I have a 6 key polymer (not ebonite) M&E flute that has just developed 5 cracks in the headjoint, including one going into the embouchure. Now I’ve owned a number of polymer flutes over the years and none have ever developed cracks of any sort, so I am having a bit of a WTF moment here, particularly in light of the fact that this flute hasn’t been out of my temperature controlled living room (65-75 F) during the time I’ve owned it.
Has anyone else run across a polymer M&E with cracks in the headjoint? I don’t recall seeing any posts on the subject over the years, and a quick forum search didn’t bring anything up on the subject. Really curious if anyone else has experienced this……
Hey Loren…that really is surprising. Makes me wonder if it was an inherently defective piece of polymer. I’ve never heard of an M&E polymer cracking myself.
Hi Eric, yeah, will be interesting to see if anyone else has seen this
I’m not inclined to think it’s a single piece of defective polymer as these materials are produced in large batches. M&E would likely have bought and used some quantity of the stuff in a number of flutes, leading to multiple flutes having issues.
Polymers can degrade over time, but I don’t think this M&E is particularly old, as it has the faux metal R&R crown and the huge white M&E logo lettering on the body. Not certain it’s the most recent iteration, but certainly not one of the early ones.
Exposure to chemicals could cause degradation, but I haven’t been running it on E85, lol. Nor have I been letting it swim in acetone.
The way the headjoint has split, it looks just like you’d normally see with a wood headjoint that has shrunk around the head liner, except this split in 5 places at once, rather than the typical one or possibly two initial cracks you’d see in a wood headjoint. Really appears the polymer both shrank and/or radically lost elasticity.
I suppose an alternative possibility is that the headjoint bore to brass headliner tube fit ratio was off, leading to a fit that was too tight. I can envision a few ways this could happen in production, but for now the cause remains a mystery. That said, I’ve never been a fan of lined headjoints in polymer flutes, and now even less so….
I was thinking there might be a herd of people if it was a bad batch of polymer!
I agree with you on not having lined head joints on polymer flutes. They just add weight and now apparently they could be problematic although I do suspect Delrin is tougher than the polymer M&R uses.
Glad you weren’t running e85 in that puppy…M&E specifies diesel only!
Have you thought about contacting Michael? He’s always been responsive to me via email.
Yes, I plan to contact Michael, if only to let him know. Having purchased the flute second hand, I don’t expect any sort of warranty coverage. I’ll probably inquire about the cost of a replacement HJ, though I’m not certain I’d want to invest additional money in this particular flute, particularly if it involves shipping the flute back for fitment, but we’ll see.
Interesting, so apparently my cracked M&E headjoint isn’t an anomaly.
The printed HJ looks good, does it play well off the printer, or do you need to hand work the embouchure hole to get it playing properly? I know next to nothing about the current capabilities of 3D printing.
I don’t know what the precise composition of the M&E polymer is, but I think it is worth noting that most/all of these polymers, including delrin, PVC, ABS, etc exhibit significant thermal shrinkage. This could potentially be used to advantage when trying to get a tight fit of a brass head liner, but could also lead to cracking.
For example, if the head is bored to size, and either heated or taken directly after machining (while still hot) to insert the head liner, it will shrink as it cools and ensure a tight fit. But if it shrinks too much (or was bored slightly under size, due to over heating and stretching during machining resulting from a dull cutting bit), the resulting stress as it cools and shrinks will be very similar to that experienced by a wooden head that shrinks as it dries around a non-yielding metal liner. The time taken for this stress to manifest in cracking may depend on other factors, such as whether the material becomes more brittle over time or with low temps.
So, all this is to say that I’m not surprised that this can happen if the tolerances are even slightly off.
Jonathan, interesting info about the thermal shrinkage, thanks for that. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure why some of these M&E flutes are cracking, but at least we know some of the potential causes.
Some plastics, nylon in particular, are also humidity sensitive and change not only in dimensions but also in toughness since water acts as a plasticizer to them. Another sneaky plasticizer and solvent is DEET, so if you’re using insect repellents use picaridin based ones as it’s safer for plastics. I once had a glow stick bracelet leak onto a table and start dissolving the the side of the head of an ABS low D whistle (Dixon TB022), along with completely removing the shiny cover printing on the corner of my Bill Ochs Tin Whistle Handbook.
Thanks, more good information on things that destabilize plastics. I wouldn’t have thought about something like DEET, good info for those who go camping and such.
I have an M&E flute and have the same crack going through the embrochure.
I don’t remember when it happened (probably during the very first years or so).
I friend who studied flute making in college thinks that the headjoint bore might have been to small for the brass tube. And then after some time it cracked …
Interesting that multiple people seem to have experienced the very same problem.
Seems like Michael really needs to improve his work…
