EP020: DIY Part 1 – 3D Printing & Hardware
3D Printing Opens Up A Whole World Of DIY Hardware
It’s hard to believe but this is our 20th episode! We sincerely thank all our listeners and viewers for checking out the show. We’re super excited for the next 20+ shows!
We’re big fans of customization, including things on our desk and other hardware we need around the facility. With huge online marketplaces, it’s easier than ever to find those oddball parts and items to personalize your setup. But what if you can’t find what you’re looking for or you’ve found something that fits your need 80% but not completely?
In this installment of The Offset Podcast, we start a two-part series on DIY (do it yourself) approaches for postproduction. We’re starting out by exploring one of our favorite DIY approaches – the power of 3D printing to make custom items for your suite, facility or anywhere else you might need a customized part.
Over the past 10 years, 3D printing has morphed from an engineering hobby for the most serious DIYers to something that’s approachable for even the most tech-phobic of us.
In this show, we’ll explore the basics of 3D printing to make your own hardware including:
- The power of customization & fulfilling exact needs
- What kind of things can you print for postproduction?
- Understanding the basics of additive and subtractive manufacturing
- The 50,000 ft view of the 3D printing – modeling, slicing, and ‘programming’
- How a good set of calipers can help you design anything with real-world measurements
- 3D printing communities
- Farming out fabrication to a vendor
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-Robbie & Joey
Video
Links
- Bambu Lab - Makers Of 3D Printers
- Prusa - Makers of 3D Printers
- Creality - Makers of 3D Printers
- Maker Bot - Makers Of 3D Printers
- Printables - 3D Printing Community
- Thingaverse - 3D Printing Community
- Thangs - 3D Printing Community
- Maker World - 3D Printing Community
Transcript
01:00:00:00 - 01:00:15:06
Joey
Welcome to another edition of The Offset Podcast. In this episode, Robbie and I are going to talk about DIY hardware for post-production. Stay tuned.
01:00:15:08 - 01:00:44:12
Robbie
This episode is sponsored by our friends Flanders Scientific, who are leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, editor or broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has professional display solutions to meet your needs. Learn more at Flanders scientific.com.
01:00:44:12 - 01:01:09:12
Robbie
Alright Joey, in this episode, we are actually beginning a two part little mini series on, I think, probably one of your favorite, life mantras. And that is do it yourself, right? You it's well known by those who know you that you are the king of DIY. Why bring a motorcycle or a car to a mechanic or dealership when you could do it yourself? Why buy something off of Amazon when you could just 3D print it yourself? Why do any of these things with the help of other people when you can do it yourself?
01:01:09:12 - 01:01:29:13
Robbie
Now it's, it is one of the things that I have in the, the time that we have worked on each other that I admire about you the most. And that is my inclination is, you know, oh, I need something. Let me go on a website somewhere and order it right. And, oh, it's the wrong thing. Well, let's try to return.
01:01:29:13 - 01:01:46:04
Robbie
I'll try to find the right thing and return it again. One of the things I've learned from you, and I think this comes a little bit from cars and your mechanic level, you being a mechanic, but is that. Yeah, a lot of the things that we do is super easy to do it yourself, and you can actually customize and create and a lot better way than you can.
01:01:46:04 - 01:02:07:00
Robbie
So in this first part of this series, we're going to talk about sort of DIY hardware for post-production. And in part two we'll talk more about DIY software approaches, things like custom scripting, and things of that nature. So let's, let's start out by talking about the big picture here and what I just sort of, hinted at.
01:02:07:01 - 01:02:23:06
Robbie
Is that why we're going to DIY in the first place? I know, I know kind of what you're going to say, but I want to hear it coming out of your, your own mouth. Why is DIY appealing to you versus buying something prefab or whatever? What's what's the what's the motivation in your love of DIY?
01:02:23:08 - 01:02:49:03
Joey
So, you know, the primary motivation is probably customer customizability, right? I think a lot of people would assume the motivation is cost, right? Oh. I can make it myself. I'm going to save some money. I hate to break it to everybody, but in cases that's that's not true. You're going to spend more money buying all the junk and more time, you know, learning how to use everything and building it yourself.
01:02:49:07 - 01:03:13:19
Joey
Yeah. Than you would if you bought something off the shelf. But what you've made will suit your needs directly and better than in a lot of cases, anything you can buy off the shelf, and especially some of the stuff we're going to talk about today with things like ergonomics and hardware for grading and things like that. You know, we're we're interacting with these devices all day, every day.
