3D printing is becoming more and more popular in a variety of areas and there are already many application in musical instruments. Here I will briefly talks about the main techniques and some of my preliminary attemps in printing a mouthpiece.

3D Printing Techniques

This article deserves reading, All 10 Types of 3D Printing Technology in 2018 - All3DP, inside which it classify the 3D printing techniques into, material extrusion, vat polymerization, material jetting, binder jetting, and powder bed fusion (polymers or metals).

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) - Material Extrusion

The model is built layer by layer by the deposited materials which is melt through a nozzle in the extrusion head. The model is normally built from the bottom to the top.

Stereolithography Apparatus (SLA) - Vat Polymerization

SLA is the earliest commercialized 3D printing technique. The 3D model is fabricated layer by layer from the liquid resin which is selectively solidified or polymerized by the ultraviolet (UV) rays through the lenses and the mirror. The object is normally built from the top to the bottom. A good introductory guide is provided by Formlab.

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) - Power Bed Fusion

SLS is similar to SLA. A thin layer of material powder is dispersed on the platform and preheated to the temperature just below the melting point. The the laser as the power source is used to sinter the materials (nylon or polymers). A good introductory guide is provided by Formlab.

PolyJet - Material Jetting

PolyJet provide a faster and more accurate 3D printing compared with the techniques mentioned above. The print head deposits hundreds of tiny liquid droplets of the UV curable materials on the platform and the UV light attached to the print head simultaniously cures/solidifies the materials. A brief introduction could be found the Stratsys website or the introduction video provided by Solid Concepts.

Comparisons between them

3D Printed Musical Instruments - the real functional instruments instead of the ones just for fun

Strings

Two of the 3D printed violins are 3Dvarius, the first electronic 3D printed violin inspired by Stradivarius and made by SLA, and HOVALIN, an open source 3D printable acoustic violin made by FDM.

Brass instruments

Jerome Wiss use 3D printing for the prototype of his brass instruments.

Saxophone Mouthpiece

It is tested by Lorenzoni et al. (2013) that PolyJet is the best technique for 3D printing a mouthpiece. SYOS is using FDM for making customized mouthpiece.

Personnaly, I have tried both FDM (Ultimaker 2+/3)and SLA (Form2) in 3D printing a saxophone mouthpiece. SLA provides a better resolution with an easier operation while you have to play with hundreds of parameters to print an acceptable mouthpiece by FDM. Such parameters might include:

  • Resolution
  • Nozzle sizes
  • Layer thickness
  • Line width
  • Infilling
  • Ironing

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