3d printed whistles, take 2?

[Wanderer]

It seems like I get back to this thought every half-decade or so

https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/3d-printed-whistle/100647/1

In 2019, I ran an experiment where I tried to have a 3d printed whistle made. But I ran into a lot of issues.

At the time, I wasn’t very good at CAD software, so I sent all of my calculations and measurements to a guy from India that I met on Fiverr, and he produced very serviceable 3d print files for me. But I never got good at modifying them, so I had to keep contacting him for changes, and those costs added up.

Secondly, I was sending those files to Shapeways to print on an SLS style printer, which was supposed to have really fine dimensional accuracy. But I never could get super satisfactory results from them without doing a lot of work on the whistles. And even then, those whistles had problems with voicing and tuning across the octaves. The price of having these things prototyped was a bit excessive…for heads, it could run me somewhere around $9.00 (if memory serves) per whistle head for the ‘low quality’ prints, and over $20 for the high-quality ones. After spending a few hundred dollars playing with the idea, I gave up on it–the cost was too high, and I felt like I wasn’t making sufficient progress, even after running through probably close to 50 prototypes. And it was taking too long–days to get modifications from the one guy (though the price was very reasonable) and a couple of weeks and lots of money to get batches of them printed from Shapeways.

Fast forward to 2023–a friend of mine had a 3d printer in the box, and was nervous about setting it up because it was an entry-level model you have to build yourself. None of her friends who offered to help followed through, so when I moved back to Texas, she asked me. I set it up for her and played with it for a week while I was waiting for her to come get it, and fell in love with 3d printing. So, I got my own printer–a little higher end model.

Which led to another friend reminding me that I’d once tried to 3d print whistles. “Well, why not give it another shot?” I thought. In the interim, I’ve gotten a lot more familiar with CAD software, and set about dusting off all of my old measurements and observations and rebuilding shape files from scratch. That was about 6 weeks ago.

Being able to make my own changes to the files in minutes and seeing near-immediate (half an hour or so for a whistle head) results was really encouraging and kept the momentum rolling, and I’ve seen steady improvements in the resulting whistles and the process.

This is my latest effort:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DQtf9EU-n0

[Terry_McGee]

Wow, that’s really exciting, Wanderer. I’ve long felt that the future of our flute and whistle developments will probably lie in the combination of 3D Printing (or some yet-to-be-developed prototyping technology) and Computer Modelling. You seem to have cracked the first of those! Tunborough, you’re on notice!

What bits are 3D Printed in your example? The head and body presumably. Ferrules (rings)? Tuning slide? (Surely not!)

And is the head “one blob” of 3D printed material in the way of the old plastic moulded heads, or made up of sections, eg the head body, the stopper and the cover that we have become familiar with post Sindt?

[Terry_McGee]

Hmmm, I had more, but the dreaded Internal Server Error has resurfaced. So here’s the leftovers…

I was interested to see the curved edge on the bottom of the ramp. I would have thought that not a good idea - that we would want the transit time across the window to be uniform across the window. But am I ignoring something or blowing it out of appropriate proportion?

Anyway, well done! And now the big question. What comes next?

[BigDavy]

Wanderer, these might be of interest to you.Qwistle 3d printer plans

[Wanderer]

(server error wouldn’t let me use quotes..blah)

The entire whistle is 3d printed.
The ferrules and tuning slide are printed with a silver-colored plastic. The rest of the whistle whistle is a plastic that is gradient colored on the filament roll (much like gradient yarns for knitting/crochet). The machine I have will let me change those plastics out during the print, so I set it all up, hit “go” and come back and pull a whistle off the print bed. Though I do print the bodies and the heads as two separate parts.

This means the ferrules are decorative only and don’t provide any actual strengthening function. But I find I quite like them–and they make it easy to find the right end to stick your whistle head into. I have one whistle printed without them, and I’m always having to double check which end goes where when I’m assembling the thing.

The tuning slides are quite robust, but 3d printing is weakest with shear forces along layers–so you could snap that slide if you tried. But so far, they’ve held up just fine in normal use.

So everything on each part is one “blob”. the heads (including ferrule and tuning slide) are one part, and the bodies (including ferrules and slight bit of mortise to accommodate the tuning slide) are a second part.

This is basically what the print setup looks like in the “slicing” software (the bit that turns a 3d file into instructions for the printer)
https://i.imgur.com/8xaTJf7.png

I’ve seen a number of other whistles with curved ramps that worked, and I found that geometry easier to work with than attempting to create a straight-bladed ramp with my limited CAD software knowledge (though I know it can be done!)–so that’s what I tried first. Basically, if you imagine taking a tube, and slicing through it at an angle to make a ramp, the curved bit happens naturally, and would take some effort to straighten out.