01:03:13:23 - 01:03:34:22
Joey
So small annoyances in ergonomics can can really compound and add up. So being able to dial in exactly what you want in a part is super useful. And yeah, it's a ton of fun. It really get your brain working in other ways. It's a good way to kind of expand your horizons, and it's just useful for things outside of work as well.
01:03:35:00 - 01:03:39:21
Joey
But mostly my my primary motivation is, is customizability.
01:03:39:23 - 01:03:58:01
Robbie
Yeah. And I, I tend to agree with that. I mean, I and I had my first, my first taste of this, I think when and I think a lot of people will probably realize this in our relationship, that I tend to follow Joey's lead a lot with this kind of thing and get interested in some of these things because he's like, oh, I just made this doohickey, or how about it?
01:03:58:01 - 01:04:17:15
Robbie
And actually, for me, that parlayed itself into doing something that you're not interested in, but I am. I started doing this with guitars right. I started it was like, well, geez, I guitars are not that complicated with machines. I should be able to figure out how to design a shape, how to CNC a shape, how to build such a thing.
01:04:17:17 - 01:04:52:20
Robbie
And you're first of all, you're 100,000% correct in that. Generally speaking, the DIY approach does not necessarily equate to cost savings, and I can. I'm absolutely giving you a testimonial that is 100% the case with doing a custom guitar. I have spent more expert and more money on trying out parts and techniques and stuff like that. But also it is there is a level of satisfaction by looking at something going, I designed that I made that that is mine and it's one of one potentially.
01:04:52:20 - 01:05:15:14
Joey
Yeah. And when it's something, you know, like we're talking about with post-production and the stuff that we interact with at work every day, it's really nice to be able to have your workspace kind of somewhat made up of stuff that you have just tuned to exactly what you want, and you're using it every day. And it just it's it is very satisfying and it makes you, I think, faster because you know it intimately.
01:05:15:16 - 01:05:34:07
Robbie
Well, speaking of which, for those astute watchers who have noticed that over here, gone are the guitars, right? I didn't get rid of the guitars, by the way. I just moved them into a separate room because I have too many guitars that I needed a whole separate room for my guitars, and I've replaced that. You'll notice down here some, filament on a bar here.
01:05:34:09 - 01:05:54:05
Robbie
One of the things that Joey's got me into, and this is a great segue for our first part of this conversation, is Joey, over the years has got me into 3D printing. Now, Joey, I love you and hate you for this because on one level, 3D printing has been like the greatest thing that's ever happened to me, because it's sort of sort of like I've changed my whole mindset, right?
01:05:54:05 - 01:06:10:21
Robbie
I'm sort of like, oh, well, I could print that, I could print that, I could print that. The hardest part about 3D printing is not the printing. The hardest part about 3D printing is designing or finding parts. So let's start there. Joey 3D printing, because I think this is something that, is obviously near and dear to you.
01:06:10:21 - 01:06:24:22
Robbie
I think you have two or 3 or 4 printers now, something like that. I got a I got a couple printers going. Tell us the basics of 3D printing, how it works and why, for what we're talking about specifically for stuff and post. What uses it really has.
01:06:25:00 - 01:06:51:04
Joey
Yeah, 3D printing is probably the most useful DIY hardware thing you're going to find for post-production and color grading. And what 3D printing is at the basic level is you're literally taking a digital 3D file and then having a robot manufacture it into a physical 3D object. And the way this works is, you know, Rob mentioned the spools of filament behind him.
01:06:51:04 - 01:07:16:16
Joey
You can see them. They are rolls of 1.75mm wide plastic. That's it. Melted plastic. And what the 3D printer does is it feeds that roll almost like wire thickness roll of plastic through a heater, a heating element, and it spits out melted plastic. And it's on a little robot that draws a shape. Right. So if you draw, if you wanted to make a pipe, for example, you would draw a circle.
01:07:16:18 - 01:07:44:13
Joey
Then you would move up a very small amount, draw another circle, move up again, draw another circle. So you're working in layers and you're literally printing out plastic layer by layer by layer to make a 3D shape. Final product at the end. There's lots of goes into this, but you're basic ingredients are you start with a 3D file, then you put that in a software called a slicer, which does exactly what it sounds like.
01:07:44:16 - 01:08:06:20
Joey
It takes your 3D file and slices it into two dimensional flat layers. So imagine just taking a knife and slicing through a thousand layers of an object, and then just puts that in the computer code for the 3D printer to execute. If you ever sit there thinking, I wish I had this object, you should have a 3D printer.
