Your 3D printer is now obsolete...
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In today's video, we explore a new software update for the X-carve CNC called Easel 3D. This new software update allows you to adapt 3D printing files for use on the X-carve. Armed with this new software I set out to make a badass DIY Bluetooth Horn Speaker.
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After watching this video my 3D printer is most definitely NOT obsolete 😂
No joke.
lol yeah
was gonna say this lmfao. could print it in 20 mins
Gotta title the vid something creative to grab your attention. If it was "Don't worry, your 3D printer is fine.." you'd be less apt to watch. Plus, it got you to comment, and me for that matter, so that drives the algorithm. There are def HUGE advantages to subtractive manufacturing vs additive in this instance. I mean, dude made his little doodad outta crap you could find on the side of the road or in a dumpster. I have yet to find filament in either location ..
@@tadhgd350 I agree that the printers not obsolete, but what printer are you running to make that in 20 min🤨?
When the speaker labyrinth was in two separate layers, that would have been a great time to add the finish, since the distance you'd have to reach into to apply the finish would be cut in half (hindsight is the most wonderful of tools for the next version). It would also make any glue runs easier to remove, even when dry.The next version could also use a small assembly help: have two holes on each layer mirroring each other and putting a dowel in each.
Love it! Great advice.
Having built many speaker enclosures I’m having a little trouble believing those acrylic side pieces don’t rattle as thin as they are. Specially since they aren’t glued to the wood along the entire available area. ⅜-½ would be optimal for the exposed surface area. Would have also given you more material for the slot to hold the io panel
@@geauxracerx I definitely agree about the possible vibration in the thin panels. A ⅜ or ½" would have the rigidity needed and would look really nice polished up. Another thing that could be used as gasket material between the wood and plastic would be 1/16” sheet craft foam. I use it on my speaker builds as driver to enclosure gasket.
@ZacBuilds you should try plunge cutting with such a long bit
@@geauxracerxhe mentioned this at the end of the video, actually!
You really need more than 4 screws on each side - the air is bypassing the length of your resonance chamber by going between the wood and acrylic. And you're right about needing a gasket. You can buy rubber o-ring material that you just lay into the channel you route into the cabinet with the X-carve - but that channel needs to parallel the entire length of the chamber, not just around the edge of the box for the rattling.
Yes I agree 100%, thats what I was trying to say in the video, but clearly I didn't do a very good job of it.
@@ZacBuilds put a 5th screw right in the middle of the plexy to support the inner wood, it is not being supported by anything and will vibrate and may break.
@@theads9519 Nahh the air pressure is very low in the horn, the air won't escape through the gap however the vibrations between the wood and plastic would be a problem. However, the main thing here is it seems Zac bought some random driver from the internet and not the one designed for this enclosure? If this is the case, this enclosure would be anything from detrimental to the output to mildly useful, it's most likely somewhere in the middle.
"Your 3d printer is now obsolete!" Proceeds to run into set backs every step of the way because he's using a CNC. Btw great vid
It's always rough going when you're learning something new for the first time. I'm sure it wouldve taken me a LOT longer to do it on a 3d printer.
@@ZacBuilds meh. Depends on the printer... heavily. If you were spending the value of your xcarve. Near turnkey options exist
This is super cool. Maybe when a print needs to be spliced for carving purposes adding a dowel or biscuit hole for the glue up alignment would be helpful. I feel like maybe the software itself should suggest it and then maybe pick out a couple spots? The speaker look great!
I really enjoy the end of these projects where it sums up various lessons and ideas for the future to do differently. Can't wait to see what comes next
Thats a great idea Andre, I've actually got some contacts at Inventables, so I'll pass along that feedback.
While it's a bit of a click-bait title, I still enjoyed the build and I appreciate that you took time to acknowledge things that you would have changed and could do better on.
I'm so glad you added "thicker acrylic panels" in post, because I was screaming that from the second I saw you cutting it. As someone who has built speaker boxes for over 20 years, I was disappointed in you. Great concept, and I look forward to the 2.0.
