3D printing (additive manufacturing) usually involves layers that tend to be a weak point.
If you want something truly long lasting you might find substractive manufacturing techniques like CNC milling better. Indeed there are solutions from companies like Cryptotag for punching cryptographic seed data into plates / blocks of titanium. Something like this could be automated with a CNC router to store a bunch more data.
Seems like low data density. I recall some people talking about laser-engraving. IMHO engraving on a solid chemically-inert surface is more likely to be useful.
I know it sounds “boring” but it is hard to beat a good acid-free archival paper printed with a good quality ink. Stored in the right circumstances (not too humid, dark place, not on fire) it should last half a millennia easily. It is also pretty much guaranteed that whatever happens we will have the technology to read it again.
Exotics like laser engraved metal plates or ceramics might be better if you have a lot of data and can’t guarantee your storage will be fire and flood free. If you don’t have a lot of data you can also think of engraving it into stone or press it into a clay tablet and fire it. These mediums are known to be very stable even in adverse circumstances.
Then there is m-disc which uses the DVD+R and BD-R/BDXL standards but writing to a sort of glass rather than to the traditional medium. These are cool as they play back n regular players too. https://www.mdisc.com/
Wouldn't that be just QR codes (and equivalents)? I suppose 3D printers can be used to etch/print them onto a durable material and then have it read back using the measuring tools you mention, but at that point I think you would be better off just 3D-printing out something like a a vinyl disc maker/reader and using that.
There are M-Disks. These are CD/DVD/BluRay disks which use a drive with a higher power laser and work by ablating a metal layer, rather than a photosensitive dye as in the lower-powered disks. Regular drives will read both kinds.
For a small amount of data (crypto keys?), consider deep laser engraving on stainless steel. That's very durable. Or even engrave text into stainless steel with a small CNC mill.
You can engrave QR codes, bar codes, etc. But there's a lot to be said for engraving plain text.
why not print onto paper and put it in a safety deposit box?
your X/Y resolution isnt going to be fantastic woth filament, but your Z is gonna really suck.
you could instead print(emboss?) like a barcode on some paper, and encase that in resin. the big benefit being that you can read it non-destructively. keep it out of the sun so whatever ink doesnt fade and you're set
Some sort of wire recorder? The teeth of the 3d printer ‘driver’ (sorry lost on the terminology here) already make an imprint on the filament, maybe it could be made intentional
3D printing (additive manufacturing) usually involves layers that tend to be a weak point.
If you want something truly long lasting you might find substractive manufacturing techniques like CNC milling better. Indeed there are solutions from companies like Cryptotag for punching cryptographic seed data into plates / blocks of titanium. Something like this could be automated with a CNC router to store a bunch more data.
Seems like low data density. I recall some people talking about laser-engraving. IMHO engraving on a solid chemically-inert surface is more likely to be useful.
Like a CD/DVD?
How much data do you want to preserve?
I know it sounds “boring” but it is hard to beat a good acid-free archival paper printed with a good quality ink. Stored in the right circumstances (not too humid, dark place, not on fire) it should last half a millennia easily. It is also pretty much guaranteed that whatever happens we will have the technology to read it again.
Exotics like laser engraved metal plates or ceramics might be better if you have a lot of data and can’t guarantee your storage will be fire and flood free. If you don’t have a lot of data you can also think of engraving it into stone or press it into a clay tablet and fire it. These mediums are known to be very stable even in adverse circumstances.
First example I thought of is the titanium punch sheets and wordlists for crypto wallet recovery phrases https://shop.ledger.com/products/cryptotag-zeus and https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-003...
There is also Microsoft Project Silica which I recall seeing in person at their EBC playing back a movie from it https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil...
Then there is m-disc which uses the DVD+R and BD-R/BDXL standards but writing to a sort of glass rather than to the traditional medium. These are cool as they play back n regular players too. https://www.mdisc.com/
Wouldn't that be just QR codes (and equivalents)? I suppose 3D printers can be used to etch/print them onto a durable material and then have it read back using the measuring tools you mention, but at that point I think you would be better off just 3D-printing out something like a a vinyl disc maker/reader and using that.
There are M-Disks. These are CD/DVD/BluRay disks which use a drive with a higher power laser and work by ablating a metal layer, rather than a photosensitive dye as in the lower-powered disks. Regular drives will read both kinds.
For a small amount of data (crypto keys?), consider deep laser engraving on stainless steel. That's very durable. Or even engrave text into stainless steel with a small CNC mill.
You can engrave QR codes, bar codes, etc. But there's a lot to be said for engraving plain text.
why not print onto paper and put it in a safety deposit box?
your X/Y resolution isnt going to be fantastic woth filament, but your Z is gonna really suck.
you could instead print(emboss?) like a barcode on some paper, and encase that in resin. the big benefit being that you can read it non-destructively. keep it out of the sun so whatever ink doesnt fade and you're set
To satisfy the "disk" condition, would a vinyl record suit your needs?
I read somewhere about people using 3D printers to make vinyl records.
Wasn’t that an april fool joke ?
Some sort of wire recorder? The teeth of the 3d printer ‘driver’ (sorry lost on the terminology here) already make an imprint on the filament, maybe it could be made intentional
You could print an old-school punch card, bring it full circle.
Depending on how you define 3D printing: braille.