BOSEbuild comprises of a “small, passionate team” working within the much larger company, Bose. The aim of this smaller initiative is to inspire people, especially children, to learn about how things around them work.
A previous project from the company is a build-it-yourself Bluetooth speaker. The latest project from BOSEbuild is build-it-yourself headphones.
However, in order to develop this project, the BOSEbuild team needed a “seamless and swift” prototyping process. So, they turned to 3D printing.
Running in the office are multiple Ultimaker 3D printers which were used to print designs of headphone parts to test out. Thanks to relying on 3D printing for in-house iterations, the team claim that they managed to save money and time.
Joe Titlow, Head of Sales and Marketing at BOSEbuild, explains that creating the headphones posed a series of challenges. For example, prototyping the yoke – the parts which attach the ear cups to the headband.
But Titlow adds: “Our Ultimaker machines easily handled printing half a dozen in different colors, which allowed everyone on the team to test the headphones for design and usability.”
Saving Time and Money Thanks to 3D Printing
Titlow explains that thanks to relying on 3D printers, the team were able to save up to $40 per print and three days of waiting time. A new yoke iteration would cost just $1 on an Ultimaker 3D printer, taking only a few hours to print and evaluate.
He adds that this gave the team time to worry about other elements that were essential. BOSEbuild Principal Project Engineer, Darius Mobed, said: “Quickly printing flexible, adaptable prototypes that survive product testing enables early developers to get everything up and running.”
Ten or more fully functional, flexible yokes could be printed each week for colleagues in operations, engineering and marketing. Therefore, trial runs could happen sooner for the app team, firmware team, and acoustics team.
According to Titlow, the Bose’s Ultimaker 3D printers will run all day during peak times. But, the printers aren’t just used for prototyping. The team also develop educational projects to craft unique displays that teach kids.
Find out more about the build-it-yourself headphone kit and other BOSEBuild projects at bose.build.com.
Source: Ultimaker Blog
License: The text of "Educational BOSEbuild Headphone Kit Developed Using 3D Printing" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.