01:08:06:22 - 01:08:26:07
Robbie
So I used to not. I used to not think that because I think my first exposure to 3D printing was I didn't want to spend a lot of money. So I started with, you know, an extremely basic, what they call a bed slinger type printer. Right. And it had a small build volume, so I couldn't print bigger, bigger objects.
01:08:26:09 - 01:08:50:15
Robbie
And to, you know, it required a lot of tuning. And so it just kind of turned me on. I was like, oh, I'm not going to get good results of this. So therefore I was like, cool. It's great for printing little, you know, fidget toys or, or something like that. But the other thing I will, I will tell you is that it is easier than ever to buy an off the shelf printer and get killer results.
01:08:50:18 - 01:09:07:08
Robbie
When Joey started this, and when he was initially telling me about this ten, 12 years ago, I was like, oh yeah, sure. And the results were like, you could clearly tell that was 3D printed and you could clearly see the struggle on somebody. Like Joey's face was like, well, I was tutoring the printer for 12 hours, and I finally got it to print.
01:09:07:08 - 01:09:22:01
Robbie
Right? Right. These days, I mean, the printer I have back over here in the corner, I will phone app. I download something off the internet of like cool print do it all remotely. It's got a camera in it. I can look at it remotely. It sends me a text message. When it's done, I go downstairs. Okay, cool things done right.
01:09:22:05 - 01:09:41:10
Robbie
If you joke, you joke about this sometimes, but it's literally like the Star Trek replicator, right? Like I'm just waiting for one of these days where. Give me, that cup of hot, you know, Earl gray, right? And it's going to be it's going to be coming out of a printer. So let me ask you this. Sure. So the basics of 3D printing, melting plastic in a design computer code understands that.
01:09:41:14 - 01:10:00:20
Robbie
Give it a couple of hours. You get the thing. But how do we get from here? The idea in my head to the thing that's spitting out of the printer. Right. I think the thing that's kind of challenging, and you say this in your best back to the future voice sometimes to me, is you need to think fourth dimension.
01:10:00:20 - 01:10:12:19
Robbie
Right? So I think the part of this goes to one of the reasons I think it's intimidating people is to design aspect. Can you speak to that a little bit? What is that path like from idea design to print?
01:10:12:21 - 01:10:32:17
Joey
Yeah, the first thing is the idea, and I want to talk to about that a little bit, because one thing we haven't really gone over at all is what am I doing professionally in my suite with 3D printed stuff? You know what? What am I actually using every day that I've talked about that we 3D printed? For me, the bulk of it is peripheral holders, right.
01:10:32:21 - 01:11:01:15
Joey
So I have to walk. I have six stream decks on my desk right now, and the stream deck in and of itself is a bit of a DIY hardware, right? Because you can define what all the buttons do and what the workflow that it's kind of using is. Right? So you can build up a toolset on that stream deck that's in anything that you want, but the problem I kind of got into is the stream deck comes with a little stand, right.
01:11:01:15 - 01:11:27:07
Joey
It sits on your desk and it's kind of at an awkward angle. I never really liked where it was sitting. I couldn't position it where I wanted. So, you know, when you're hitting a thousand buttons a day, that adds up. So kind of the first things I 3D printed for the suite were stream deck holders. So I've got a conventional stream deck holder that holds two stream decks, two of the original ones that is the exact same height as the control deck on the mini panel.
01:11:27:09 - 01:11:47:08
Joey
Then, when the Stream Deck XL came out, I designed a much more advanced XL holder that holds the XL on your desk at exactly the same height and angle as the top screens of the mini panel. So now I've taken an off the shelf piece, the stream deck, and made it a much more integrated part of my mini panel setup.
01:11:47:12 - 01:12:01:15
Joey
And I'll tell you what, like going through day to day grading on this setup, it has saved me so much time being able to have these additional pieces exactly where I wanted them.
01:12:01:20 - 01:12:20:12
Robbie
I agree with that. I have, and I know you've gone before, but I'll give you my own examples of this kind of thing. So number one, stands holders. That's pretty low hanging fruit. I've done some of the same similar things, used some of your designs for stream decks, etc.. Where it's really what I like to think about 3D printing stuff is I have a problem solved.
01:12:20:13 - 01:12:37:06
Robbie
How can I print? How can I fix this problem relatively quickly and customize it so, for example, the lights that are on in front of me, I 3D printed lights, light holders for all of these, these lights that I have on. Right. I have, for example, the little iPad that I have over here for show notes and stuff.