I wanted to comment the same thing but decided not to be so rude lol. You are 100% correct though but it is a learning experience for him. It is much better than any speaker i built for the first time.
I found it interesting considering that cnc is the EXACT opposite of 3d printing. In cnc you remove any material that doesn't belong leaving only the material that does belong whereas with 3d printing you start with no material and add it to where it does belong. You essentially get the same result in the end however you have to come at the processes completely differently.
Adding a couple holes for dowels would have eliminated alignment issues.
That is amazing. I have the electronics laying around here for at least a year. Wanted to cut it from MDF. But this looks so much nicer! And it's nice to hear, that it actually sounds good
Add some dowel holes for alignment when you have those 2 halves
Good call!
Love all this outside the box stuff you've been doing recently.
when doing deep narrow cuts I use a pocket operation and remove all the waste material as to not have fingers left over that can catch the cutter... just eat the material away
Good tip, I'll keep that in mind for next time!
Figuring out how to fix all your mistakes is the purest open source methodology. This is The Way.
Pin holes on the gluing surface for alignment, I agree with the channel for the gasket material (1/8" ball end mill and some 1/8 silicone tubing, easily compressible & trim to fit). Eggcrate acoustic foam. If you go thicker with the acrylic CNC a 45 degree chamfer around the permitter. Great job and very cool looking speaker. *Subscribed*
Reminds me of a speaker I made years ago with a similar winding port and before bluetooth was a thing for speakers. The big difference however, was I just quickly cut it on a bandsaw without all the hassle of gluing, clamping, alignment, etc, and it was very quick to do. Think of the old style bandsaw boxes.
Great job on this speaker 🔊 👏. I love how you can see thru it. You could try running a thin flat bead of clear silicone on the wood. Let it dry and it would make a gasket to seal it and stop any vibration noise. Look forward to seeing your next project. Cheers from Calgary Alberta Canada 🇨🇦 👍 😀
maybe when you carve the individual pieces, you can pop a dowel hole into the carve file and boom...no alignment issues.
Rig a pump on a timer to spray the endmill every hour with a solvent to de-gum and cool it.
This is “The Rings of power” of Cnc woodworking... 😂
One thing I would've done differently: don't remove the solid sides until after the glue-up. Also, as so many others mentioned, add holes for dowels to keep alignment when gluing the halves together.
Wow that's awesome Zac. Hopefully you get great use out of it for many years and enjoy it. Can't wait to see more videos soon. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work my friend. Keep making. God bless.
I'm sure I will Jared! Thank you for the support!
@@ZacBuilds you are very welcome my friend.
Keep an eye out for 4" coaxial speaker drivers if you want to experiment with more compact speaker builds like this. You will need a crossover network for them, but you'll get even cleaner separation of your mids and highs, particularly while strong bass is playing. Well, as strong of bass as you can reasonably expect from such a small driver. Dayton Audio has one that looks pretty decent.
Crossover filters are used for paring the limitations of multiple drivers. You might have meant that a rumble filter could be useful here? Full range designs use a single driver from roughly around 80 to 90Hz on the low end up to 15 to 18kHz on the top. Since one driver is doing all of the work, a crossover is not necessary. A rumble filter could quickly cut frequencies under the limitations of the drivers bottom end however, which could help with distortion.
@@Weicho1 COAXIAL. Two drivers in the form factor of a single driver. Some COAXIAL drivers might come with a simple crossover baked in, but most will not and you will need to provide your own.
@@mndlessdrwer My apologies. You are absolutely correct. The driver he was using had a phase plug, so not coaxial, and I missed that for some reason in your message. I have designed a multitude of full range speaker systems mostly using full range drivers with phase plugs. Most of the systems were transmission lines and tapered quarter wave tubes. I would have never thought to use a coaxial driver in one of these systems, but I can see some benefits and some sacrifices. Please forgive my oversight. I find that bit of information very valuable to anyone looking to dive down the speaker building path. Great catch.