Since I’ve seen it work on other whistles, and thinking back to the original Clarke whistle and how low-tech that ramp is, I just gave it a shot. And since it worked, I am not spending a lot of time tinkering with that bit! Though I did make several prototypes changing the angle of that cut until I found one I liked best. That’s the thing I like about CAD and 3d printing. if I want to change an angle a half-degree, it’s easy–my ability to do such things manually with a file is just not up to snuff.

As for what’s next? I’m not sure. I’m having a lot of fun improving the process. I’m selling 3d printed stuff at pop-up markets here and town and sold a couple whistles at those. Someone on Facebook expressed an interest, and he has one. But I’m not really gearing up to sell these things with a website and all that jazz just yet. Though I imagine that’s coming.

[Wanderer]

@BigDavy

Wanderer, these might be of interest to you.Qwistle 3d printer plans

I’ve seen those…but I haven’t wanted to look at them too closely. I wanted all my ideas to be my own designs from the ground up.

[Terry_McGee]

Great stuff Wanderer. Keep us in touch with progress.

I’ve made a few whistles “the hard way”, and mill the ramp, using an approximation approach, rotating the head in 5 degree increments. So rather than a perfectly curved ramp yielding a perfectly straight edge (when viewed from above), I end up with a dozen or so facets to the curve and therefore to the edge. Easily touched up if wanted, but it doesn’t seem to be critical. I notice Killarney whistles do the same in brass. That could be an approach if the 3D curve maths gets too scary, and if you determine it would be better to have a uniform window “length”. But these are matters probably to be determined experimentally.

[Wanderer]

@Terry_McGee

Great stuff Wanderer. Keep us in touch with progress.

I’ve made a few whistles “the hard way”, and mill the ramp, using an approximation approach, rotating the head in 5 degree increments. So rather than a perfectly curved ramp yielding a perfectly straight edge (when viewed from above), I end up with a dozen or so facets to the curve and therefore to the edge. Easily touched up if wanted, but it doesn’t seem to be critical. I notice Killarney whistles do the same in brass. That could be an approach if the 3D curve maths gets too scary, and if you determine it would be better to have a uniform window “length”. But these are matters probably to be determined experimentally.

I’ve made a few wooden whistles back in the day, using a set of jeweler’s files. Which made it ‘easy’ to get that straight-across blade. And when I first tried 3d printing whistles 5 years ago, I also voiced them with those same jeweler’s files, and one of the first things I did was straighten the blade out. My designs at the time accounted for that reshaping and subsequent material loss in the windway sizing.

With this latest set of attempts, I asked myself if all that was necessary. After all, I’ve seen other working whistles with a half-moon blade (Impepe, Alba, and Kerry Songbird come to mind), and the same blade geometry works for quenas, the pinkillu, xiao, shakuhachi, among others. So I just figured I’d try it as-is. And since it seems to be working well, I’m just not inclined to futz with it further.

[Tunborough]

@Terry_McGee

I was interested to see the curved edge on the bottom of the ramp. I would have thought that not a good idea - that we would want the transit time across the window to be uniform across the window. But am I ignoring something or blowing it out of appropriate proportion?

In my limited experience with curved leading edges (as seen from above), I didn’t care for the tone.

If the ramp is flat and the tube is curved, cutting the leading edge straight across will leave the sides of the leading edge flat rather than sharp. I haven’t found this to be a detriment.

[David_Cooper]

@Terry_McGee

I was interested to see the curved edge on the bottom of the ramp. I would have thought that not a good idea - that we would want the transit time across the window to be uniform across the window. But am I ignoring something or blowing it out of appropriate proportion?

When I experimented with making a fipple adapter for my quenas I was thinking I should maybe try making some with a straight edge to the ramp, but it worked fine without bothering, and I also know that such quenas have a reputation for being a little harder to play, perhaps because a straight edge is sub-optimal. Think about the air speed at the sides where it’s slowed by friction - it will take longer to get there than the air in the middle. The best shape I’ve found is not the one you get by using a round file for each “bisel” (the internal and external sides of the ramp) as you get too pointy an “escotadura” (the shape of the window hole), so I go for something more of a U shape and do the final stages by carving with a knife to make it less V shaped. It wouldn’t surprise me if the best shape for blowing directly onto it is the same as is needed for air coming to it from a windway.

[Wanderer]

@Terry_McGee

Great stuff Wanderer. Keep us in touch with progress.