01:12:37:08 - 01:12:57:09
Robbie
So 3D printed iPad holder, right? I didn't want to spend 100 bucks on a stand from, you know, store over Amazon. So I 3D printed one, but more practically like it goes into fixing other problems. Just this past weekend, I was installing something in my machine room rack, and it didn't. The particular equipment I bought use it didn't have rack rails.
01:12:57:13 - 01:13:19:11
Robbie
Okay, so I had rack years for it, but I didn't have any rack room. So what was happening was the back of it was sagging just a little bit. Right? I 3D printed these supports that go that tie into the rail in the back, come into the rack about three inches and just lace, all right, under the back of the rack, right under the item to give it a little extra support.
01:13:19:11 - 01:13:39:15
Robbie
So it's not sagging. Right. Took me about 15 minutes to print it. Problem solved. I would have been googling for days to find something that was suitable and cost efficient to do that kind of that kind of fit. I have a little Elgato teleprompter in front of me. I broke a plastic piece off of it when I was installing it.
01:13:39:17 - 01:13:58:04
Robbie
Thin little piece of plastic, no big deal. Didn't want to have to order another one because it's kind of expensive. I just took a measurement with a piece of calipers printed on a new little round piece, put it on the beach, beat it, taped it to the back of the prompter. Band-Aid? Sure. Problem. Fixed salt. It's not going anywhere now.
01:13:58:04 - 01:13:58:12
Robbie
Right?
01:13:58:16 - 01:14:20:11
Joey
Exactly. And it it just does kind of open your mind up to thinking fourth dimensionally. Like like you said, you look at problems in a more solvable, direct way and, so yeah, let's talk a little bit more about that whole process like you mentioned. So we've got the idea, we talked about that we need to turn that idea into a 3D object.
01:14:20:11 - 01:14:39:21
Joey
And there's a couple approaches to this. Learn CAD software. That's the most difficult approach right. Certainly I do. Highly recommended. There's great tutorials online. You can do very basic CAD very easily. Like it's a lot easier to do CAD of something that isn't pretty than something that is pretty. You can.
01:14:39:23 - 01:14:58:14
Robbie
Actually functional. Let me just interject here because there's actually different levels to this. Because are you designing a piece of life and death hardware that has to be precise enough to like, you know, put in a wind tunnel or whatever the case, we probably not. Right? So in that case, you don't have to use the $50,000 a year, you know, AutoCAD software.
01:14:58:14 - 01:15:21:19
Robbie
There's levels to this. I know you're a big fan of fusion 360 by the guys at Autodesk Fusion is great. I've really I've really started to learn it but still hurts my head a little bit. I'm right now I'm using something called Tinkercad that is like essentially like a pretty cheap design software does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, takes a lot of the the engineering parts of that, that software, it kind of hides them away a little bit.
01:15:21:21 - 01:15:34:13
Robbie
And I can get to really good results really quickly. I can't necessarily do things within the tolerances and precision that I could do, necessarily within a higher end CAD piece of software, but I can get to designing pretty quick.
01:15:34:15 - 01:15:58:15
Joey
Yeah. So I would say if you're going to go down this journey, the first thing you need to buy a good set of calipers. What are calipers? Calipers are a little slidey device that measures distances and gives you a digital readout in millimeters of how big something is for everything that we're doing here making a stream deck mount, making a bracket to hold something in your rack, doing, you know, adapters for cable management, things like that.
01:15:58:17 - 01:16:19:00
Joey
You're going to want to be able to measure something in the real world quickly and easily and accurately, and then translate that into the software. That's kind of the the biggest like brain shift you're going to need to do is that normally when we're working creatively in software, we're not working to any reality. Right? We're just all in here in picture land, right?
01:16:19:02 - 01:16:38:21
Joey
With CAD, we're talking real measurements. If you make a ten millimeter square in CAD and then print it on a 3D printer, it will come out ten millimeters wide. So getting a good and they're not expensive. You can buy them on Amazon, but just get a set of calipers so you can start measuring things that you're going to need to make.
01:16:38:23 - 01:17:07:03
Joey
Then, you know, start playing around in CAD software. There's very, very much levels to this. There's super easy drag and drop like template based CAD systems out there that are free online. Basically, there's open source solutions and then there's more advanced systems like Autodesk Fusion 360, which I use, which has a community free version that is more than powerful enough for anything you're going to want to 3D print in your office.
01:17:07:08 - 01:17:18:13
Joey
Yeah. And then from there you just go, like we said, through the slicer software, through the 3D printer, just be ready to try again and try again and try again and fail.
