When a designer is looking for something, they generally have a fairly specific set of parameters. Often there is no willingness to settle for second best or a ‘not quite fit’ solution. This demanding eye often leads makers to create their own stuff rather than just accepting whatever the market might supply.
If you’re a maker, you’re probably already nodding your head.
And if you were to get a chance to listen to music on these, you’d be nodding your head to high-quality sound. Given access to a bevy of high-quality 3D printers, it should come as no surprise that the designer decided to leverage the capabilities of the technology in order to create a fully customized set of speakers.
The speaker casing was created in CAD and then imported into Z-Suite slicing software, it was then printed on the company’s powerhouse printer, the Zortrax M200. Different filaments were used to create the final product, Z-Hips and Z-Ultrat, filaments that are extremely durable and that print with a matte finish were used for the casing and Z-Glass, a filament that is semi-transparent was used to print the covering for LED lights.
Making speakers with 3D printing is a pretty awesome project to take on in its own right and a number of 3D printed speaker options have been cropping up across the maker world.
We’re not just seeing the creation of innovative casing but that the very components used to build the speaker are being 3D printed as well. Back in January, we covered a 3D printed speaker created by Formlabs for display at their booth at International CES 2015 along with a sweet video showing how it was made. We’ve seen several other varieties of 3D printed speakers since, too.
In the meantime, I’m just hoping for an invite to give the 3D printed speaker a listen. That’s the true test of its success. I hope Zortrax has some good soul music on their playlist.
What do you think of these speakers? Have you encountered any 3D printed sound components? Let us know in the 3D Printed Zortrax Speakers forum thread over at 3DPB.com.