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DIY Custom Microphone Blimp 3D-Printing - by Mattia Cellotto


mono

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How the idea came about…

Until recently I was barely aware of what the current state of 3D printing technology was. I assumed that any type of audio accessory I could think of would have been either too complex or too expensive to print. And even if the tech was cheaper than I thought, I wouldn’t have had any idea of how 3D printing could have serviced field recording. That was until one day a colleague at the game studio I work for started an e-mail thread explaining how modern printers are capable of not only creating fairly complex shapes reliably, but also allow for more flexible plastics to be used.

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Finish the story, here:

 

http://www.mattiacellotto.com/portfolio/custom-blimp-3d-printing/

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Hey Folks, sorry for being unresponsive to this, for the material I believe I used PLA, but I'd suggest looking for something more flexible in the long run, my blimp proved to be a tad too fragile and cracked at one point on one of the closing caps. I do not have the STL files with me, they are on a hard drive far from home as this was supposed to be a one time experiment. The friend that helped me with them probably still has them, I'll ask :)

Some takeaways topics/mistakes from this after 3 years since the experiment:

 

1) I had to print the blimp cylinder in 3 different pieces that got glued together, this is because most printers would not be able to print something that tall.

2) Glueing the fabric to the plastic frame is a nightmare, especially considered I was using a hot glue gun.

3) Did not try to print the pistolgrip so ended up relying on a third party one and created the model around it. This is the main reason I abandoned the experiment after as I didn't have any other pistolgrips to try new models with.

4) It's a fun experiment that has the potential of reducing costs for work, I ended up spending more than 10 hours on this project from ideation to assembling and I still can't quite decide whether it was worth it. It was fun and instructive but maybe ahead of the time as the print costed somewhere around 80 to 120 pounds from what I remember. That said anything that breaks can be printed in the form of replacement which is great.

 

I hope this helps a bit :)

 

Mattia.

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