3D Audio Recorder – Converting Audio into a Physical object with 3D Printing

I started working during the makersCAFE experience (half makers-space and half-cafe, created to show and provide the 3D Printing technology) on the idea that Audio and Physical Objects are both unique and replicable, personal and shareble at the same time.

From comparing the two, how to combine those together?
Audio is frequencies, signals, something that is convertible to a number, a list of data.
3D Printing works with 3d virtual solids, elements composed from a series of surfaces made from curves from points. All those elements are genetared by list of numbers.
Here we can connect the two together, for example send and receive audio parameters from a source to create or edit a solid object.

My work was focused on finding the perfect way to record a 3d Printable Soundwave in real-time. So I take frequencies every milliseconds following a path (a 3d curve for example), make an average and convert them to a list of numbers, assign this number to a parameter (for example the diameter of a circle), so every millisecond the program creates a circle with a certain diameter following the pre-assigned path. At the end of the recording I connect all those circles together to create a solid.

The difference of this project from the other printed soundwaves already made during the past years from designers and engineers is the possibility of recording in real-time and create immediately the soundwave without the necessity of listening to a pre-recorded audio file, so when we’re gonna be able to send live input to a 3D printer we’re gonna be able to talk and see the soundwave printed in real-time.

These are example generated in real-time with different shapes and paths.

These pictures show the recording-steps, from the left one that shows the original path, the center one shows the circle’s generation and the right one the watertight 3D object.

This is a Soundwave bracelet generated from the kid’s voices of one 3D colleague and first customer, 3D Printed MEtallic Plastic made by Shapeways!