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It doesn’t float?
What if we could 3D print our aquascape?
- Thread starter chad vossen
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I haven't put anything into my reef tank but the Yoda floats in tap water. However, you can easily design in a recess for a weight or just glue a ceramic weight to the bottom of any structure to ensure it stays down.
There certainly is. Homes are being printed from Portland cement even now. Why not a reefscape. The process will obviously require a specialized printer but that doesn't suggest unreasonably priced hardware. 3 axis and a cnc printing / pumping head etc. Fairly simple stuff. Heck metal printers are 1/5th the price they were a few years ago.
I own 3d printers that we use for prototyping and some production work in plastic and metal. Porosity on par with any live rock would be trivial to print with a half way thought-out matrix design. There is a software named Solid works that we use all day everyday that can very easily calculate surface area in a project like this and make recommendations to further optimize. It honestly is not that hard. Someone just needs a business plan that works. We all tend to forget that live rock covered in Coraline, corals and detritus it actually doing 95% of its job on the surface.
Very nice info dump. The newer ceramic printers might be worth considering as well not to mention using a hybrid metal / ceramic printer with 1-2 kw fiber laser for setting the material with. We print a lot of very high def metal parts like this that require little mill work or post processing.Hi Everyone. I'm a product design engineer and I've worked extensively with 3D printing over the last 7 years. The industry has come a long way. When I started, our 3D printer was $60,000 and took up a good portion of the room (this was an extremely high quality and accuracy printer).
Now, you can buy one for your home for under $1,000 (completely different method of printing than the industrial sized ones and much less accurate). This type of printing is called FDM and it's what is covered in OP's article. Basically, it melts plastic and then draws with it to form layers that stack on each other to form your final product. Despite what some people have mentioned about these being solid - most of the time they are not. To save on material beyond the specified wall thickness of the product, it will be hollow but have a honeycomb type fill. Odds are it's not going to be water-tight either so it will fill. You can add holes all over your structure as well if you wanted. There is also software out there to make your model "organic" - see the picture below of the organic Yoda I simply downloaded off the internet and printed. I think that structure has amazing surface area and would be great to host bacteria.
The Yoda was printed on a Makerbot. I suggest this brand for anyone that wants to make good quality prints at home. If you do end up looking into 3D printing, make sure you research the material you use for being reef-safe (I haven't researched this topic at all). Only buy high quality material - you don't want anything leaching out of the plastics. The sharks teeth were printed on the same machine. The Batman bust was printed on a different machine that uses a method called SLA (shoots a laser into a liquid to solidify it and builds layers that way).
I think 3D printing and Computer Aided Design of aquariums will eventually offer complete customization. You can calculate and control: total surface area, volume displacement, conduct analysis on where shadows will be cast, add custom spots for coral plugs, flow analysis of your tank based on the features you add, and a lot more.
Unless you have a giant tank the marine pure blocks are treat you right !I'll be your tester. I just put in a man made non porous structure in my tank. I also have 3 Marine Pure Blocks. 8 Maxspect-nano-tech-bio-block, and a bunch of aged misc rubble rock.
2 of the 3 frag racks I own are printed. I think ceramic would be the way to go. BTW Im looking into getting one, there are some cool DIY kits available
Brew12
Electrical Gru
Have you ever done any ICP testing to check for contaminants? Or do you run GAC to account for anything that could leach out?
Brew12
Electrical Gru
Well, I know ABS plastics are not food safe. I believe most of the PLA stuff is, or at least can be.
ICP-Triton was done after several months with them in place, tin and alum was approaching yellow but still in the green, Dr Randy recommended not to react and monitor. I have a AWT that I will do in a week or two.
I think a ICP would need to be done after 30 days of placing in a tank to really see. The PVC plumbing ( known to have impurities ), plastic overflow and the plastics from pumps to heaters and the mounting hardware from everything else we use is taken for granted so why not a Quality 3D filament.;Bookworm
Aragonite or ceramic mud on a 3 Axis printer with a gate or flow valve could make some nifty Aquascapes, I think that would be a feasible material. We use sealer robots (5-6 axis) with a dispensing nozzle for urethane and I can make some big Cow pies any shape you want.
BTW has anyone heard about pfoa and pfos in water? we are discovering this stuff in wells and now in our wildlife. Last week they issued a Do Not Eat Deer from a 5 mile radius of an old Air Force base that closed in the 80's after a deer has tested positive. It has always been there but they are now looking for it. So Im not sure ICP would reveal anything.
I think a ICP would need to be done after 30 days of placing in a tank to really see. The PVC plumbing ( known to have impurities ), plastic overflow and the plastics from pumps to heaters and the mounting hardware from everything else we use is taken for granted so why not a Quality 3D filament.;Bookworm
Aragonite or ceramic mud on a 3 Axis printer with a gate or flow valve could make some nifty Aquascapes, I think that would be a feasible material. We use sealer robots (5-6 axis) with a dispensing nozzle for urethane and I can make some big Cow pies any shape you want.
BTW has anyone heard about pfoa and pfos in water? we are discovering this stuff in wells and now in our wildlife. Last week they issued a Do Not Eat Deer from a 5 mile radius of an old Air Force base that closed in the 80's after a deer has tested positive. It has always been there but they are now looking for it. So Im not sure ICP would reveal anything.
OP
OP
chad vossen
Active Member
I should have included this video in the article, but better late than never.
Imagine if we had a really nice Tonga branch scanned, which we would print over and over. Down to the texture of the original rock. Once this ceramic is fired, the organics in the base material are burned away, leaving a extensive pore structure within the ceramic that water can easily penetrate, likely better than rock such as reef saver.
Imagine if we had a really nice Tonga branch scanned, which we would print over and over. Down to the texture of the original rock. Once this ceramic is fired, the organics in the base material are burned away, leaving a extensive pore structure within the ceramic that water can easily penetrate, likely better than rock such as reef saver.
Unless the tech has made a huge jump don't these 3d printers take an insane amount of time to print something, especially something with a very intricate design? A youtube video showing the Eiffel tower being 3d printed took 20 hours. A rock will take a lot less and a branch even less but in the time it takes to print one of them a machine can probably extract tons of dry rock from natural locations. I think on a small scale it could be feasible but nothing that can replace current harvesting methods.
U
User1
Guest
Printers do take time, at least at the base consumer level. However, you can set and forget. Come back later after checking from time to time and its completed. Enterprise or corporation levels is another story but also outside of our price point. Depending on the material used will answer the reef safe question or not. Last phase is manual process to throw some reef safe or marine epoxy on it, add some substrate and rubble, let it cure, and you are done. Similar to how one would make the false rock walls using foam and other mixes.
People are already making skimmers out of their printers among other things. No reason why you can't use the printers to make solutions to hide power heads or unique closed loop systems.
People are already making skimmers out of their printers among other things. No reason why you can't use the printers to make solutions to hide power heads or unique closed loop systems.
Totally awesome!
I own a fairly new model printer designed for industrial prototyping - still takes forever. I also own a printer that handles a few types of metal - takes much longer LOL. There are a few different types of 3D printers that are just now hitting the market that are crazy fast (and expensive) compared to traditional manufacturing processes that will make 3D printing as common as milling over the next few years.
dantimdad
7500 Club Member
I saw a demo a year ago of a very very fast 3d printer. I was blown away. Honestly, the one we have at work, I could take a block of aluminum and a Bridgeport and build stuff faster than it can. I am not a machinist BTW.
I can't wait for a sub $1500 fast (at least three times as fast as now) 3D printer.
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