01:17:18:16 - 01:17:49:20
Robbie
I'd also think it's worth mentioning, Joey, that if you're if your brain doesn't necessarily work that way, the communities for, objects models, if you will, is just astronomically huge, right? There are websites. We'll put these in the show notes, but things like printables, dot com thing of verse, I mean, there's probably a dozen, dozens of the other other ones where people who are much better designers and we probably are oftentimes not always, but oftentimes they got to do.
01:17:49:20 - 01:18:20:02
Robbie
Hickie. They put that design up online. Sometimes it's editable design for you to use. Oftentimes it's kind of the, the, the output of that design, what's called an STL or sort of the CAD, the, the, the render of that, that CAD design software you just download, put it right on your printer and print. Right. You know, so sometimes like if I'm like, well, I could spend four hours trying to figure out how to design this, or I could go find the thing that is most like the thing I want or in better case, in middle ground is I found the thing that I want to print, but I need some modifications.
01:18:20:07 - 01:18:23:08
Robbie
I can then have the best of both worlds. I'm kind of modify it.
01:18:23:10 - 01:18:46:08
Joey
Yeah, and that's the thing, right? The community is getting bigger and bigger. We talked about this a little bit earlier, where it used to be a hard thing to get into 3D printing. It's gotten easier and easier and easier. The community has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and started to include more post-production professionals. So if you look on thing of ours and you search for Stream Deck, many panel holders, you can download my design and print it out.
01:18:46:10 - 01:18:47:05
Robbie
Yeah, totally.
01:18:47:08 - 01:19:04:15
Joey
And it works great. My stream deck holders exist in some very high end color suites around the world, because other colors have come out to me and said, hey, either hey, could you print one for me and send it to me? I love the idea of it. Or be, can you just send me the file? I just got a 3D printer.
01:19:04:21 - 01:19:30:11
Joey
I want to do it and that's where it gets really cool. That's where it really is, the Star Trek replicator. Because the other day, Rob was building his own, backups tape back up mount for his nass. Right. Again, DIY hardware. Right. And he needed a bracket to fit a SAS connector board in this chassis. He drew a sketch on a napkin, took some measurements with a caliper.
01:19:30:12 - 01:19:43:12
Joey
I went into fusion, design him apart, emailed him the part. He printed it out on his end. I've never held this thing in my hand. I literally emailed Rob a physical object and it's now in his rack actually working.
01:19:43:12 - 01:19:44:16
Robbie
And the thing about a.
01:19:44:16 - 01:19:46:13
Joey
Complicated part, right.
01:19:46:13 - 01:20:12:16
Robbie
It's not. But but the issue with that is that, like, I could have spent a lot of money trying things out. Oh, this is sort of fits the bill. Oh, this is this bracket. I could have waited for shipping. I could have waited the, you know, the spent the cost of doing this. We went through maybe 1 or 2 iterations where I just said, hey, can you just move the screw holes back a millimeter or whatever, after trying because you didn't have the piece in hand and it was perfect.
01:20:12:16 - 01:20:37:15
Robbie
And that was a that was a functional slash problem solving kind of thing that honestly, I wouldn't have had a solution to without a 3D printer because there was no nobody is making, oh, you need a riser block for a one. You server to fit this specific SAS card. I mean, come on. Right. Like that doesn't exist, you know, so it's like it's it's a piece.
01:20:37:15 - 01:20:54:03
Robbie
Okay. So let me let me ask you this though, so when you get into that kind of 3D printing and you're maybe going to a website like thinkable, you know, think of errors or principles or any of these other places. Can you just speak to. Because I think this is a little confusing. The people getting into 3D, 3D printing.
01:20:54:05 - 01:21:10:17
Robbie
So you'll find things like styles, you'll find files that are like three morphs, I believe is the, the extension on that. But those what are those files. Because those are not the actual, like CAD design files. Right. Those are the those are the output.
01:21:10:17 - 01:21:42:09
Joey
Exactly. It's kind of like rendering an image out to a flat file. Right. So in CAD you can change the dimension of one line or one face. Whatever an STL or a three mfe file is all of your CAD geometry distilled down to discrete triangle surfaces. So the slicer can read it. They're very not editable, right? So if you're doing your own designs, you'll be doing them in CAD, and then you'll just export the STL and then use that to slice it and prep it for the printer.
01:21:42:09 - 01:21:52:05
Joey
Most things you'll download from the community are also STL, so they're a little harder if you wanted to go in and edit them. But you can make do, you can do local modifications.
01:21:52:05 - 01:21:56:12
Robbie
Yeah, basic scaling like you could add if you needed to put some text on it. You can do it. Yeah.
