you use a spray primer to completely coat the object?

~~~
542458
Not a clue! You'd have to ask somebody more qualified than myself.

------
lumberjack
Damn 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-
spe...](http://www.peachyprinter.com/?_escaped_fragment_=printer-
specs/c1gk6#!printer-specs/c1gk6)

~~~
MBCook
But 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
You'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%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=h%2F%28h%5E2+%2B+x%5E2%29+x%3D0+to+5+h%3D1+to+3)

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.

------
ibrahima
Hmm, 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
If 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.

------
kevingadd
I 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?

~~~
anigbrowl
Line noise is a bit of an issue, but that's usually quite high frequency which
means it can either be filtered or that the errors will be correspondingly
small. Latency and glitches are not likely to be an issue at all, even the
crappiest computer nowadays can handle multitrack audio and delays of a few
milliseconds that would interfere with music performance are not going to have
any impact here. Likewise sampling rate shouldn't be a problem, anything above
8Khz or so should be adequate for purpose here and most cheap uCs could handle
that. Cable noise is generally negligible over short runs. A bigger problem
would be ground hum from poorly isolated transformers/power supplies, but that
is on a fixed frequency and can be eliminated with a HPF. Certainly the output
is a little crude but it will be 'good enough' for many purposes.

Note also that the audio input allows playback from an mp3 player or other
sources, suggesting the audio can be wholly precomputed. Imagine how useful
that could be in places like Africa so that you could print thing without
necessarily needing a high-power device like a laptop.

~~~
kevingadd
Thanks for the points on how trivial it would be to handle line noise and
playback glitches. Makes sense to me; I just don't know my hardware and analog
circuits well enough to know how cheap it is to filter that stuff out.

~~~
anigbrowl
No problem. Sorry if my other comment wasn't informative.

------
noonespecial
That's the "Woz-est" engineering I've seen in some time.

------
tinco
This 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
Where 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.

------
rbanffy
After 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.

------
mrleinad
"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
This guy probably _printed_ a t-shirt that reads "What would McGyver do?".
Using a waffle iron.

------
andrewcooke
this 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
It's even called stereolithography :-)

------
samstave
At 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.

------
grannyg00se
I 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!

------
DanBC
> 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
_I 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

------
scoofy
This 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
It looks like the resin they are using is "Makerjuice"
([http://makerjuice.com/](http://makerjuice.com/)). I don't know anything
about that resin though.

~~~
rorrr2
$40/liter for small prints

$45/liter for large

Not cheap if you want to print anything larg-ish.

~~~
Groxx
Eh, 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
In this case, the suspension is some with salt water, which would provide very
little support.

~~~
jlgreco
The resin is buoyant in salt water; is the cured resin?

So long as the liquid resin floats on salt water, I don't see why salt water
should provide less support than liquid resin.

------
dm2
Awesome 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.

------
jimktrains2
Mount a Raspberry PI to the side of it (with a USB microphone)and you could
treat it as a network-attached printer :-)

~~~
makomk
The 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
I wonder if the precision would matter a lots.

Lots of lag may cause problems:-\

------
ttty
Why when I visit this website I get a torrent downloade automatically?
widgets_tweet_button.html.torrent

------
robomartin
It'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
If 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
In 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.

~~~
twic
This is perhaps a bit like how an SLR-owning photographer would have looked at
cameraphones when they came out. Or how a mainframe programmer looked at
microcomputers.

They, and you, were absolutely right to observe that these devices were
massively less capable than the existing devices, and to foresee that they
would never become as capable, and to explain that the reduced capability
translates directly into less freedom to create, and to predict that they
would not replace the existing devices.

Where they might have gone wrong (i note that you do not!) would be to
conclude that these devices were therefore never going to be successful. They
did not displace the existing devices from their niches; they carved out an
entirely new niche, surviving by making small profits from huge numbers of
people.

The boosters are talking rubbish when they say that 3D printing will
revolutionise manufacturing. But it might just revolutionise DIY.

------
daeken
I 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.

------
codehero
I 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.

------
tonyarkles
This 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!

------
jlgreco
I wonder if this will work with a combined headphone/microphone jack.

Regardless, I love the approach taken here; really quite clever.

------
scotty79
Awesome 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.

~~~
bookface
Just print the box titled a few degrees :-)

~~~
bookface
s/titled/tilted/

------
mcantelon
Is the resin for this a standard type of resin? Seems like you don't get much
of it with the kit.

~~~
tripzilch
Yes. [http://makerjuice.com/](http://makerjuice.com/)

------
antr
why does the site, before it finishes loading, want me download a *.torrent
file?

~~~
anigbrowl
Not here (and I tried it with my sandboxed adblock-free honeyypot browser).
Maybe an ad?

------
nanofortnight
I 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
On 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.

------
aagha
It should also be noted that this guy seems to be a genius.

------
marincounty
I 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!

------
smokey42
Nobody seems to get that this is the first 3D printer with which printing can
be easily parallelized! This is going to be huuuuuuuge!

------
tocomment
So why does it have to use audio? And why can't it use servos to move the
lasers?

~~~
ehsanu1
Both 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
It also removes a lot of code complexity, or at least moves it to the computer
where it's easier to write and update.

------
fudged71
Very clever ideas in this design. I hope it can scale up the way he suggests!

------
ris
I wouldn't trust the dimensions of things made by this one millimeter.

------
agumonkey
beautiful approach. love the audacity 'model preview'.

