Jan 26, 2015 | By Will

Everyone who has seen a 3D printer at work would probably recall the distinct sound of the stepper motors as they rotate and change direction. Now an online user by the name of DeltaRAP has used his Delta Rep Rap 3D printer to elevate those sounds to the next level. By using g-code commands to convert stepper motor movements into exact tonal sounds, the printer played Beethoven's Fur Elise in its entirety.


DeltaRAP had seen a video of a CNC milling machine creating music from its motors and decided it would be fun to give it a try.

"A week ago I was watching a Youtube video about CNC machine playing music and tried to make my printer do the same but the result wasn't music at all." DeltaRAP told us. "I gave up when it hit me...deltas behave differently than cartesian machines, what if I use only Z axis?"

However, there was a slight complication. Delta 3D printers utilize three separate motors to cover a Cartesian plane on each layer. This means that to achieve a given X/Y motion by the print head, each motor moves a different rotational distance and speed. Therefore the sounds were strangely subdivided and recombined, with the final product being a garbled, incoherent headache of sounds.

After much dismay, DeltaRAP realized that their mini Rostock delta printer could produce distinct tones after all, by moving the print head vertically. This in fact is the only way to get a singular tone from a delta printer, as it causes all three motors to move in unison.


An example of the g-code converter parameters

The core principle is that if a stepper motor moves at, say, 640 clocks per second, you can call that 640 Hz. The measure of hertz is a frequency, much like sound. It may not be in the proper key but if you double the speed to 1280 clocks per second, the sound frequency doubles as well. Also, to get all possible tones you need stepper motors that can operate in micro-steps since most conventional motors have a resolution limit of 200 steps per rotation.

DeltaRAP started with the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) file for Fur Elise. That digital musical was then converted to g-code using this MIDI to G-CODE converter. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. Many small changes in the code were made to adapt for a delta printer, as this code was generated from a program that was made for milling machines. It required changing all of the X-value changes into Z-value changes, as well as other coding adjustments including boundaries to make sure it doesn't crash into the build plate.

Click here for the full list of details on the process of using g-code to make the printer play music.

Finding and replacing all X-changes to Z-changes to work on the Delta printer

This project is a fascinating example of what people are capable of doing with their 3D printers besides printing. Some may call it a waste of time, but to those people you have to ask: did you see the video?

 

Posted in 3D Printers

 

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Matthew LaBerge wrote at 1/27/2015 8:15:21 PM:

Uhhhh, how is this noteworthy. People have been doing this for as long as stepper motors have been around...



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