01:21:56:12 - 01:22:02:10
Joey
You can scale, you can invert, you can do a lot in the slicer while you're prepping it to print.
01:22:02:15 - 01:22:29:09
Robbie
So if you're out there looking for a 3D printer, right? I mean, there's literally hundreds of models that you can choose from, from companies like first UN, Bambu Labs and Creality. And like, you know, just do your homework. I mean, there's going to be a certain things that separate these printers, build volume. How big of an object you can print is one really kind of discerning factor, multi material support, whether you can support multiple filaments like I have back here in a single print.
01:22:29:09 - 01:22:49:00
Robbie
So if you wanted to change color on a print, for a particular part of it or have a different type of material on a certain part of the print, that's a big distinguishing factor. Speed, of course, is, factor how you know, how fast you can actually speed up things and what materials it can print. Like certain materials are only really good for certain types of materials.
01:22:49:00 - 01:23:12:19
Robbie
You might have to have an enclosure to print, more advanced engineering materials because of the, the smell of them. And actually, that's the last thing I think we should mention about 3D printing, just so we can, put the Asterix for the, legal disclaimer here. 3D printing, as Joey said, is melting plastic, no matter what material you're using, it is melting stuff with a lot of heat.
01:23:12:21 - 01:23:38:18
Robbie
To do so. And therefore it is possible to create, fumes and byproducts, those volatile, compounds from printing something. So just just so, you know, a lot of, you know, entry level form is totally fine. Probably not going to cause any problems. I'm thinking PLA, PETg, whatever. Some of the higher end engineering formats are pretty dangerous to get into your system by inhaling.
01:23:38:20 - 01:23:56:09
Robbie
So you want to make sure you have proper ventilation, a proper, enclosure. You know, a lot of people kind of put these things out in a garage or, you know, out in a room where they have a lot of ventilation, but just know that that is not something you necessarily probably want to have going on next to your bed while you're sleeping, kind of thing.
01:23:56:11 - 01:24:20:00
Robbie
And also the other thing I would just say about 3D printers in general is this this is not an instantaneous procedure. It we there has gotten better at how well-tuned these things are, but it can give you some problems. And there are the communities are great for troubleshooting. But you see, if our stories all the time of people just end up with piles of gobs of filament in a, in a pile, why does that happen?
01:24:20:01 - 01:24:40:01
Robbie
There can be a million reasons. We're not here for helpdesk support on that kind of stuff. But it is a little bit of trial and error. And as you get better and more advanced with it, you start to understand, oh, well, yeah, I can't print a six inch piece of overhang in thin air, because there's nothing underneath of it to support it.
01:24:40:01 - 01:24:49:12
Robbie
Right? You start learning techniques about supports and layers and, and how to orient things to print and that kind of stuff, to get the best results out of.
01:24:49:14 - 01:24:52:22
Joey
Yeah. But what happens, though when you need something?
01:24:53:00 - 01:25:09:23
Robbie
Well, this is, this is something that you can't print. So this is what I was going to ask. I, I went down this path with a guitar. Sorry. I was telling you earlier because I wanted to make my own guitar bodies. And yes, there are some 3D printable guitar bodies out there. I have one, it's pretty, pretty freaking cool.
01:25:10:01 - 01:25:36:15
Robbie
But wood, metal, etc. you're going to have to do something slightly different. And I actually, this is a really good distinguishing factor with 3D printing. What are we doing? We're taking, material in one form and we're basically, you know, through morphing whatever into another form. We're taking the plastic melting additive additive and making it into something with other materials would metal, etc. it's the opposite way of working, right?
01:25:36:15 - 01:25:53:21
Robbie
We're starting with generally a block of something and we're taking away we're subtracting, from that material to make the object. What is a great example? Start with a block of wood for a guitar body. You cut it out into the shape you want, you sand it down. You're taking a way to get to the same thing, and the same thing is true with no.
01:25:53:23 - 01:26:14:14
Joey
Yeah. So where does that fit into the post-production world? For me, it's things like monitor stans modifying your desk, keyboard holders, stuff like that that need to be a little bit stronger. Once you kind of have this foundation of I can design the part again all the at the at the end of it, it all starts with the idea, right?
01:26:14:14 - 01:26:36:02
Joey
So if you have an idea for a part and you know you're going to need it out of metal or out of wood, and you're probably going to need to contract that out and have someone else build or manufacture your designed part. 3D printing can be a great prototype for that. Case in point, Robbie and I both have 31 inch Flanders scientific monitors.
