Jun 5, 2015 | By Simon

While we’ve seen how various additive manufacturing technologies have enabled both beginners and experts alike to create various custom products that are designed and fabricated within hours, many of these objects are rarely sensitive to the occasional extra little bit (or lack of) material and can function just fine otherwise.  But what about hardware designs that are extremely sensitive to even the slightest in material differences - such as musical instruments that have been modified over hundreds of years to perform in perfect tune?  

Thanks to one composer, we may soon be able to 3D print musical instruments that are capable of being fine-tuned digitally to the exact specifications of a musician before being fabricated.  

Composer Terumi Narushima, who also lectures in music studies at Wollongong University in New South Wales, has a particular fascination with semitones - also called a half step or a half tone - which are the smallest musical interval that is commonly used in Western music.  More particularly, Narushima is fascinated by the intervals between the semitones called microtones.

"When you go to school and study music you're told the smallest interval possible is a semitone," says Narushima. "But I'm interested in the sort of notes you can get that fall between the cracks of the keys of the piano."

The sounds that Narushima refers to can often be found in traditional music from Southern India, Indonesia and Turkey cultures, however the majority of the music in the world “doesn’t fit into those nice neat steps,” according to the composer.  

After being introduced to 3D printing, Narushima started a project that combines both one of the oldest instruments known to man - the flute - with modern additive manufacturing technologies to create custom wind instruments that are capable of producing these microtonal notes.  

The goal of the project is to create an instrument fabrication platform that allows users to create their own instruments that can play a range of notes outside of the conventional 12-tone scale - up until now, it was impossible to create such a thing without the aid of 3D printing; despite their rather simple appearance, flutes are actually a very complex thing to make.  

"If you change one parameter in the design it ends up affecting everything else," says Narushima. "Compared with the acoustics of, say, violins, which we are getting a very good understanding of, it seems with wind instruments like flutes there is still a lot of trial and error."

Using ABS plastic, Narushima has been able to create a variety of prototypes that can be altered a variety of ways to create different tonal qualities.  The results are so accurate that the instruments can even be used to print custom wind instruments that ‘fix’ a player’s inability to create a particular note - such as players who may suffer from a disability.  

Depending on how well the project goes, Narushima even see a potential for other wind instruments in the near future - such as saxophones and trumpets.  

"Rather than us saying, 'OK here are the tunings available', eventually we'd like to be able to say, 'What tuning would you like on your instrument? We'll come up with a 3D model for you that we can either print for you or maybe they might be able to print at home," added the composer.  

Although Narushima hasn't yet launched the flute designs publicly, those interested in remixing a flute design and 3D printing their own flutes can head over to the 'flutes' page over on Thingiverse.  

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

 

 

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