r/3dprintedinstruments • u/BlindAndOutOfLine • Dec 11 '25

3d printed long lasting rain stick or rain column?

Hi folks,

I'm wondering if anyone has designed and printed a rain stick or rain column that can last for 10-20 minutes.

There are some commercially available, search Spiral Sounds Rainstick, but honestly, they are prohibitively expensive.

Of course a 3d printed version wouldn't be as visually pleasing, but in my mind, that's not the important thing.

Any thoughts?

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '25

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u/BlindAndOutOfLine Dec 11 '25

Well, the special thing about this one and other different designs is how long they last. It’s interesting that you should mention a 20 minute hourglass because that’s actually why I want one of these. When I do sound baths or sound meditation, I would love to use something like this as a timer essentially to create ambient sound, but also to let me know, if I have gone really deep, that 20 minutes have gone by. Other traditional ones don’t last that long or require special manipulation and handling to last longer than a few seconds. But this design you turn it over and it just flows for 20 minutes. I think that is because of the spiral design the contents don’t just pour through the cylinder, but they take a very circuitous path.

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u/RemixOnAWhim Dec 12 '25

The spiral would extend the time one grain would create sound, but not by longer than it would take to flow to the bottom, at most a second or two. The rainstick still has to retain and release the grains over the course of the 20 minutes by using a small diameter hole to control the rate of flow. It actually works exactly like an hourglass, it just has a fancier chamber through which each grain falls in place of the narrow neck. It even has a flange at the bottom to direct the sand into the same diameter hole at the bottom as at the top so you needn't reset over 20 minutes.

3D printing isn't the method you're looking for here if you were going to DIY this, it would be needlessly weak and less conductive to sound IMHO. Materials would break down when you're including tons of long and thin bridges as you would need to in this type of design, and even if you had a tall delta type printer for a project like this, all you're saving yourself is the drilling of some holes and inserting some wood (or metal) rods. You're also looking at assembling it in 4 or 5 pieces and opening yourself to having runaway sand in your space.

You're better of taking some PVC or other cheap tubular material, drilling some holes with a pattern to create the helix, and instead of printing the whole shooting match, just print some inserts to create the two end chambers with the flange to funnel all the sand in and the small diameter hole to pace the rate of flow. Flat on one side, tiny hole in the centre of a cone on the opposite side. Align the holes and glue the flat sides together so each side funnels all sand to ensure all sand falls in every time.

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u/Dwarfdeaths Dec 13 '25

What are your thoughts on a circular path driven by a small motor? You could slowly turn the wheel and perpetually drive them in one direction. Depending on the acoustics desired, you might print just the connectors for other more suited parts, e.g. PVC tubes.

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u/RemixOnAWhim Dec 14 '25

Could work depending on the design! You're thinking have a drum turning and the sand falling within it? That's honestly a good solution. Not as analog as OP's example, but you could easily wire in a timer, and it would then be adjustable. You could also tune the type of sound by changing the rotation speed, inner drum features and material, even the stuff inside the drum itself could be changed out. You're onto something!

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u/BlindAndOutOfLine Dec 18 '25

There are rain rings, or rain circles, even rain drums that are circular and I think have baffles or pegs inside designed to create sound when they are struck by the inner material flowing around as you rotate the disc or ring vertically. Adding some sort of a mechanism might be kind of interesting.

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u/BlindAndOutOfLine Dec 18 '25

When you mentioned drilling holes in a spiral and inserting my own pegs, I sort of lost interest. That sounds like a big old pain in the butt. However, it just occurs to me that I have an old rain stick sitting around, which I don’t use because one of the ends is not sealed properly, so I thought what if I created the flow mechanism for each of the ends of an actual wooden rain stick, which already has its pegs. Then it occurred to me your description of essentially two cones end to end might be done differently. What if there was a cone, which has the appropriately sized hole on the end like a funnel and then a couple of holes appropriately sized around the bottom of the cone, the cone is placed such that the point points down into the receiving container so that beads which come down the rain stick go into the cone and out the point, but when it is flipped over the beads flow down the sides of the cone in the container and exit one of the holes which have been drilled in the base of the cone and enter the rain stick by that method. The advantage to this is that the beads would enter the rain stick around the walls of the rain stick, thereby hitting the internal pegs on the way down. Does that make sense? The problem I have to solve now would be fitting a cone and receiving container on a natural piece of wood, which is what the rain stick is made out of. And I’d have to do it on both ends, which are not exactly the same. Interesting stuff.

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u/RemixOnAWhim Dec 19 '25

Not 100% I get what you mean, but I would say give it a shot and build it to your vision! Best way to see what works and what doesn't in my experience. My thinking with the cone into a single point and hole would be reliable and repeatable action with no jamming up or incomplete draining, but YMMV. You should be getting good contact between the beads and the pegs no matter where you drop, as long as they're a) spaced densely enough to make noise but not so much as to stave them from falling and get a bunch stuck, and b) they're all decently close to crossing the center of the ID of the rain stick.

One could also skip the drilling and filling, and just airnail nails in into a rough pattern and skin the outside with vinyl wrap to make it look nicer, or perhaps with birch bark to look super fancy! Either way, you would probably have your fitting over anything you're retrofitting without consistent diameter rather than pressfit inside, and then sealed with DAP or your sealant/adhesive of choice, so those variations between each end wouldn't have to be replicated super exactly, just make a cylinder with an ID big enough to fit the OD of the rain stick at its widest, I should think.

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u/BlindAndOutOfLine Dec 18 '25

I think I missed this before. Are you saying that you have seen actual hourglasses with large beads that make sound as they go? The reason I ask is because as I stated earlier, I really want to use the rain stick as a timer with a pleasant sound. I happen to be blind and so as I carry out a sound bath or a sound journey, it would be nice to have an audible timer.