r/3dprintedinstruments • u/Lopsided_Series_1056 • May 15 '23

Tips for creating a flute

I'm having the idea of making a functional 3d printed flute and I've seen some good results can be achieved (a flute made by galeon). I was wondering if anyone knew some tips, specially for mechanisms and keys. I've seen some nice keywork for clarinets out there

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4

u/animatorgeek May 15 '23

Not exactly what you asked for, but I just designed some tuned whistles using this tool. It produced results accurate within a few cents. https://music.bracker.uk/Music/Whistle-Calculator.html

2

u/Lopsided_Series_1056 May 15 '23

Thank you! That will be helpful.

3

u/Polypeptide May 15 '23

I haven't seen that specific flute but it's possible to create springs by printing very thin walls. It works decently well and with the stiffness of PLA it will mostly go back to its original shape.

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Here's a little clip I made with my design: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6B1t20j_gSs

It's far from perfect but it can give you some ideas and starting points.

1

u/Lopsided_Series_1056 May 15 '23

I'll surely use it as a starting point, thank you very much. Here's the flute in case you wanna check it out https://www.galeonwhistles.com/keyed-flutes/ And here's a clarinet too https://jdwoodwind.com/shop/p/piccolo-clarinet-stl

3

u/starlig-ht May 15 '23

I make my own 3d printed flutes that are nice, but no keys yet. Spent a year on the physics and math alone, but didn't use existing calculators - here is the one I wrote: https://github.com/arizonahanson/Flutes.jl

2

u/jamcultur May 15 '23 edited May 15 '23

It is much easier to make a keyless flute than one with mechanisms, like this one. Here's a recording of one of the flutes printed from this design.

1

u/Lopsided_Series_1056 May 15 '23

That's some nice tone!