@@Weicho1 The main compromise is that you lose out on the particular "sound" of a single full-range driver, but that sound is primarily comprised of distortion and peculiar harmonics that arise from trying to drive a full frequency range on a single speaker and pushing past driver breakup and beaming to do so. By using a coaxial, you can largely avoid this while still maintaining the single point-source coherence. If you opt for a coaxial driver that uses a compression driver for the tweeter then you can drive your distortion extremely low. The quarter-wave and transmission line enclosures still work for the woofer, so you still get some of that cabinet tuning sound signature.
@@mndlessdrwer You know your stuff. It's been a while since I've designed and built any enclosures, crossovers, etc. I had made a 4 inch tapered quarter wave tube, using low distortion drivers. I put a high pass / rumble filer on at 24db slope. The drivers had an FS around 110Hz so it was important to cut the bottom end. The rest measured with very low distortion and harmonics at 1 meter. Quite flat for a single driver too. I seem to remember something about spatial reflections? Harmonics? Something that was less pleasant about the coaxials. Sure they relieved the top end but there was a compromise. Pretty sure the only coaxials I tested had silkies for tweeters. I'm not a big fan of compression drivers. Notorious for loads of distortion, but I know people defend them fervently, so I won't press the issue. Like tube amps, if you like the sound, who am I to judge? Plus I like tube amp sound, so I'd be a hypocrite if I judged.
prusaslicer 2.6 is almost released (in alpha3), bringing a bunch of innovative new stuff like in-slicer modification and tree supports, so 3d printers are defo not obsolete yet.
Not a large community for the X-carve because no one wants to pay that much for a "Hobby Grade" machine. $2500 for 29"x29" work area and not very easily upgraded. Compared to some of the brands that you can buy their small machine, which is only slightly smaller that the x-carve for under $1000 and then you have upgrade kits you can buy later if you need a larger machine.
That speaker looks so good! I would maybe try one by laser cutting a lot of 1/4” plywood, and stacking it together, but that’s going to be on my long list of projects to do. Great build Zac!
That sounds awesome Arpad! Is the laser cuter you have at school powerful enough to cut 1/4" ply?
@@ZacBuilds oh yeah! It’s a trotec speedy 360 which can cut 1/4” wood no problem. I even think it can go more than that based on how powerful it is, but don’t quote me on that
Those acrylic sides are doing nothing but looking cool. The architects would be proud. RCE 4 life. glue some wood sides on and see how it really sounds.
Ok so couple things to note. 1 you could have actually done 1 in pieces and just cut multiple pieces on the table at once. 2. You could have built in dowel holes to index the parts together and it would have made the glue up so much easier. 3 if you had done an even thinner onion skin then cut through it on the CNC at that stage it's such low resistance that the part would not have moved. 3 you could have just added in your notches for wire management on the CNC.
I thought this was always a thing. cool it is now.
If youve been using fusion 360 CAM then yes its been a thing for a very long time
@@jakeengland1430 It has also been in V carve,PyCam, and many others packages, both paid and free. My recollection is that Slic3r had a way to do this, too. But it is exciting when it is new to you, and Easel seems to do something other than the generic raster 3D cuts. Looking forward to him figuring out how to slice layers and use multiple tools.
It's a thing in the sense that you could make it happen with other software, but this is the first time that Easle has supported it natively and theyve really stream lined the process to the point where anyone can do it.
...for sealing, you could 3d print slightly "thinned out" version of it, using TPU (elastic filament). Could go really creative with it, too (double-seal around each edge of the carving, girder-like triangles, etc.)
my 3d printer started to SHINE after watching this video.
People who 3D print hearing him say it's a two-hour carve: *laughs maniacally in time*
Odd, i have been using STL in my CNC for years.
You remind me of DIY Perks in that you have a very clean and identifiable style when it comes to designing stuff for you home. The speaker looks slick!
Thanks man! I really helps to keep my mediums limited to walnut and acrylic haha
Um ok, this has been available in VCarve Pro for over a decade. You can design a 3D model in a CAD program, export as STL then import into VCarve to generate the toolpath. Or download the STL and import that instead. Easy.
