On the news tonight there was a story of someone who developed a 3D printed plastic gun. That reminded me that back when I was a “rocket scientist” we had a 3D plastic printer for doing prototype and fit check work. The machines were expensive but price per part was cheap. We also sent stuff out to metal 3D printers. But It was very expensive.
So I was curious if anyone has tried a 3D printed chanter. It would probably sound like crap and easily broken. But it would be an interesting project.
I think you could create blanks that would be something between the step drilling process and the reamed chanter. The resolution (layer thickness) I have seen on the 3D printers we have used is only about 3.5-4mil (0.0035"-0.004"/0.089mm-0.102mm). I think this coarseness of the walls of the chanter would allow the sound to closely approximate the best offerings from Pakistan…
If you ran a set of properly profiled reamers to refine the bore, I believe you could get a good scale (with a well-fitted reed), but the tone would be lacking.
I suspect that would be the case. That’s probably why the flute and other videos of of recorders made all sound too soft. I suspect, like the evolution of dot matrix and then future generations of inkjet, the resolution will get really close to a machine bore.
I might give this a go. There is a woodworking/metalshop/3Dprinter Club here in Portland that I have been meaning to join anyhow. I downloaded blender… now lets see if any of my engineering skills help with this. I have done really really simple cad a long time ago.
Have you heard if anyone had every completed a concert D chanter (or any key) in a digital file?
If not I will try the dimensions from the latest project at Na Piobairi Uilleann.
This may be a big waste of time but at least I will get to play with a 3d program and a 3D print.
I will post my tragedies and successes on my blog.
But I saw this thing on a pipe organ builder site, they were using software to get desired harmonics of shaping an organ pipe on said software. I’ll post a link when I find it, I think it was either on Pheonix or Johannus organs.
I wonder if you could use said software to get desired chanter tone and harmonics with a 3d printer?
Plz reply someone…
(Drones you can fiddle with reeds pretty much until you get the tone you want, but maybe those too.)
I am reading the manual for this blender 3D software… It’s giving me a headache already.
I have a hard time convincing myself that an all plastic chanter will sound that good. I don’t know but it seems like even the density of the different hard woods make a difference and the plastic I think is much softer and less dense than boxwood, ebony, etc.
But if I can really do this and it sounds at least playable but with crappy tone then I can experiment with different plastics and shapes.
I have low hopes for this but I suspect I will understand my brad angus chanter better when I am done.
Here is a question though. The rowsome d chanter that I am copying has several keys. That’s a complication I don’t need for this first one. So the question is should I put the holes there anyway and then tape them off. Or can I just not put the holes in. In other words do the keyed holes small volume, when closed, affect the chanter tuning?
Yes, any perturbations of the bore will have some effect on tuning. Some makers feel that these slight indentations can even encourage bad behavior from a chanter. I noticed it right away when I added three keys to a chanter that I had been playing for about five years, however, I did not feel that it posed too serious a problem.