01:26:36:02 - 01:27:07:04
Joey
We had one at our office as well, and we have at all three locations, the same TBC consoles desk. It has a rail system for mounting monitor arms. Nobody made a monitor arm that was heavy duty enough and strong enough that we trusted putting our big heavy $30,000 monitor on so what we did. I got the measurements from the engineering drawing from Flanders of the screw holes in the bottom of the monitor where the feet bolt into it, right, right.
01:27:07:06 - 01:27:34:13
Joey
And what we ended up doing is we made mounts that fit into just a straight upward pipe coming from the TBC desk. Yep. And replacing the feet on the Flanders monitor so the monitor could just drop down on these two pipes where its feet used to be, and sit on the desk. So as a completely one off mounting solution for this monitor that makes it fit exactly where we wanted it on the desk physically, both height wise and distance wise.
01:27:34:18 - 01:27:59:21
Joey
It's very robust. It's very low profile. So we could still get our cables around and everything like that. And again, it's something that you cannot buy anywhere. Well, we went through 3 or 4 3D printed versions of that and we never put the monitors full weight on them because we wanted them to be metal. Right. So we kind of 3D printed the part to figure out how it would fit.
01:27:59:23 - 01:28:21:04
Joey
And then we went to someone else to get them actually cut out of aluminum. Now I'm fortunate. I have a very good friend who has a machine shop, and I have access to a CNC machine where we can get these things machined. What a CNC machine is, is, computerized numeric control. It's essentially like Robbie said, it's the opposite of additive manufacturing.
01:28:21:04 - 01:28:45:09
Joey
It's subtractive. You take a block of material and you use a robot to cut out the parts you don't want out of metal, wood, carbon fiber, whatever. And then you end up with your 3D object at the end. So what we ended up doing is we took the design 3D, printed it, prototyped it, locked it down after a couple iterations, and then had my buddy CNC machine it.
01:28:45:11 - 01:29:05:00
Joey
And now we have that at home and at the office and it's been there for years. We've never had a problem. The monitor is on there really good and it's I love it. It takes up so much less space than like a conventional riser or a shelf or something like that. And again, we were able to customize it to exactly what we wanted.
01:29:05:02 - 01:29:12:23
Joey
It's funny, we were talking like, should we sell these? I'm like, well, you kind of have to buy a five. A very specific $5,000 desk and a very.
01:29:13:02 - 01:29:14:04
Robbie
Small.
01:29:14:06 - 01:29:38:23
Joey
Monitor just to even think about wanting this. Well, the target market here is kind of you and me. There are also online services that specialize in this. So if you've got a 3D printer and you've figured out your design and you've prototyped it and you've held it in your hand and you said, okay, this is what I want, there's options to email that file off to a service and have them do it and send you back the part, like send or send cut.
01:29:38:23 - 01:29:55:23
Joey
Send is one, pcbway is another. We'll link some more in the show notes. But what they'll do is, you know, if you've got a design you're happy with and you want it out of metal, you'll email them apart. You'll say what you want it made out of, how many you want. They'll tell you back a price and that's it.
01:29:55:23 - 01:30:25:15
Joey
If you if you like the price, you say, yes, I'll take it and they'll do all the work and send it to you. And that brings me to kind of like the last category of part that I think is good for DIY, which is what I think of as kind of the 2.5 d part. It's a flat something that you cut holes into or cut designs into, and there are a lot of places like send, cut, send that we'll do water jetting or laser cutting of things and basically any shape you want.
01:30:25:20 - 01:30:50:22
Joey
So you can have, you know, a sheet of quarter inch thick aluminum that you cut brackets out of. For example, if you wanted to make a monitor stand, in that case, you're only making a 2D design because you're 3D is just the thickness of the material, but it opens up your options to make things like if you needed to adjust something, how well rackmount works, or if you wanted to make a table to put your monitor on or something like that.
01:30:51:03 - 01:30:54:06
Joey
You could do it out of metal from a 2D shape as well.
01:30:54:08 - 01:31:10:07
Robbie
Yeah, and there's certain there's certain reasons to use those services. I'll give you a great example. The desk that I'm sitting at right now, I didn't like I wanted something that had because I have a little bit of a belly. I wanted something that had a little bit of a belly cut out, but I couldn't find anything in the right length.
01:31:10:07 - 01:31:26:18
Robbie
Right. So I have a friend that has a little bit more of an advanced woodworking shop than I have. Right? And I can't, I can't I don't want to spend all that money on tools I'm going to use once. Right. And so I wanted something that was like progressively beveled for like the belly cut. And he was like, yeah, no problem.