Really great feedback at the end. I’d love to make something this but probably if you ever did a 2.0 I’d be even more likely
Glad you liked it! I'll have to come up with more exciting design for a 2.0. Maybe stereo sound....
Love the Idea ! Did you consider carving alignment holes and little dowels to help with alignment when joining the 2 parts ? It could be seamless and make the process less stressful :)
Good suggestion. Zac is not thinking fully in CNC machining/assembly mode just yet. I'm sure he'll adopt some smart assembly locators etc for future projects
Love this idea! I'll keep that in mind for next time.
Export of STL file has always been available in Vectric Aspire as far as version 9 I believe, and they are on version 11 now.
I I was you I would use thicker acrylic like you said but carve the impression of the speaker sides into it and then use some clear silicone or other clear sealent for the gasket. You would then need to make the speaker that much wider to compensate for the speaker inset into the acrylic. You would probably be better off using a spray lacquer to do the insides. Very cool build BTW.
I really like that idea however, when you carve the acrylic it leaves the surface pretty rough, so you wouldnt really be able to see the walnut where it rests against the acrylic. Maybe the clear silicone would be able to help fill it in, but I think it might still look a little weird. Very creative idea though, I'm sure with some thinking you could get that to work.
I usually work with fiberglass, but for stuff like this, the trick is to use a shallow depth of pass. I'll use a 1/8 mill (tiny), and run passes at about 3 thou and 15 in / min. Takes a while to do deep cuts, but you will get there.
Cut out a box section of the acrylic to access the electronics. Then glue the rest of the speaker panels in place, ideally like you say with thicker materials.
That little sound bit around 2:40 made me think i was having auditory hallucinations lmao
TPU, TPU, TPU, if you have a 3d printer, TPU is the way you want to make the gasket. I've used it in my shop and its a game chager when trying to hold some pressure. I know this is late in terms of you releasing this vid, but thats your solution for increasing the inside pressure, for better sound propagation out if the port. Regards.
I'm looking forward to you all feeding in ideas and models back into 3d printing. Hopefully we eventually a combined device ...that does both well.
Wow! Your work (and work space) is really orderly, clean, and beautiful. Thanks for the inspiration!
Love the idea. Glad you showed not only the good but the bad too. If you sharpen your chisel it would be able to shear the fibers better without the need for the hammer. Especially on something so thin.
Ya know, I'm a huge fan of cnc and 3d printing, but I'm a bigger fan of using the right tool. And the right tool for that walnut was a bandsaw.
Nice build! It would be super cool to see a comparison to a 3D printed version for a true comparison in the build processes. I'll keep my 3D printer running for now lol. I think that over time the CNC community will figure out how to tweak the 3D printer STL's for CNC - because I'm sure there are several things he could have done to optimize the design for CNC. Also the assembly.
I would have just 3D printed it in wood and stained it, I do have an MPCNC though but I wouldn't go out and buy a super long mill bit just for that.
Going to be checking out 3D STL files now for my 3018
Good first effort but I think you will benefit from looking into tool paths adopted when CNC milling aluminium alloy etc. I think you would be better off plotting a path for a series of plunge cuts with a 2 flute cutter to remove the bulk of the waste material as a first op then a second op to clean up/finish cut on the inner and outer surfaces of the voids. That way the chip loading and cutting contact area are dramatically reduced and give your fragile long series cutter an easier life.
Appreciate the advice! I'll definitely keep that in mind for my next project
I'm currently doing a DIY speak for myself, and I'm trying to make it battery powered. It'd be interesting to see what you find is the best option to make your speaker powered by a power tool battery or just something rechargeable. Future video; portable Boombox made of wood.
Love that idea! I actually already made a portable bluetooth speaker out of wood, but the idea of running it on a powertool battery is an awesome twist!
For those who want to start 3D printing, start small, don’t dive headfirst into the large printers like the Max Neo or S1 Plus. You’ll save yourself the stress and regret of buying a beef cake of a printer, and I’ve seen the sorrow, it’s depressing.