I’ve made a few whistles “the hard way”, and mill the ramp, using an approximation approach, rotating the head in 5 degree increments. So rather than a perfectly curved ramp yielding a perfectly straight edge (when viewed from above), I end up with a dozen or so facets to the curve and therefore to the edge. Easily touched up if wanted, but it doesn’t seem to be critical. I notice Killarney whistles do the same in brass. That could be an approach if the 3D curve maths gets too scary, and if you determine it would be better to have a uniform window “length”. But these are matters probably to be determined experimentally.

So, the tuning slide is the weakest part of these whistles. They hold up, for the most part, but if you bend them just a little too hard (such as trying to shove them in a boot for the 10th time) it can break. Because of the way 3d printing works, the shear strength across layer lines is the weakest, and the tuning slide is a half-millimeter thin…so it’s the weak point.

I don’t like that much, so I’ve ordered some brass tubing in the appropriate size. When it gets here, I’m going to experiment with replacing that 3d printed tube with a metal one, for greater longevity. But until then…another tune!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSYXdXvHQfE

[BigDavy]

Wanderer, a friend of mine who is into experimenting with uilleann pipes using 3D printing had the same problem. He found that printing the parts by adjusting the print so that the layer lines were diagonal to the vertical axis of the part gave much more strength to the part in use.

[Wanderer]

@BigDavy

Wanderer, a friend of mine who is into experimenting with uilleann pipes using 3D printing had the same problem. He found that printing the parts by adjusting the print so that the layer lines were diagonal to the vertical axis of the part gave much more strength to the part in use.

Yup, I know the technique you refer to. But angling the print introduces other problems, notably with support placement.

One of the ways I’m getting around the limitations of my nozzle size is using the internal supports in the mouthpiece as double duty to also provide a ‘wall’ to lay the labium ramp on as it goes down. This allows me to print a thinner blade than would otherwise be possible by just printing the ramp in the air. In so doing, I get a play-ready ramp straight from the printer, rather than something I have to take files to in order to clean it up afterwards.

The tuning-slide are a high-use part, and even if it doesn’t break, will eventually wear and loosen due to friction of sliding it around. I think for long-term longevity, I’m ok with adding a few cents and a few minutes to the process by putting in a brass piece there instead.

[Wanderer]

Tubing arrived yesterday, and OD was right where the seller said it would be. My printers were busy, so I spent the afternoon modifying my CAD files to do away with the printed tuning slide, and instead created a spot for the brass one to go.

Fit tests done today seem to be just right, so I’m currently printing a full whistle where I can slot the slide in and see how it goes.

[Wanderer]

New whistle printed. Tuning slide works great!

Made a short video about it, in which I purposefully break one of the old style whistles. I hope it’s obvious in the video that it’s not that easy to break them, but I do believe the brass slide is a much better solution.

https://youtu.be/nRA2P8t_qQc

[Terry_McGee]

Heh heh, you’ll remember I said:

@Terry_McGee

What bits are 3D Printed in your example? The head and body presumably. Ferrules (rings)? Tuning slide? (Surely not!)

So much relieved to see that now in brass! Well done, Wanderer.

And thanks for allowing us to look over your shoulder while you’re doing all this. Very exciting!

Any thoughts as to what comes next?

[Wanderer]

@Terry_McGee

So much relieved to see that now in brass! Well done, Wanderer.

And thanks for allowing us to look over your shoulder while you’re doing all this. Very exciting!

Any thoughts as to what comes next?

Yeah..I’m rough on whistles, and I snapped one at the tuning slide. Being rough with it, of course And I figured if I’m gonna break them, other people probably will too, so I found a seller on Amazon selling the exact size OD/ID tubing I needed that I could cut down to lengths.

I’m pretty happy with how things are now. Now, I think it’s just incremental improvements to the process. Some better finishing tools, etc. I’m printing them in all the colors I have here in at the house, to see which filaments are suitable for making whistles. It turns out, not all of them are. I have a “metal” filament that’s steel-colored and has bits of actual metal in it. That one came off the printer this morning and was a big failure. Even with my super precise deburring tool, I couldn’t cut a clean ribbon off of the material. It ended up with lots of little tear-outs and jaggies. The blade wouldn’t make a sound right off the bed (which is unusual these days) but I generally can fix that–but not with this material. There was just no salvaging it.

I’m also trying to source cheaper tubing. I would’ve used Smallparts.com years ago to get it, but Amazon evidently bought them out and then killed off the cheap materials. Right now, it’s costing me $8.00 a foot for what I’m using, which is easily 4-5 times higher than I expected to pay.