01:31:26:18 - 01:31:44:04
Robbie
So I just literally sent him just the same thing. I sent him the CAD design and he just took it. He's like, yeah, well, I can make this a little smoother, a little better. And I have the right tool to do this bevel. I took a literally a piece of three quarter inch plywood. He did all the cut out and beveling shaped the edges for me.
01:31:44:10 - 01:32:02:02
Robbie
Put some screw holes in the bottom of it, fit to my my the feet that I already had and just bam! Now I have a custom desk that literally cost me 30 or $40 at Home Depot to buy the, you know, higher quality plywood and, you know, a case of beer with my buddy to to to cut it out.
01:32:02:02 - 01:32:03:12
Robbie
So it was it's win.
01:32:03:14 - 01:32:27:02
Joey
Yeah. So back to the very beginning here. It all starts with the idea. And once you kind of open your mind to hey yeah there's something that I want or there's something that I need for my office, for my house or my work for whatever. Yeah. And it doesn't exist off the shelf. Your first thought should now be, well, how can I make it?
01:32:27:02 - 01:32:44:08
Joey
Or how can I make part of it and get the other part made? Or how can I design it and get the whole thing made? Just open your mind a little bit to the possibility that, yeah, hardware can be DIY. Now, the world has kind of really advanced in this, this field in the past ten, 20 years.
01:32:44:10 - 01:32:50:05
Joey
And it really does kind of change the way you think about building out your office in your workspace.
01:32:50:07 - 01:33:13:17
Robbie
So, Joy, I know it might seem to people that we're not talking about anything post related. We're just, oh cool, printer 3D sent like the purpose of this series, and this episode in particular, was just to get you to think about the possibilities, right, of what is what is possible to do. You know, if you do a little, little research on this, you'll soon realize, like, the sky is literally the limit.
01:33:13:17 - 01:33:41:03
Robbie
I talked to some of the other day who had died a motorized eyes lift for their panels, so they didn't. They wanted to have the desk work, so when they were not coloring, it was a flat surface. So they actually cut into their desk, bought some hardware. I don't think they printed it, bought some hardware that basically opens and closes a hole on the desk and then raises the panel out of the bottom of the desk.
01:33:41:03 - 01:33:44:04
Robbie
Now I know what you're thinking. Who cares? That's stupid. Why would you need that?
01:33:44:04 - 01:33:45:05
Joey
But I kind of want that.
01:33:45:07 - 01:34:07:01
Robbie
The point is, is you can right there is. As we started the show talking about, there is a certain satisfaction that happens with knowing that this is completely customized. And this is a one up one, and you made that thing, whatever it may be. And part of it can be ergonomics, esthetics, but also part of its functionality. Right.
01:34:07:05 - 01:34:24:17
Robbie
Getting that, you know, Joey couldn't ever get a, off the shelf, stream deck. Stan, that was going to be the perfect height and configuration for how his ergonomics work. The only way he was ever going to get there was to print one, design one, and print one himself. And so, yeah, I think that's it's pretty cool.
01:34:24:17 - 01:34:44:20
Robbie
So good stuff. Joey. And just, in the next episode, we'll talk about how this all plays into software. We'll talk about some more about that home assistant stuff. We'll also start getting into more about scripting and how ways to customize tools like DaVinci resolve to do more workflow automations and things of that nature that can help you, speed up things in your own projects.
01:34:44:20 - 01:35:03:14
Robbie
So, as a reminder, the, podcast is available on every major, platform out there. We're also on YouTube. Follow us on on the various social media is just by searching for The Offset Podcast. And if you do find the show, please like and subscribe. Tell your friends and colleagues about the show. Every little bit helps in a major way.
01:35:03:16 - 01:35:06:05
Robbie
So for The Offset Podcast, I'm Robbie Carman.
01:35:06:07 - 01:35:07:19
Joey
And I'm Joey. D’Anna - thanks for listening.
Robbie Carman
Robbie is the managing colorist and CEO of DC Color. A guitar aficionado who’s never met a piece of gear he didn’t like.
Joey D'Anna
Joey is lead colorist and CTO of DC Color. When he’s not in the color suite you’ll usually find him with a wrench in hand working on one of his classic cars or bikes
Stella Yrigoyen
Stella Yrigoyen is an Austin, TX-based video editor specializing in documentary filmmaking. With a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from UT Austin and over 7 years of editing experience, Stella possesses an in-depth understanding of the post-production pipeline. In the past year, she worked on Austin PBS series like 'Taco Mafia' and 'Chasing the Tide,' served as a Production Assistant on 'Austin City Limits,' and contributed to various post-production roles on other creatively and technically demanding project