This is great advice for anyone looking to get a CNC too.
Where do you usually get what you plan on carving? You could use one of many free tools like fusion or blender to at least convert to a format that your cam tools play nice with. Good on xcarve for supporting stl but you could have done this for a long time.
While it's cool what you have done, I'm very hard pressed to feel like my 3d printer is obsolete. Here's a few reason why. Just from your video: 50% fail rate, multiple work arounds, LOTS of post-processing (more than 3d printing would take), and multiple tools to accomplish the same build. The positive is that what you did produce is beautiful. But I wouldn't say the process you present makes my print farm obsolete. Not even close. But you did confirm how much I LOVE my 3d printing vs the headache of woodworking.
Nice job. I would separate the electronics from the speaker case, as they are two different functions and gives you more flexibility in amp selection and packaging.
There's books on loading a bit. Run the bit faster, make the movements slower and do passes. Same as you would with any of the other equipment in your workshop. Knowing the platform it was probably on purpose 🤣
That is really cool build - and great new software feature.
You could have the x carve cut registration guides in each part too so they don't twist or slide during clamping.
Perhaps just sandblasting the electronics portion of the acrylic would make it opaque enough that you wouldn't see the wiring and all but, you would see the LEDs. Nice little speaker!
I wonder if something like Rockwool would be a nice-looking sound damping material.
What blade do you use to cut the acrylic on the table saw? I enjoyed the video Project, but will continue using the CNC and the 3d printer.
Deep pour epoxy Edit that's how you embed the dampening device (if any) camo it or use contrasting or accentuated coloring to make it look good.... Otherwise good job... 3" full range... My pixel has that sounding like lossless 7.1 👍
“Not the cleanest hole if I’m honest” 😂😂
Fun video Zac! Presentation was top shelf. I will be keeping my 3D printer though. 😂 But I have a CNC too so what the heck. I may dabble with this but I still would probably go the Fusion 360 route. That said kudos to Inventables for getting this feature added for folks that want a simple solution.
Thanks Jason! And I will probably be buying a 3d printer in the near future too. Truth be told the venn diagram for what can be done on both a CNC and a 3d printer effectively is pretty small. Both are awesome tools for different purposes, but you know how the KZhead title and thumbnail game be 😂 I still havent tried using Fusion 360 to run the X-carve yet. I'm a bit intimidated but I should really give it a shot
Super cool project, but I feel like you did a disservice by over hyping the 3d carve feature in Easel Pro since you didn't actually use it. For a carve like you made, it only uses a 2.5d cut. This has always been available in the free version of Easel. The 3d carve feature simplifies the CAM process compared to more advanced software like fusion 360. I'm happy to see that they have made it available but you shouldn't misrepresent how it is used.
When you did the glue up of the two sections, you should have used e two half inch sheets for clamping. The sheets would have evenly distributed the clamping force.
I want to get the record straight 3d printers run off gcode not stls. The slicer takes stls, some of them take .step files in which can be analogous from slicer to cad software and backward.
awesome build! my 3D printers are still feeling pretty secure from your title statement though 🤣
My 3d printer is obsolete and I would love to have a CNC (maybe soon) but with a 3d printer you could have made a bespoke box for the electronics that would actually look great inside the speaker XD
Very true haha, 3D Printers are awesome and I definitely plan to explore that world more in the future
@@ZacBuilds if you do, you will find yourself using it all the time. It is amazing for prototyping and to solve small everyday problems... its fantastic. I have a lot of ideas and "inventions" in my head and going from having an idea to having the actual thing in your hand in a matter of hours is a game changer.
Always remember that classical music is never copyrighted, so you can always through on some Beethoven
Amanda couldn't you have glued it all together before hand, anyways? But still have done multiple paths? Like 4 one inch cuts? Or even a single hole for using as a home point to align and just flip the entire thing over?
I wanna get into CNC, but 3DP is far more approachable, so I'm doing that for now.
