3D Printing Enclosures

[Mike Gann]

Hello everyone, a friend of mine has purchased a 3D printer and I have decided to print enclosures with it. This journey will involve a lot of learning on my part and I hope you guys can help me on this on going project. I am hoping to make this project my first horn enclosure, but we will see where it takes me. My previous projects include bass reflex and sealed enclosures for car audio, I have never ventured into horn designs other than hours wasted away reading about them. I am very interested in the tractrix horn design but I'd bet some of you are going to try to convince me otherwise which I'm still open to. I will be printing on an Airwolf 3d hd2x that has a bed size of 11" x 8" x 12" so maybe a studio monitor would be the best target because of size limitations. It may be possible to slice the model into 4 blocks which can be glued together.

I will post photos videos and such on here for anyone interested. Also if you have plans that I can print and mail to you, I will definitely consider it.

First step for this is to decide which material is the best choice for audio applications, any input on this would be great. Here is what the machine is capable of printing:

• PVA
• bronzeFill
• Laybrick
• Laywood D3
• PLA
• PLA 4043D
• PLA Soft
• ABS
• HIPS
• TPU
• TPE
• ABS-ESD
• BendLay
• colorFabb XT
• PET+
• T-Glase
• Nylon 618
• Nylon 645
• Nylon Bridge
• PC-ABS
• Tritan
• PolyCarb

This is my first time exploring these materials, I don't even know what half of them are. I'm already finding some tweeter pods on the internet that people have printed, seems like a fun exciting project.

[OrionStang]

Would be interesting to build exact copies of the same specs out of each of the materials. To see if there is an audible difference, and to figure out which reacts best to the pressure, the least flex at a given thickness. In for progress pics!

As far as the materials listed, I have no clue LOL.

[Mike Gann]

Ha yeah that would be a good way to do some testing but instead of buying all those rolls of materials and spending days printing enclosure copies we can probably look at their listed specs and use our heads.

[Broke_Audio_Addict]

Whatever you decide on post lots of pics so we can see how it goes.

Personally I don't think it will work out how you hope it will, 3d printing is good for rapid prototyping but not really good for finished products.

[3vil]

You should print in glass, make some really bitching enclosures that would blow peoples mind

[Mike Gann]

Whatever you decide on post lots of pics so we can see how it goes.

Personally I don't think it will work out how you hope it will, 3d printing is good for rapid prototyping but not really good for finished products.

I think it would work fine as long as we can find the right material for it. Just need to find something that resembles wood in its properties

[Mike Gann]

You should print in glass, make some really bitching enclosures that would blow peoples mind

Well that requires a different type of printer to print with real glass. They do have materials that are clear though, such as T-glase

[Mike Gann]

So the guys over at Airwolf suggest that I use PET-G material for this. Now onto design..

[bigmizzle99]

Any updates on the 3D printing of enclosures?

[sencheezy]

Bump