I’ve started posting vids on the various FB tinwhistle groups, and if someone wants one, I imagine I’ll sell them one. I’ve sold a small handful so far. If I keep getting positive feedback on them, I imagine I’ll be standing up a website in the next month or two and open shop, I guess

[Terry_McGee]

@Wanderer

I’m pretty happy with how things are now. Now, I think it’s just incremental improvements to the process. Some better finishing tools, etc. I’m printing them in all the colors I have here in at the house, to see which filaments are suitable for making whistles. It turns out, not all of them are. I have a “metal” filament that’s steel-colored and has bits of actual metal in it. That one came off the printer this morning and was a big failure. Even with my super precise deburring tool, I couldn’t cut a clean ribbon off of the material. It ended up with lots of little tear-outs and jaggies. The blade wouldn’t make a sound right off the bed (which is unusual these days) but I generally can fix that–but not with this material. There was just no salvaging it.

Wow.

I’m also trying to source cheaper tubing. I would’ve used Smallparts.com years ago to get it, but Amazon evidently bought them out and then killed off the cheap materials. Right now, it’s costing me $8.00 a foot for what I’m using, which is easily 4-5 times higher than I expected to pay.

Interesting. I imagine you’d get a number of slides out of each stick, so that cost doesn’t sound high. But that probably tells us that I haven’t considered the price competition in the whistle market! Penny whistle, and all that!

I’ve started posting vids on the various FB tinwhistle groups, and if someone wants one, I imagine I’ll sell them one. I’ve sold a small handful so far. If I keep getting positive feedback on them, I imagine I’ll be standing up a website in the next month or two and open shop, I guess > >

Wow, how exciting.

Then there will come the Session version, the Quiet-as-a-Church-Mouse version, the “all the different keys” versions, the full sets, the “can you do a version to match my eyes?” versions, etc, etc. And then someone will ask about flutes…

Keep us in touch!

[Wanderer]

@Terry_McGee

Interesting. I imagine you’d get a number of slides out of each stick, so that cost doesn’t sound high. But that probably tells us that I haven’t considered the price competition in the whistle market! Penny whistle, and all that!

My goal with these things is to produce as good of a quality whistle as I can while still keeping the price as affordable as possible. That means saving pennies anywhere possible without sacrificing quality to do so. I don’t really want to become yet another $100-300-per-whistle whistle maker. It kind of runs back to my first forays into whistledom years and years ago when it was near-impossible to find affordable folk music on the internet. I was terribly offended that I had to pay somewhere around $5.00 a tune to get out-of-copyright sheet music for folk tunes on the web, so I spent some of my own money and started putting those tunes up for free. Now, of course, there are sites that are much more well known and used than mine, but I don’t mind that one bit. Goal accomplished.

I don’t want people to feel like they have to spend that kind of money. I mean, I’m not going to kill that market, for sure. I just contacted Fred Rose to get one of his whistles…but I want to kind of blur that line between “starter whistle” price and “decent whistle” price. (And please, let’s not muddy this thread up with yet another decades-old discussion about how Generations are just fine. I know that there are plenty of folks who hold to that. And I don’t deny them their opinion. Horses for courses. You know who you are…resist the temptation lol!).

These tuning slides add just shy of $1.00 USD to the end production price, which isn’t crazy, and I can live with it. But if I could make a slide for $0.25 for the same quality, there’s no reason not to spend a little effort to find a source.

@Terry_McGee

Wow, how exciting.

Then there will come the Session version, the Quiet-as-a-Church-Mouse version, the “all the different keys” versions, the full sets, the “can you do a version to match my eyes?” versions, etc, etc. And then someone will ask about flutes…

Keep us in touch!

I’m trying not to look too far into the future, or let myself get too excited about it. I’m just trying to take things as they come and if becoming a big whistle maker doesn’t pan out, I won’t get too bent out of shape about it. I’m mostly excited that I’ve managed to make some whistles that don’t seem to suck

Perhaps my next foray will be designing a C whistle though I imagine Cs and all of the little D variants are a niche market compared to the standard D. Honestly, the next thing I’m interested in is looking into more robust plastics. The plastic I’m using is sustainable, not petroleum based, and used in food and medical industries, so I feel pretty good about using it. But it’ll also warp if you leave it in in your car in the summer in warm climates. They make more uv and temperature resistant plastics, and I imagine I’ll casually keep looking into those to see if I can find something I can use but also feel safe about people putting in their mouths.

[Moof]

@Wanderer

The plastic I’m using is sustainable, not petroleum based, and used in food and medical industries … But it’ll also warp if you leave it in your car in the summer in warm climates.

That probably wouldn’t do a flute or a fiddle much good either! People will expect adequate tensile strength in a whistle, but they can get used to instruments that need a bit of care. I might be in a small minority who’d think that was perfectly fine now (I’m even willing to shift my electricity consumption to when demand can be met from renewable sources), but environment-first attitudes are becoming more widespread.