Hackaday: Black pipe furniture is all the rage now, and for good reason — it has a nice industrial aesthetic, it’s sturdy, and the threaded fittings make it a snap to put together. But if you’ve priced out the fittings lately, you know that it’s far from cheap, so being able to 3D-print your own black pipe fittings can make desks and tables a lot more affordable.
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Once again, it is the 3D printer making innovation. This is an easy way for people at home to save money and build their own furniture. This kind of printed construction is something that is already being used in the world of theatre. I read an article a while back – I think it was on this blog, but I can not remember – about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival scene shop printing pieces for a steel frame so that they would not have to use fasteners. The walkway frames and the handrails just slid into a 3D printed holder. The technical director also used the McMaster-Carr catalog to design his printable pieces. He uploaded the model of the joint being welded to the frame parts and then created a profile from it that could be attached to an angle iron so the frame could just slid into place. I think it is really cool that this company was a catalog resource that is open for individuals to pull models from. Its seems like a great resource to be able to model structures with the exact hardware needed for construction – so the model is as accurate as possible – and then people can also do what Mariano did and print the pieces themselves.
It’s really impressive how far we’ve gotten with 3D printing. I know it was always supposed to be something that anyone could play around with. The fact that the 3D printing is detailed enough to do pipe thread so easily is awesome. I really wonder how strong it actually is. It’s not terribly strong probably, because it is still just plastic not steel, but it’s pretty resilient. If they are study this could be an interesting way for a theatre to cheaply make non-rigging hardware instead of buying it all. Like how in Ragtime we used so many pipe connectors to make the handrails. The printing time is probably a factor in not using it for a production, but if it was something more universal that could be used in stock that could be interesting to pursue. I do wonder a little bit at the legality of just 3D printing something off of McMaster-Carr instead of buying it. But they’re such a huge company it probably doesn’t even affect them and it's not like it says somewhere that you can only use the downloadable draftings as references only.
I like the Fusion 360 shout out. I am still waiting for it to process faster and not lag, but it is a really powerful tool that I think will catch on soon. Now, for the very interesting part, this guy just pulled a part off McMaster and printed it. That is totally free for him. I wonder if McMaster will ever start charging for CAD files if people stop buying products and just print them instead. Sure, it's hard to print a steel bolt, but there are a plenty of McMaster CAD files when paired with a certain 3D printer could make it so buying the product is unnecessary. I see McMaster CAD files as a luxury so people can see what they're getting and add it to drawings, but McMaster could easily take that luxury away if people are abusing them. I printed a mcmaster file for my stewart platform, so I guess I am part of the problem. Who knows, maybe McMaster is OK with it.
3d printing is moving and its moving fast in a positive direction. As we move forward and the technology is becoming more and more integrated into our technology and into things that we see and use everyday the precision and applications become endless. It's also interesting to see where 2-d printing will go in the professional and production shop. As things become more precise and more accurate and we are able to mass produce and even create pieces in shorter and shorter print times the objects and #-d printed components will become more and more reasonable to use in larger scale productions. Now a lot of things just take to long or aren't quite up to their metal counter part or what have you. entire industries are changing with just a few simple ideas and machine concepts and we will be able to see it all shift in the theatrical industry in the near future.
This article is interesting in two separate ways first of these is the fact that they used 3D printers to print flanges for the black pipe desk because it was cheaper than buying the flanges online. But for me the most important statement made in article for me was when they stated that "Thanks to the ability to browse the McMaster-Carr catalog from within Fusion 360, [Mariano] was able to seamlessly import the CAD model of a suitable iron flange and quickly modify it to his needs. The power of this feature is hard to overstate; you can literally browse through a catalog of engineered parts and print usable replicas instantly." The time that I was shown the wonder that is McMaster-Carr I was completely blown away by just how useful this tool would be in my future draftings. Interesting though I didn't know that they had started to make 3D models which is pretty damn cool.
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