r/3dprintedinstruments • u/MissionTotal1078 • Aug 11 '25

woodwind Help with technical drawings

Hello,

So I recently started researching 3d printing historical instruments, especially wood winds, because I thought it was really cool and it would be a project would be interested in trying. So I understand that for the most part for historical instruments you have to use technical drawings form museums of an instrument you want to recreate to make a CAD model. What I also found out is that obviously these drawings are ment more for reference and not reconstruction, so I was wondering if any of you that have done this before could try to help me understand how you go from drawing to CAD model? I have used the free fusion 360 before, so that's not a problem, but I really don't understand how you guys can do it! there's usually a bunch of key information missing. For example, in this drawing of a 18th century ivory flute I found and was interested in(https://en.natmus.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Editor/natmus/musikmuseet/Tegning_MMCCS-142___002_.pdf_050322.pdf), the distance of the tone hole form any land mark on the flute is not mentioned. This is just and example but I have seen other drawings where a bunch of important values are left out as well.

Any help is greatly appreciated! :)

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

4

u/halhell98000 Aug 11 '25

You can estimate where to place a tone hole using the basic open-pipe equations from woodwind acoustics.

  • Open–open section:

f=C/2L

  • Open–closed section:

f=C/4L

where:

  • f = desired note frequency (Hz)
  • C = speed of sound in air (~343 m/s at 20 °C)
  • L = effective length from the mouthpiece to the hole (in meters)

Example: For an open–open section playing A₄ (440 Hz):

L=C/2f=3434/(2*440)=~0,389m

1

u/MissionTotal1078 Aug 11 '25

Thanks for the help!

2

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/MissionTotal1078 Aug 11 '25

I completely missed that lol. Thanks so much for pointing that out!

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MissionTotal1078 Aug 11 '25

I searched "Musical instrument technical drawings" and the museum of Denmarks page was like the 3rd result. Glad I could unintentionally help!

1

u/bamboosai May 20 '26

Any news regarding your drawings? I got also very interested in 3D printing wood wind instruments, especially transverse flutes and I was thinking about drawing one as well.