Totally understand that. I'm personally hoping to get into 3dp soon as well. In truth they are both awesome and have different use cases with a little bit of overlap in the middle.
Use cork for sounds dampening!
Oh ya, thats a great idea!
Alignment dowels and sheet stock on top and/or bottom for clamping would probably help a lot.
For simplicity, you could probably carve everything in one "print", including dowels if you used a bigger sheet of walnut.
Wich is the speaker used? In video 12:38 I can read "Aiyima" but the link goes to dayton audio
You made a few errors but errors are great to learn skills .. a. Cut seperate layers...You worked that out the hard way but well done. B. You could drill location holes , index holes so the glue lines up both sides
I would love to see you try out some traditionally "impossible" builds by slicing a stl in half and gluing the halves together!
Hello, can you tell me in which program you count the cases on the speakers
I was going to say attempting to cut that in one pass with a 4 in. bit was a bad idea! I assume you work mainly with softer materials. Wood, plastics, and perhaps Sintra(a foam plastic sheet of various thicknesses). Still, you figured it out and produced a beautiful project!
3D printer owners: "Two whole hours? FOH lol."
My first thought on the glue up would have been to have a couple of boards on the outside
stl files into a cnc mill is not new. the entire point of a cnc mill is to make 3d objects and as such, it is standard in many other software packages. the problem is that you chose a brand that locked you out of those ecosystems.
Version 2 needs thicker clear plastic on the side to keep them from rattling.
I mean, before you could do that. Maybe just go get Mach. You could probably also use Mach or maybe some open g-code parser and export your g-code from Blender or Fusion. But it's cool that they made it easier. Dealing with Mach would mean being comfortable with g-code and no one should ever be shamed for not wanting to learn about g-code. It can be pretty daunting and isn't the task you are really trying to solve in the shop. It's crazy that CNC tools are so ubiquitous these days that the tools are getting great. It used to be an absolute desert of good software even if you spent the money. Still sort of is, but wow. It's so neat that woodworkers and crafty grandmas and elementary school kids are learning about these manufacturing tools.
Route the groove but place a round rubber seal in it. Can buy an meter and cut it. Will look much better than sealant.
Not sure I feel this is so major, been using stls to make tool paths for my xcarve for years, using F360 or now vectric software and a gcode sender. Much more stable the using buggy/limited easel software.
Nice build. Really appreciate you sharing your mistakes as its the best way to learn. One other improvement you could potentially make for a future build is to actually make sure the TL (transmission line) is the correct length for the quater wave length of your driver. I imagine an stl you find online would unlikely be correct but I get that wasn't the purpose of this video. Also your videos are really nice quality and there is so much work that goes into that so great job!
3d printers use gcode stl files are just a 3d render file I believe.
That is correct, sir!
How about cnc routing out a full acrylic speaker?
One idea would be to clamp your pieces like a sandwich between two flat slabs. Distribute the pressure evenly.
13:43 Just because the description says full range on AliExpress that’s a zero guarantee that it’s actually what you get.
Ive been using Easel to run my non Xcarve CNC for a while now. Weird that it's now called Easel 3D. It has always been 3D.
You have been able to do that with V-carve / Aspire since forever. I was doing this with my old X-Carve 5 years ago. Easel is horrid, literally like trying to work with a straightjacket on.
I think a small round rubber gasket might help seal it too
I always thought of using the CNC to carve out the guidelines and finish the rest with regular tools (powered or not) by hand. Less waste and quicker to finish.The waste is for me the biggest problem with CNC manufacturing. Paying a butt load of money for material for it to just go to waste.
Question is how long would this have taken on the band saw vs this route
I wonder if laying a black leather cord in a groove would create that seal/cushion, or maybe a rubber cord…?
Use smoked or tinted plexi sheets. Engrave your logo or something onto them, also.
That small full range driver has a nice diffraction spike too. Looks hi end.
I would suggest next time to to put a joinery tongue and groove along both interfaces on each half. Would be superior in strength and easier to assemble.