At ICR3ATE, we love new technology. How children stand behind fences ask for new football pictures at the supermarket, we digitally stroll through Kickstarter, Indiegogo and CrowdSupply in search fora creative (and possibly useful) project to back. We prefer to give technological projects a push to come to life. One of those projects was a 3D construction package for a record player.
After purchase, this building kit had been dusting up in the office for some time. In busy times, there are naturally other priorities than putting together a record player. When our operations manager Merel joined us, we had already printed the frame with our own 3D printer, but the turntable still had to be built. Merel had only just learned how solder. A good project to test this new skill was the turntable.
Where crowds go to different webshops every week looking for that new shirt, we can be found weekly on Kickstarter’s Explore page. That’s how the turntable kit reached the ICR3ATE office. Manfred loves both classical music and technology. So this was an excellent opportunity to bring both worlds together.
“ICR3ATE can be found weekly on the exploration page of Kickstarter”
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This kit consists of at most a few fragile parts. A couple of clever minds from Limburg have put together this building kit, in cooperation with Hi-Fi specialist Lenco. We then received the necessary 3D files via e-mail. After the 3D printing of the frame, Merel assembled the kit. It went like this:
Merel: efirst I had to find out how it works to assemble such a kit. Screws, threads, all very small and fragile. Luckily there was an instruction manual with it. But after the first few steps it turned out to be incomplete! So I had to look for the right combinations myself. This was quite a challenge, because I had only just learned to solder. Armed with the soldering iron, I was wrestling with the kit in the workshop. It reminded me of the struggle with the IKEA bed a while ago. Just like the bed, the turntable started to look more and more like it.
It’s annoying when something doesn’t work. Unfortunately, the instructions for use were not as clear as at IKEA. But, because of that, it was quite a victory when music came out for the first time! When the green light came on, we put a record from Manfred’s collection on the turntable and voila: there was music on a 3D printed turntable!
A project like this is very typical for ICR3ATE. We print all kinds of different things in 3D ourselves. From tiny parts for a prototype to bigger things, like the frame of this turntable. The nice thing about 3D printing is that the possibilities are endless.
What is the next Kickstarter project?
I don’t dare say that. We have been considering adding a laser cutter to our workshop for a while. But we postponed that purchase for a while. Soon we will move to a new location, so new projects will be backed up that will get a nice spot at our new place.
The backing of the Kickstarter projects arises very spontaneously. One of us sees a Kickstarter project and when we believe in it, we back it up. And then we put it together ourselves, in the case of the kits. We think it’s great to build it ourselves. Sometimes we see projects that we question. We don’t back them up, but we criticise them internally, haha.