3D Printed Records

Nothing is better than a tech savvy, geek spirited, music lover with an imagination, a willingness to grind and an abundance of cool tech within reach. Amanda Ghassaei is one such tech savvy Instructables.com employee with a vision of creating 3D Printed Records. It seems that Amanda has taken time to develop a method of printing digital audio via 3D printer in the form of 12″ 33rpm Records.

Amanda has been hard at work experimenting with various audio / tech projects but this 3D Printed Records project, in particular, is really compelling. It may just be the beginnings of some very cool home grown new age dub plate sort of movement. Sub, of course, the dub plate cutting for 3D printing. Obviously, 3D printing has a ways to go where the average consumer is concerned. Still, the seed has been planted showing that the possibility to print a 3D record is well worth exploration and cultivation.

How’d she go about this? She says “I printed these records on a UV-cured resin printer called the Objet Connex500. Like most 3D printers, the Objet creates an object by depositing material layer by layer until the final form is achieved. This printer has incredibly high resolution: 600dpi in the x and y axes and 16 microns in the z axis, some of the highest resolution possible with 3D printing at the moment”

Amanda explains…

In order to explore the current limits of 3D printing technology, I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D printable 33rpm records and printed a few functional prototypes that play on ordinary record players. Though the audio quality is low -the records have a sampling rate of 11kHz (a quarter of typical mp3 audio) and 5-6 bit resolution (less than one thousandth of typical 16 bit resolution)- the songs are still easily recognizable, watch the video above to see the process and hear what the records sound like. Also check out my laser cut records, made on wood, paper, and acrylic.

Let’s check out some video of the process…